Many of you know about the H11 to H9 conversion... same bulb size, 10w more, WAY more light. It requires a snip on the center locator pin and removal of one of the tabs in the connector itself. Otherwise, done.
Now enter the H11B. My Sedona uses these for the low beams, and from what I can gather, only Kia and Hyundai vehicles use these bulbs... PERIOD. They have no upgrade options, and the basic replacements are harder to find and are more expensive than other equivalent bulbs. The "B" in H11B refers to a different connector, which swaps a female end for two male spade connectors that rotate into the connector mounted on the housing itself. A neat idea, but the original H11 design wasn't broken, so...
In theory, you'd think that an easy upgrade would be an H9B, right? Well, good luck finding one anywhere in the US; you can't. Even eBay had scarce selections. I did find a pair however, for $25 shipped from Hong Kong for some genuine OSRAM H9B bulbs. They arrived today, and to my delight they do appear genuine (compared next to my OEM H11B OSRAM bulbs for reference). Since the socket for these two are the same, the only modification is a snip on one of the locator pins, and the bulb goes right in.
On other Kia/Hyundais, some lamp housings are large enough to retrofit a traditional H11 socket onto the wiring and put a regular H11/H9 bulb in. However, my Sedona's housing is too small to handle the 90 degree turn of the regular connector. I hacked my old housings to make this work a few years back (and light output is awesome), but those housings were replaced due to damage and I didn't want to hack the new ones up. Just wanted to report!
And before the official DOT bulb police chime in to revoke my BITOG card, the light output still results in a nice cutoff from the projectors, with the only difference being increased light output within the beam itself,
Now enter the H11B. My Sedona uses these for the low beams, and from what I can gather, only Kia and Hyundai vehicles use these bulbs... PERIOD. They have no upgrade options, and the basic replacements are harder to find and are more expensive than other equivalent bulbs. The "B" in H11B refers to a different connector, which swaps a female end for two male spade connectors that rotate into the connector mounted on the housing itself. A neat idea, but the original H11 design wasn't broken, so...
In theory, you'd think that an easy upgrade would be an H9B, right? Well, good luck finding one anywhere in the US; you can't. Even eBay had scarce selections. I did find a pair however, for $25 shipped from Hong Kong for some genuine OSRAM H9B bulbs. They arrived today, and to my delight they do appear genuine (compared next to my OEM H11B OSRAM bulbs for reference). Since the socket for these two are the same, the only modification is a snip on one of the locator pins, and the bulb goes right in.
On other Kia/Hyundais, some lamp housings are large enough to retrofit a traditional H11 socket onto the wiring and put a regular H11/H9 bulb in. However, my Sedona's housing is too small to handle the 90 degree turn of the regular connector. I hacked my old housings to make this work a few years back (and light output is awesome), but those housings were replaced due to damage and I didn't want to hack the new ones up. Just wanted to report!
And before the official DOT bulb police chime in to revoke my BITOG card, the light output still results in a nice cutoff from the projectors, with the only difference being increased light output within the beam itself,
