G'day all,
Just recently I had taken my car out for a drive and it got dark so I had to switch on the headlights, they were so dim and misaligned that I had to drive with my high-beams. The alignment I have covered but that doesn't mean anything if the globes aren't ideal. Can anyone recommend any good H4 55/65W incandescent lamps. I can't go LED or HID as they are illegal to use unless the vehicle came with them as standard. Ideal globes to me are bright, long lasting and available in Australia.
Cheers guys!

What is the status of the reflector surface and the front "glass" (it uses to actually be plastic)?
Both tend to corrode over time (old steel, chromium plated reflectors tend to rust and peel off, more modern coated plastic reflectors tend to oxidize so get milky), the plastic tend to go milky once the UV protection layer gets worn out.
In both cases the only real working solution is the headlight replacement.
The plastic front could be polished, but it would be missing the UV protection whatsoever, so get milky within few months again, even when attempting to apply some UV protection sprays available on the market (you will never be able to reach the quality of the main production line). So according to me fixing that does not make much sense. But if you need some quick fix to work for just few weeks, you may give it a shot (e.g. to be able to drive till the new headlights arrive,...)

What is the status of the reflector surface and the front "glass" (it uses to actually be plastic)?
Both tend to corrode over time (old steel, chromium plated reflectors tend to rust and peel off, more modern coated plastic reflectors tend to oxidize so get milky), the plastic tend to go milky once the UV protection layer gets worn out.
In both cases the only real working solution is the headlight replacement.
The plastic front could be polished, but it would be missing the UV protection whatsoever, so get milky within few months again, even when attempting to apply some UV protection sprays available on the market (you will never be able to reach the quality of the main production line). So according to me fixing that does not make much sense. But if you need some quick fix to work for just few weeks, you may give it a shot (e.g. to be able to drive till the new headlights arrive,...)

Everything is nice and clean, just the reflector is angled down and the adjuster is broken. The headlight is made of glass and good hella quality. I have no real issue getting a new assembly as there is a Toyota scrap parts supplier in Epping (1hr from me) that somehow still has parts for my car. I don't do much night time driving so waiting at most a week is not an issue.

I understood it delivers only too little light.
For lamps I preffer the long life versions, to me the visibility range is more related to the beam distribution (intensity near vs further away from the car), than the intensity itself. And that is about the optics and its alignment (the older, larger reflectors with refractive faceting on the front lens used to perform better than the later clear lens, faceted reflector optic style, mainly when using small reflectors in general). But that you can not change with the given car, just fix/replace what is broken and align it well.

Philips Xtreme Vision or Racing Vision H4's. Great flux production...only drawback is the shorter life span.

Long life lamps are essentially useless for vision...they only save maintenance expenses.

Long life lamps are essentially useless for vision...they only save maintenance expenses.

Definitely not in my experience. You could get easily accustomed to a lower light level.
But you will never adopt towards e.g. too high contrast in illumination near vs far from the car. And that has nothing to do with lamp output flux, but it is solely dictated by the headligh beam pattern and alignment.
To get the best pattern, the headlights have to be clear from any dirt or optical damage.
If your headlights are cr@ppy, you may put there whatever strong lamp you get the hands on, but all you get is not seing in any distance because of the glare from few meters in front of the car (usually the road just in front of the car gets overilluminated, compare to the road in the distance).
If you have such lights, no amount of lamp light output is going to help in any way.

Definitely not in my experience. You could get easily accustomed to a lower light level.
But you will never adopt towards e.g. too high contrast in illumination near vs far from the car. And that has nothing to do with lamp output flux, but it is solely dictated by the headligh beam pattern and alignment.
To get the best pattern, the headlights have to be clear from any dirt or optical damage.
If your headlights are cr@ppy, you may put there whatever strong lamp you get the hands on, but all you get is not seing in any distance because of the glare from few meters in front of the car (usually the road just in front of the car gets overilluminated, compare to the road in the distance).
If you have such lights, no amount of lamp light output is going to help in any way.

Long-life lamps are cr@ppy...sounds like you've never used high performance halogen bulbs. (Remember, USDOT and EU lighting requirements are different...that can make a big difference in subjective opinion.)
My headlights are good condition...I like to see where I'm going...not guess or feel where I'm going. But if you want to do that, well that's up to you.

Long-life lamps are cr@ppy...sounds like you've never used high performance halogen bulbs. (Remember, USDOT and EU lighting requirements are different...that can make a big difference in subjective opinion.)
My headlights are good condition...I like to see where I'm going...not guess or feel where I'm going. But if you want to do that, well that's up to you.

I don't know what exactly you mean by "high performance bulbs", but I did try many things.
Including double power bulbs. Yes, everything was brighter, it appeared to throw the light further away on a road which was already illuminated (but there the car headlight was not needed at all beside "being visible" by others) but with really dark road still no extra visibility at all.

The best night visibility ever I've experienced with Skoda Felicia. Completely stock headlight. Not that bright when compared to other, more modern, cars, but you could really see what is going on in the distance. Practically all other passenger cars (all more modern designs) I've met, include about 6 when visitting the US, were definitely worse tgan the Felicia.
Agree, the US (mainly Olds 88 and Ford Windstar) were not that bad, but that could be the different legislation. I don't know if the Windstar is to be taken into account, because it was the only van, so with rather high seating and headlights (I skip all the heavy trucks and busses from this compare, just because the high seating makes big difference regardless of the lights used).
The criteria was quite simple: How far ahead from the car and how well I can see what is going on.
All had the same problem: The first ~50m  in front of the car were illuminated so intensely, it drowned everything from 150..200m and further away in glare, with Felicia I was able to easily see nearly a km away, if the road was straight that far ahead.
With Golf V (the first modern car I bought as new after the Felicia, was very disappointed with the high beam performance; used H7, separate reflectors for each function) I did an experiment to disconnect the low beam and tye visibility reached about 300..400m, but missed curb illumination. And definitely illegal arrangement.
Tried a 100W high beam bulb there (illegal, because over the max lumen limit), everything a bit brighter but no real difference in the visibility distance from them. But had to switch it to low beam way sooner to prevent glare, so became stuck without high beam (so blind for longer than those 50m the low beam gives) for way longer stretches, so overall "average" visibility was worse. Tell me, how any "high performance" bulb may improve anything.

The only style lights I have no experience with are the adaptive high beam (laser, "pixel light",...), where in theory there you don't have to switch to low beam to prevent glare. But still if the design habit is to practically overilluminate the first 50m, I see no improvement in complete darkness.

I wonder what if you would dim the low beam in the Golf V while leaving the high beam in its factory configuration

As for pixel lights, the residual glare from them is still far worse than from an average Halogen high beam that the driver haven't switched down

I wonder what if you would dim the low beam in the Golf V while leaving the high beam in its factory configuration

Never managed to find out, if that would be possible to do in the light configuration "coding", but definitely the HW should allow that (it used dimmed down low beam as a DRL, but dunno if there was the link from the high beam). But definitely that would be violating the manufacturers certification, so illegal to do.

As for pixel lights, the residual glare from them is still far worse than from an average Halogen high beam that the driver haven't switched down

These systems are extremely sensitive to alignment and lens cleanness and that uses to be the main problem. Not sure, if that has any real solution.