I’m on my 4th set of bulbs for low beam in 4 years. And still I can’t see jack-squat. I need to keep my headlights on high beam constantly. I live in rural Maine and many of the roads do not have paint. Try navigating a road when you can’t see the ditch. This has a potential of becomoing fatal.
Have you made sure your headlights are aimed correctly?
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Have you thought about trading this car for something else?
if the roads do not have paint, then I would guess that they also do not have street lights or much traffic. What’s the issue with running high beams in this situation?
There’s a possibility all the bulbs were faulty. I had a problem like that w/ a dome light, where I’d keep replacing the bulb w/one from a dealership parts dept, and it would fail within 6 months. Finally I purchased a bulb from a different parts vendor, worked for 15 years. Sometimes a vendor will get a big batch of faulty bulbs.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests headlights and posts their findings on their website. Often some trims of a car have much better headlights than other trims of the same car. It might be possible to replace the poor ones with better ones.
(I mean the headlight assemblies, not the bulbs. There’s a lot of internet flimflam about bulbs. Stay with a good brand of bulbs and the # specified for your car.)
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Tester
Is both the lens and the reflector of each headlight in perfect shape? Six years is enough to degrade the lens in some driving situations.
Have you looked into the headlight assembly to verify whether the reflective surface is still good? Offhand, it sounds like the reflector is tarnished. Since the lights are generally on low more than high that would explain why.
My Lincoln has the worst lights known to mankind. In all seriousness, I can’t read the license plate of a car 2 lengths in front of me even with the high beams on. Many Lincoln owners have resorted to wiring them so both lows and highs are on at the same time but even that is very iffy at best.
It’s all due to burned reflectors and in this case there are no NOS or new aftermarket ones available. Very shoddy materials and construction by Sylvania.
+1
I am shocked almost every day by the number of cars that I observe with clouded-over “cataracts” on their headlight lenses. Polishing kits aren’t really expensive, but it seems that a lot of people are driving around with very badly-clouded headlight lenses even though they could easily remedy the situation.
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People might be pleasantly surprised at the price of decent but non-OEM headlights. I just put one on my 1999 Honda Civic. Barely $40 from Rock Auto with tax and shipping.
Rock Auto has a set of headlamp assemblies for $760, what if there is no improvement?
At that price, I would not be pleasantly surprised. The lowest priced one (and that is for one) at Rock is $319. Still not pleasantly surprised!
One way forward is to research headlights for 2015 Sorento at the IIHS site. If there is a difference among trim lines, determine if you have the best headlights. If not, find out if the better ones can fit your vehicle. If so, search auto recyclers for a good pair.
A friend of mine has the same issue. Tried the brightest h7 bulbs with little luck. I used an endoscope to look at the inside of the projector and found that the reflective surface is bubbling likely due to heat from the bulb and a poorly selected coating. A bubbled surface won’t reflect light very well and should be a manufacturer warranty item because it greatly hinders the light output which is a major safety issue. I’m betting those of you in this string have the same problem.
True, but the original poster has a 2015 Kia, and this is the end of 2022. Surely the basic warranty has expired now that the car is nearly 8 years old.
No idea what the wty is. Mfg will have wty extensions for stuff like this if it’s widespread.
Because they don’t have to.
The “will have” should be changed to “not likely at all”.
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