LED High Beam - delighted with results

[Adrian E]

I think DVLA ended up backtracking on interpretation of the rules - not helped by some of the German manufacturers getting approvals for cars without self levelling from TUV (Porsche IIRC)

When I worked in vehicle standards legislation it was always the intention to effectively ban retrofit HIDs, which the legislation always did, but a lack of proper enforcement made it a challenge.

I stopped at retrofit LED marker lights on mine - they were much better and the light output is so minimal anyway it wasn't a big issue.

I don't have a big issue with it these days - the kits have got better, the headlamps seem less variable than BITD, but mainly I just do a lot less mileage so see less chavy Corsas with stupid blue lights scattering the beam all over the shop! A decent lamp and reflector in the first place does help - I seem to recall the focus point of a HID can never be in the right place for a projector lens not designed for it, but my memory is hazy!

[ainarssems]

I have tried a lot of aftermarked HID and LED lights in my cars but they all have some issues. LEDs are definitely better and there are no major problems with high beam and larger bulbs like H7 or 9005 as they are only on for short periods of time and bigger body helps with heat dissipation but dipped beam H1 are too small, lower light output and does not last beacause they overheat. Only problem with LEDs in high beam reflector is that light output is not uniform, you get some lighter and some darker spots.

I have a project lined up, I bought a 2017 Quasqai LED headlight for £20 including shipping on ebay for research and they are often available for a similar price. The good news are that there are no fancy electronics in them just straight power connection so easy to connect. Downside is that projector unit is only dipped beam with full beam separate. Dipped beam should be pretty easy to trasnfer projector unit over, I don't think it uses standard Hella mounting points for straight swap-over but should be easy enough to fabricate adapter plate. A bit harder if you want to use full beam from them as well.

As its all designed together light source and projector unit it should work well without dazzling other road users and the LEDs should be decent quality with good CRI and also suitable heat dissipation so should last long time unlike most aftermarket.


PS

Here is a short video of my A6 with aftermarket LED bulbs for both dipped and full beam. It's just dipped at the very start and then switch over to full beam. You can see in video what I mean about dark and bright spots. It's a wmv file as size limit on forum for .avi is too small. To be honest dipped beam is not much improvement over halogen but full beam is much better. For some reason my Windows 10 default built in media player does not play it but it works fine with VLC player.

[GH77]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

Here is a short video of my A6 with aftermarket LED bulbs for both dipped and full beam.

Can't argue with that for an improvement!

[Nick Jones]

MoT rule on this have just changed apparently

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-insp...#section-4-1-4

"Existing halogen headlamp units should not be converted to be used with high intensity discharge (HID) or light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. If such a conversion has been done, you must fail the headlamp."

Whether this makes any practical difference remains to be seen. As ever the only actual sin is getting caught.....

Nick

[MikkiJayne]

Interesting. So in that case my A6 with retrofitted OE bixenon headlamps, manual levelling and no washing is just fine

[David's8]

Thanks for the link Gregor
My headlights have been out recently so all should be fine. I also refurbed them a few years back but unfortunately never lacquered them so this will be a job for spring.

[GH77]

Don't let the laquer overspray get on the floor! Proper slippy