Aftermarket LED headlight upgrades?
Discussion
Hi,
Having recently driven on sections of the A46 between Lincoln and Newark at night, where the cats eyes have not been maintained, I found that visibility on dip beam was rather worse than I remembered and it was difficult to see where the road went. I have recently replaced the OEM bulbs with standard brightness equivalents, so not a consequence of 6 year old bulbs.
I do not believe much of the hype over 140% brighter bulbs as the tech spec still shows the output as 1450 Lumens plus/minus a small margin. I cannot see how one bulb can be significantly brighter if the official output is the same.
So, searching the web, I found http://www.horizonleds.co.uk/exterior-leds/cree-le... at 3500 lumens.
The question I guess is, the bulbs will physically fit OK. But where do I put the ballast box? Does it fit in the headlamp unit? How would I secure it?
Having recently driven on sections of the A46 between Lincoln and Newark at night, where the cats eyes have not been maintained, I found that visibility on dip beam was rather worse than I remembered and it was difficult to see where the road went. I have recently replaced the OEM bulbs with standard brightness equivalents, so not a consequence of 6 year old bulbs.
I do not believe much of the hype over 140% brighter bulbs as the tech spec still shows the output as 1450 Lumens plus/minus a small margin. I cannot see how one bulb can be significantly brighter if the official output is the same.
So, searching the web, I found http://www.horizonleds.co.uk/exterior-leds/cree-le... at 3500 lumens.
The question I guess is, the bulbs will physically fit OK. But where do I put the ballast box? Does it fit in the headlamp unit? How would I secure it?
The LED bulbs arrived from Hong Kong yesterday - a little earlier than expected.
The bulbs have large heat sinks but there was no driver/ballast box.
Fitting was mostly easy with the exception that the heat sink prevented the retaining spring from being moved back into place. The solution was to unscrew the grub screw holding the spring in the headlamp unit, locate the spring into the bulb at approximately the right angle, put the bulb in the headlamp unit, locate the spring under the screw and tighten it down. Sounds worse than it was - took a few minutes.
Then the test drive on my closest unlit road - massive difference. The range is the same for the obvious reason that it is dictated by law in the alignment of the headlamp - but the area was completely lit with little/no fall-off in brightness so in reality you can see right up to the cutoff.
My only concern now regards longevity as the heat sink would imply a lot of heat to disperse, but the headlamp unit is hermetically sealed. I'll have to see what happens next.
The bulbs have large heat sinks but there was no driver/ballast box.
Fitting was mostly easy with the exception that the heat sink prevented the retaining spring from being moved back into place. The solution was to unscrew the grub screw holding the spring in the headlamp unit, locate the spring into the bulb at approximately the right angle, put the bulb in the headlamp unit, locate the spring under the screw and tighten it down. Sounds worse than it was - took a few minutes.
Then the test drive on my closest unlit road - massive difference. The range is the same for the obvious reason that it is dictated by law in the alignment of the headlamp - but the area was completely lit with little/no fall-off in brightness so in reality you can see right up to the cutoff.
My only concern now regards longevity as the heat sink would imply a lot of heat to disperse, but the headlamp unit is hermetically sealed. I'll have to see what happens next.
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