2000 Sonata Headlights

You should be able to find an H7 at just about any auto parts supplier.

You might try to find a way to wedge the cover in place. I've seen several with the covers off and have never seen any ill effects. If you can't get it to stay, I'd let it go for a while to see if anything happens.

Cars lead odd lives sometimes. People selling cars tend to not want to spend money on fixing them. Perhaps the bulb was taken out to take to the parts place and the person never went or they didn't have the bulb. Who knows? Just remember that people are silly, do what's obvious, and continue as normal.

Yes, that my local Autozone was out-of-stock (a frequent problem), amd was much more expensive than Kragen. I called Osram/Sylvania; the woman said, "I don't understand why a Korean manufacturer is using a Eurpoean-type bulb."

I asked about the high-performance versions of the bulb ("Silver," Blue). She said that by law, they can't increase the power consumption of the bulb. Therefore, the only way to increase the light output is by running the filament harder -- in other words (my interpretation), using a lower-voltage filament which will produce more lumens when fed a higher voltage than its design spec. The fancy bulbs will also produce more heat and therefore burn out faster. She said that the life of these bulbs is substantially shorter. So, you pay twice the price or more, and get a lot less life. Bottom line: you may be paying 4 times the cost of the stock bulbs, or the equivalent of $96 for a set of high-beam bulbs, or $192 for a set of all four -- a rather stiff price for blinding the old folks coming towards you downtown at night.

I'm familiar with these lamp issues from electronics repair -- my late bench technician always tried to replace certain dial light bulbs with bulbs intended for higher voltage, thereby making the replacement bulbs last forever at a cost of a slight loss of brightness.

Thinking about these auto bulb issues, it would seem that the federal requirement is intended to prevent under-hood fires by ensuring that stronger bulbs don't overload the cars' wiring. However, I can envision that in certain vehicles, the use of a brighter aftermarket bulb could possibly melt some plastic, like the molded lamp mount shape (part of the elaborate headlight assembly). I've also seen a comment someplace that bright bulbs caused the plastic bulb socket to become brittle and fall apart.

Thanks. I drilled a couple of little holes and fastened the cover at one corner with a wood screw. I can't get at the other side, but the one screw will be better than nothing.

Yes. I just got around to replacing the former engine oil, which was an unknown oil to me ("76" has changed hands twice in recent years -- who knows what it is). I put in Castrol 10-40. Would 10-30 be a better choice? The climate is never below 30 here, but the high end can include long freeway upgrades at up to 105 degrees ambient (worst case).

After reading an amazingly thorough examination of oil filters on the web, I hunted down a Wix filter at a NAPA store. It was pretty expensive. The filter report by Mr. Knize is an awesome, exhaustive piece of work that we all should read. Consumer Reports has never done better. The report confirmed someting that I've been suspecting for a few years: the regular Fram filters are junk. What he was trying to determine was if you can get a good, inexpensive oil filter for everyday use.

Go here:

This is aimed for the classic Mopar folks, and if you click on any links on the page, you'll find slightly different pages -- maybe newer data. The guy is always going out, buying filters, and then slicing them apart to evaluate what he finds inside them. He must have invested a small personal fortune in this project, but I, for one, am grateful for the information that he's provided for us.

Richard