LED head light bulb
Discussion
they are illegal...those are the facts.
a lamp has been tested and been approved as a complete unit (bulb, and headlamp housing, incl. its reflector). if you change 1 of the components in this system to a different design (in this case the bulb to LED) the complete system will loose its approval.
even the light might be brighter and you also might illuminate a wider field in front of your car, have you ever thought that you also might blind other motorists? with causing them to have an accident
a lamp has been tested and been approved as a complete unit (bulb, and headlamp housing, incl. its reflector). if you change 1 of the components in this system to a different design (in this case the bulb to LED) the complete system will loose its approval.
even the light might be brighter and you also might illuminate a wider field in front of your car, have you ever thought that you also might blind other motorists? with causing them to have an accident
GinG15 said:
they are illegal...those are the facts.
a lamp has been tested and been approved as a complete unit (bulb, and headlamp housing, incl. its reflector). if you change 1 of the components in this system to a different design (in this case the bulb to LED) the complete system will loose its approval.
even the light might be brighter and you also might illuminate a wider field in front of your car, have you ever thought that you also might blind other motorists? with causing them to have an accident
Well that's open to opinion & frankly I don't care if they are legal or not, the decats sure aren't legal either. Also a lot of the time the way you drive a Cerbera can require some good humour from the boys in blue! a lamp has been tested and been approved as a complete unit (bulb, and headlamp housing, incl. its reflector). if you change 1 of the components in this system to a different design (in this case the bulb to LED) the complete system will loose its approval.
even the light might be brighter and you also might illuminate a wider field in front of your car, have you ever thought that you also might blind other motorists? with causing them to have an accident
I do care about blinding other road users though, that has been discussed earlier on in this thread. These lights I'm fitting them to were designed for HID bulbs, so as long as they are adjusted correctly should be fine, but I will be checking that very carefully.
gruffalo said:
I removed the dim dip on side function by snipping the wire so I could use a relay.
If your LED lights are lower current draw then you will get a smaller voltage drop so you may get away with the standard wiring. I put the relay in to ensure the original wiring wouldn't burn out as it now carries almost no current.
Let us know how you get on could you?
Ah I see, but as I said I quite like having the 4 lights on together. So I'll see if I can do anything else to reduce the voltage drop in time. Right now the LED bulbs drop 1.4v against the 2v of the originals. If your LED lights are lower current draw then you will get a smaller voltage drop so you may get away with the standard wiring. I put the relay in to ensure the original wiring wouldn't burn out as it now carries almost no current.
Let us know how you get on could you?
I did wonder if bridging this bad connection would make any difference to the volt drop, but it didn't
I have just bought a thermal imaging camera it was obviously rather hot round there before, but on checking it again after I found the bridged wire was stone cold, but another one, was still a bit warm, about 15deg when everything else was about 4deg. I think the wire that was hot was the ignition wire from the wiring diagram, but the ignition wasn't turned on at the time. My fingers were about 10deg by then though so I stopped!
In the mean time can anyone point me towards the mod you do with the control boxes after fitting twin pod light units, so the dips stay on with the main beam? I'm sure many years ago there was a picture on her showing one of the tracks on the PCB cut through. But loads of the pictures from old posts have gone now, so I'm not having any luck tracking down the info.
I tried removing the main beam signal wire that looks to be coming from the main beam output of the light ecu & into the dim dip control unt, but it just stopped the main beam working the, I'm not sure the wiring diagrams actually match what's in the cars that closely, or probably more likely I'm reading them wrong! It would be nice to know which pin in the plugs the number refers to.
Yes actually fitting the bulbs isn't all that hard really. I used to think Cerb bulbs were a faf till I did my mum bulbs in her Renault Clio, I'd take a Cerb any day!
Once I figured out the best way to bend the spring retainer clip the second bulb only took 5 mins. I took the retainer out to bend it on the second, much easier.
Of course getting the cover panels off can be tricky, so I got these stainless screws to put them back on with:
Just search Stainless Steel Self Tapping Screws Pozi Flange Trim A2 on eBay, its the No.10 you want.
The mild steel ones that came out in that pic were only a couple of years old &have seen very few miles.
I did have to cut some more out of the access hole on this side to have any chance of getting to the back of the bulb holder. But as I said I modified the Cerb to run the twin pod lights so the hole is likely in the wrong place.
The retainer spring can be seen sticking out where I had to bend it out to clear the fan.
They are actually much easier to plug in with the flying lead. It was 15 years ago when I put the twin pod lights in but I can still clearly remember lying in the road swearing at it trying to get the spade connectors on the back of the old bulb!
This is a bad pic of the spring clip taken out with one side bent:
My dim dips still worked nicely
I got some LED side light bulbs so they matched the dips, there is still one of the old side light bulbs in the O/S there.
As it originally had the big single lights there was only one ground wire to each side. So I ran a wire directly from the battery, but I found that was losing 0.2v. So I moved it down to the main chassis ground below the battery & soldered a new connection on, the loss was down to 0.05 then! I also found the connection behind the back seat wasn't pushed in correctly. Correcting all that got the voltage drop at the LED bulb down to 1.0V, interestingly it had more effect with the old halogen back in, they now lost only 1.3V
I did mention earlier in the thread I suspected it was the single wire coming from the boxes that then split to two was causing the drop. That is not the case.
These were the measured voltages (with the light on!)
Battery at 12V
Fuse box 11.8V
Dim dip switch unit (last point to measure of single cable) 11.4V
Connection behind back seat (when it has split to two wires) 11.3V
At lights 11.0V
So it's actually the supply cable from the fuse box to the light box that lost the most & it's quite a short run too. After I'd bridged the bad connections in the plug I could see the cable getting warm with my thermal camera, the pictures of that are further down the page.
Its far too much hassle to go pulling all the fuse box out to get a thicker cable in there so it will just stay like this now.
The 38w LEDs draw less current & the cables have lasted 20 years with the old 55w bulbs.
Once I figured out the best way to bend the spring retainer clip the second bulb only took 5 mins. I took the retainer out to bend it on the second, much easier.
Of course getting the cover panels off can be tricky, so I got these stainless screws to put them back on with:
Just search Stainless Steel Self Tapping Screws Pozi Flange Trim A2 on eBay, its the No.10 you want.
The mild steel ones that came out in that pic were only a couple of years old &have seen very few miles.
I did have to cut some more out of the access hole on this side to have any chance of getting to the back of the bulb holder. But as I said I modified the Cerb to run the twin pod lights so the hole is likely in the wrong place.
The retainer spring can be seen sticking out where I had to bend it out to clear the fan.
They are actually much easier to plug in with the flying lead. It was 15 years ago when I put the twin pod lights in but I can still clearly remember lying in the road swearing at it trying to get the spade connectors on the back of the old bulb!
This is a bad pic of the spring clip taken out with one side bent:
My dim dips still worked nicely
I got some LED side light bulbs so they matched the dips, there is still one of the old side light bulbs in the O/S there.
As it originally had the big single lights there was only one ground wire to each side. So I ran a wire directly from the battery, but I found that was losing 0.2v. So I moved it down to the main chassis ground below the battery & soldered a new connection on, the loss was down to 0.05 then! I also found the connection behind the back seat wasn't pushed in correctly. Correcting all that got the voltage drop at the LED bulb down to 1.0V, interestingly it had more effect with the old halogen back in, they now lost only 1.3V
I did mention earlier in the thread I suspected it was the single wire coming from the boxes that then split to two was causing the drop. That is not the case.
These were the measured voltages (with the light on!)
Battery at 12V
Fuse box 11.8V
Dim dip switch unit (last point to measure of single cable) 11.4V
Connection behind back seat (when it has split to two wires) 11.3V
At lights 11.0V
So it's actually the supply cable from the fuse box to the light box that lost the most & it's quite a short run too. After I'd bridged the bad connections in the plug I could see the cable getting warm with my thermal camera, the pictures of that are further down the page.
Its far too much hassle to go pulling all the fuse box out to get a thicker cable in there so it will just stay like this now.
The 38w LEDs draw less current & the cables have lasted 20 years with the old 55w bulbs.
Edited by Luckyone on Friday 22 December 16:05
Most importantly is the difference it makes to driving though.
With the old 55w H7 halogen bulbs:
With the new 38w LED bulbs:
With the main beams on at the same time:
I think I need to adjust the main beams a bit now they have a lot of help!
But you can clearly see with the dips on the light is below the BMs windows, so no blinding anyone. The Cerb was parked on a slight slope there too where the ground was sloping back to a drain behind.
The big hedge was lined up with Cerb as if it was the side of a road you were driving down, so much more of that visable now!
With the old 55w H7 halogen bulbs:
With the new 38w LED bulbs:
With the main beams on at the same time:
I think I need to adjust the main beams a bit now they have a lot of help!
But you can clearly see with the dips on the light is below the BMs windows, so no blinding anyone. The Cerb was parked on a slight slope there too where the ground was sloping back to a drain behind.
The big hedge was lined up with Cerb as if it was the side of a road you were driving down, so much more of that visable now!
Pink_Floyd said:
Which LED H7 bulbs did you go for,
Sorry I meant to include that!
AMBOTHER LED Car Headlight Bulbs H7 All-in-One Conversion Kit 7200Lm 6000K Exterior Headlamp (Upgrade)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B072NBRD2D/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_SN5nAb661EBVH
There were cheeper ones but some of the reviews on those mentioned them stopping working quickly. So I got these based on there relatively low wattage & the the fact that only bad reviews were from muppets who clearly had no idea what they were doing!
Some largely unnecessary thermal images.
This was after I bridged the clearly burnt dips power out wire:
It showed the power in connection was still getting quite hot!
Same image with the pics turned off:
You can see how the power wire is getting hot a bit there too. However this was with the old 55w bulbs, I just checked it again after I've bridged that other bad connector with the LEDs in & the wire wasn't showing as warm at all.
Of course a chain is only as strong as it weakest link so, I'll be keeping an eye on the dim dips box where that wire runs to next:
Again that was with the 55w bulbs in, having just checked again the connector was still showing at 14degs but the wire wasn't hot with the LEDs. 14degs is hardly going to melt plastic though & the LEDs are plenty bright enough now, but I will check it again when the weather warms up a bit.
These boxes are dated Nov 97, I think there are probably a few different later types....
Then just for a laugh this the 55w halogen bulb:
The 38w LED bulb:
(You may need to open the image to see the min / max temps at the bottom left)
This was after I bridged the clearly burnt dips power out wire:
It showed the power in connection was still getting quite hot!
Same image with the pics turned off:
You can see how the power wire is getting hot a bit there too. However this was with the old 55w bulbs, I just checked it again after I've bridged that other bad connector with the LEDs in & the wire wasn't showing as warm at all.
Of course a chain is only as strong as it weakest link so, I'll be keeping an eye on the dim dips box where that wire runs to next:
Again that was with the 55w bulbs in, having just checked again the connector was still showing at 14degs but the wire wasn't hot with the LEDs. 14degs is hardly going to melt plastic though & the LEDs are plenty bright enough now, but I will check it again when the weather warms up a bit.
These boxes are dated Nov 97, I think there are probably a few different later types....
Then just for a laugh this the 55w halogen bulb:
The 38w LED bulb:
(You may need to open the image to see the min / max temps at the bottom left)
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