Ram 2005 headlight bulbs

I understand that those new bluish lamps have a short life time compared to standard lamps. So not only are they pricey but you'll be buying them more frequently.

The Silver Stars have a very short life and often just make a ton of glare.

I tried the Ultras. They're not really all that much brighter. If you look carefully at the package, you will notice they compare their NEW bulb with one that's used (I think 50%) to claim its brighter. not really comparing apples to apples.

I truly hate the newer bright white ones even on low. I often stop in the road(county) when I have them coming at me. I look far the the rt. on two lane roads to keep from being blinded. The blue ones are not much better in my opinion.

I am not happy with ours either but there seems little I can do due the design of the lens.Brighter will not improve the pattern and visibility.

Sylvania Silverstar Class Action Settlement Proposal

Not for nothing, but apparently the product did not live up to Sylvania's marketing hype.

bovellois wrote:
On the new to me 05 Ram 2500 CTD, I note a big difference in lighting compared to Old Faithful (97 Ram), but it's still not perfect. What type of bulb should I use while staying street legal? I've used Sylvania's zXe in the old truck, they are good but pricey. What about SylverStar Ultra?

Instead of dumping a bunch of money into new bulbds perhaps you should break out your volt meter and check the voltage at the bulb socket with bulbs connected and on..

Pretty good chance you will find a 1 or 2 volt drop at the bulb..

Typically I have seen as low as 10.5V at the bulb with engine running, at the battery measured voltage around 13.9V.. or about 3.4V drop..

That is equivalent to about 24% LESS wattage from the bulb!

If you have a bulb rated as 55W you are only getting 41.8W!

Fix that and you WILL have considerably brighter lights.

Vehicle manufacturers tend to use the lightest wire gauge they can possibly use and typically is 18 ga.. While it is acceptable to use for the current drawn through the wire it also adds a lot of resistance which drops the amount of voltage by the time it gets to the bulb..

What I do on my vehicles is I add relays into the headlight circuit.. I feed the relay with 10Ga wire directly from the battery. This shortens the amount of wire the voltage travels and lower the resistance loss of that wire considerably.

With the relays I dropped the voltage loss to less than 1/2V.. The results are nothing short of a miracle and didn't require using extremely higher wattage bulbs which have a shorter life..

My first pair of Sylverstars didn't last much more than a year. They definitely were brighter though for sure. My second set has been in place for years now with no problems. They are not the Ultras. I'm intrigued with Gdetrailer's solution. Sounds like a fun project on an older truck.

Dodge headlights are terrible.

My 2nd gen trucks had the worst, my 3rd gen trucks are very bad, and my 2014 projector headlamps are just bad.

So maybe by 2025 they will have headlights comparable to a 2010 Chevy.

Out of the Sylvania line, just get the Xtravision bulbs. They last much longer than the silver stars and put out the most lumens and are still cheap. I personally went with some GE Nighthawk platinums since they are slightly over-driven bulbs but seem to have a much longer life than the Silverstar Ultra line of bulbs. They also only have a tiny blue ring just to add a little bit of the blue tint some people love. But most of the lense is clear to ensure you get all the lumens you possibly can get. There were some studies done of the "Dyed" glass high performance bulbs, and the lumen output was found to be lower than that of regular clear bulbs. Also, they last a shorter time because they have to drive the filament even harder because of the tinting to get the lumen output back to an acceptable level. Many OEM's tend to equip vehicles with "Long Life" halogen bulbs which do last for about 500 hours, but have less lumen output. So that's why OEM lights tend to be a little dim when you get a new halogen equipped car. Getting a regular bulb or slightly overdriven bulb like the nighthawk platinums or syvlania xtravisions will make a bit of difference. They did for me.