Lights a bit yellow - bulb options?
 

Hi all

Looking at my headlights yesterday it looked like the dipped beam was a bit yellow. Prof Peach (who owned the car previously) thinks they are probably xenons but the xenons on cars i have previously owned are a lot brighter and whiter (almost blueish) when on.

Can someone please confirm that these are in fact xenons and if so, whether they should be providing a different hue?

If so, I'm going do a bulb change so would love some recommendations for suitable bulbs that won't deliver error codes and offer a better quality of light.

Some photos attached to help determine the situation.

Thanks

Mossy

Yes they are dual xenons and the colour is correct, probably 3500K or 4300K.

The "blue" colour you refer to will (mostly) be aftermarket kits that use a higher colour temperature, often as ridiculously high as 7000K.
Those bluer bulbs don't work as well, it's purely cosmetic.

You have a lovely OEM car, keep it that way. +++

Well they are the later FL bi-xenon lights so I would imagine that they are xenon bulbs, from the pics the colour doesnt look that bad but did you wait for them to properly warm up etc before you judged their colour? if you did then changing the xenon bulbs over would be the only solution I would think

Hiya

Those are bi-xenons using a d2r bulb for headlight/main beam. There's a seperate halogen bulb for flash and also comes on with main beam (the round one in the corner)

There are modern d2r osram bulbs available that claim to be a good bit brighter, but depends on the age of the bulbs in there as they do dull and change colour temperature with age

What you might also notice is that the sidelight bulb is both pathetic and very yellow. There are led options but unless you want to see a pcb through the front of the headlight your options involve some dismantling to modify the reflector to accept a chunkier housing bulb. I've done this on mine with detailed pics, so worth looking for a thread on headlight refurb :)

One other cause of the 'yellow' bulbs might be discolouration of the plastic 'lens'. The headlights are quite easy to remove and dismantle and the plastic lens can be cleaned, perhaps using a proper plastic cleaner/scratch remover rather than just soap and water.

OEM colour temp is 4250k if I remember correctly.

Thanks everyone

Adrian - the LEDs are already in place and I'm fine with the PCB look so will leave

HP - always happy with OEM as long as I can see where I'm going.

Laird - lenses are lovely and clean. So its certainly the bulbs.

I will investigate Osram brighter bulbs but most importantly it looks like its bi xenon which is what I was hoping anyway!

Thanks for the helps chaps

Mossy

Yes this is about right.

Personally I tend to find the 5-6000k bulbs more to my liking as they are more 'pure white'

Reason OEM colour temperature is around 4300K is because that's the peak output lumens/watt. Once you're over 6000k the output brightness reduces.

There are 2 lenses on the bi-xenons the inner one is plastic and clipped on. Goes dull with age, but don't recommend anything more aggressive than water to clean it if you decided to strip the lights. The silver finish on the edges of the inner lens isn't terribly robust to chemicals!

Is it just dipped beam you're not happy with?

Easy way to tell if lights bi-zenon?
 

Hi,

Informative thread, thanks to previous posters. +++

Like the original questioner, I need to find out if the lights on mine are bi-zenon and I don't have access to the VAG.

I do have the "spec" sticker for the car; what would I look for. :Confused:

Robert

They look precisely like the picture in the first post of this thread - if you don't have the round flash and side light holes in that position, and the silver trim strip running across under the bulb then it's single xenon.

Bi-xenon are pretty distinctive to look at - if in doubt go from normal beam to high beam with lights pointing at a wall and you should see the flap move in the reflection. If you just get more light and the xenon beam doesn't change, then again it's most likely single xenon

I recently changed my bulbs to the very latest Philips X-tremeVision 'gen2' Xenons:
http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/85126XV...headlight-bulb

Not cheap, but nice improvement over the old bulbs.

Bloody hell Mark £94..that's more than I paid for my first car:eek:

Retrofit Bi-Xenons
 

Thanks Adrian, you're a star, I don't have them: can they be realistically retrofitted? Any idea of cost?

The lights are poor at the moment. I could also do the clean routine but I notice that the lights on my S Reg Fiesta are better right now! :o :-(

Robert

About the same as I paid for my first car too come to think of it :ROFL:

They were actually a bit cheaper than that; I paid about £70 each for them .... Which is still a tad expensive but I figure they (should) last several years. The last bulbs (also Philips) were on the car when I bought it over 6 years ago and were still working well when I replaced them. Besides, genuine generation 1 X-treme Vision bulbs are nearly as expensive.

Gotta be careful where you buy Philips bulbs though; there's a lot of fake ones out there. The gen2 bulbs had only just been released when I bought them a month or two ago and so (it seemed) only genuine bulbs were available. It's only a matter of time before the fakes start appearing though.

They used to be arse-buckling expensive, even used, but might be worth a call to the sponsors. I'm sure people have retrofitted them in the past without issue - nothing overly special about them in terms of design.

Bulbs are the deciding factor with any headlight, and condition. If yours are milky or reflector is worn then new bulbs won't help as much.

For non-xenon bulbs I've always sworn by Philips Xtreme Vision Plus as they're about £20 a pair from major ebay sellers - I used them in the main beam support/flash in my bi-xenons and for front fogs. They burn brighter so the downside is a shorter lifespan if used as your main bulb - in our A6 you'd get a failure after 2 years.

I think that legally speaking you'll need self levelling and headlight washers to have xenon lights, although it seems no-one will be checking! :cool:

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...-hid-headlamps

I assumed the car does at least have single xenons for dipped beam, so equipped with headlight wash and auto levelling. Without those I suspect it'll throw headlight warnings in the cluster as it won't perform the self test at key on, I wouldn't have thought?