Undercover Brother

Hello folks, I’m probably joining this convo a few years too late - however, this forum and this thread helped me a lot when I was forced to replace my trusty ol’Camry V6, and got an Aurion Presara (2008) last month. One of the low beams wasn’t working - which did help me with negotiating the price on the car, but left me a little lost regarding replacement bulbs and their cost. I looked up the HID lamp spec in the owners manual, and it said they were D4Ss. I also gathered after hunting online that the factory originals for Aurion Presara in Oz were 35W Toshiba-Harison lamps @4300K. These are long life HIDs with 2000+ hours life times. After getting the vehicle registration and VIN off me, Tuggeranong Auto Electricals quoted me $650-ish to replace both HID low beam bulbs. They wouldn’t even tell me what brand, what light temperature and what price the bulbs actually cost them. I promptly rang Canberra Toyota - their parts guy said he didn’t know what brand they were, but they cost $350 a piece - $700 a pair. Disappointed, I went to Supercheap Auto - asked them for D4S spec HIDs. They stocked Bosch HIDs - OEM replacements for Toyota Avensis, they said. $118 each, and these had to be ordered in, they said. They couldn’t tell me anything about the colour temperatures or wattage. After a little online research, I figured that the Avensis and the Aurion Presara used the same spec - D4S. Also figured out that D4S lamps are all the same wattage and colour temperatures based on info from the Bosch, Osram and Phillips websites. eBay could get me Toshiba-Harisons from Japan, but that’d take many days, and Supercheap seemed more cost effective. ...so got a pair of Bosch D4S HIDs from Supercheap - $240, and took the car to a local mechanic - who charged me $100-something (labour for an hour and a quarter) to put the bulbs in... was a decent workshop - they took the utmost care. The Bosch lamps are made in Japan, have a 12 month warranty, work beautifully and have a rated life time of 3000+ hours. I could have gone for 6000 or 8000K bulbs - but they don’t last as long, and the human eye/brain really screws up when trying to clearly see at night at those colour temperatures - biologically, the best colour temperature for headlights is between 4000-5000 Kelvins - i.e. not too white/blue. Cheers!