dot legal yellow headlights?

hey i saw yellow H4 bulbs for headlights on ebay and he says they are 50 state street legal and DOT compliant. if the DOT approves them for street use can you be ticketed for them? i'm going to Hella H4 conversions on my 86 accord hatch,which of course are completly legal, it's just going to a modern bulb, but i really like the yellow bulbs it's the same look as lemans cars. also does anyone know if i went to a 5 3/4 round housing insead of the rectangular with an h4 high low beam would it be legal? is there a size the lights have to be? or just a legal reflector and bulb. i was thinking if the yellow are approved that would mean they had been tested to meet the requirments of the goverment. they are standard wattage. he also said they have the the yellow gas not the painted crap.

Hey man nice to see ya on the boards. Im not o100% percent sure about yellow headlights but the last time i tried nokyas in my headlights (H4's of course) i was promptly stopped 15 minutes after the install and asked to take them out and change them back or risk a ticket. So as for being legal i can't se that happening in the headlights. Now the foglights on the other hand i know that are perfectly legal in those. I will soon be buying a svt front fascia and putting a new set of nokyas in them. hope this kinda clears up your situation.

ok lots of questions...

first off, are you just switching the bulb? or doing an HID conversion to an H4 HID setup?

The difference....switching the bulb is not illegal, going to HID setup is illegal unless you use a DOT approved Projector Lens housing (which for your car im sure there are none)

Basically look at it like this....the more color the bulbs have, the more attention you will draw. Any bulbs that are extremely yellow like that usually have a coating on the outside of the bulb to make them that color....I know exactly which type of bulbs you are speaking of and YES, they will get you into trouble as they are not street legal. Regardless of what you read on the Ebay listing, the bulbs that are extremely yellow will eventually land you a ticket or at least a traffic stop.

Secondly, if you like the look of the bright bulbs you will need to upgrade to an HID conversion kit in order to get the brightness....you will be dissapointed if you just switch out the halogen bulb for another halogen bulb. Also with the higher temp Halogen bulbs you risk frying wires (aka melting them) and possibly melting your plastic headlight housings. Believe it or not HID lights use less power than Halogen bulbs and burn brighter. Keep in mind HID lights are illegal but usually you wont be hastled for 4300K-8000K unless you aim them high.

As for the size of the lights...yes there are sizes to the bulbs....you would need to check with you dealer manual to see what light bulb size your car uses...then stick with that size bulb or else they will not fit properly.

oh i'm not going HID i'm doing the hella h4 conversions they replace your old sealed beam with an H4 housing which is legal. the bulbs i'm talking about are for H4 types of lamps. these don't have any kind of coating on the bulb itself,he said the bulb is clear,its the gas that makes them yellow. as far as the wiring i know about that,i'll just do the four relay system to preserve safety with the isolated headlight circuits just like factory. they don't make my combination switch anymore and they had problems with too much current through the switch anyway. so i have to take care of that switch.

oh i'm not going HID i'm doing the hella h4 conversions they replace your old sealed beam with an H4 housing which is legal. the bulbs i'm talking about are for H4 types of lamps. these don't have any kind of coating on the bulb itself,he said the bulb is clear,its the gas that makes them yellow. as far as the wiring i know about that,i'll just do the four relay system to preserve safety with the isolated headlight circuits just like factory. they don't make my combination switch anymore and they had problems with too much current through the switch anyway. so i have to take care of that switch.

They probably only say DOT compliant because there probably 55 watts.

Ryan88 wrote:

They probably only say DOT compliant because there probably 55 watts.

well sealed beams suck lol