HID Aftermarket installation regulations and your MOT.

[JungleGus]

Is there a fan on the back of the heatsink? The Philips Ultinon's I have for H7 bulbs do and seem to be a nice build quality...light seems a lot better than the nightbreakers I had on there before but ideally need a dark country road to test properly

[paultv]

Nope there's no fan and no external power unit - I'm gonna try do a left right test - Osrams left and LEDs right -

Paul

[Brianmoooore]

Self amalgamating tape may be the way to go to keep water out. This is a rubbery insulating tape that is not sticky, but fuses with itself over a period of days. It is stretched into place to provide a seal against other surfaces, and after a few days forms into one solid rubbery piece. It's rated as suitable for waterproofing mains voltage joints under several metres of water, so should be well up to this application.
The enemy of LED lamp reliability and life is heat. The finned area at the rear of the lamps needs to be cooled as well as possible, so the hole in the plastic housing rear covers is a good idea, to get some air flow over the fins.
The eye's interpretation of brightness is a square law, so if they are twice as bright as what they are replacing, you should perceive them as being 50% brighter.

[Brianmoooore]

Nope there's no fan and no external power unit - I'm gonna try do a left right test - Osrams left and LEDs right -

Paul

When you've done this, park up about 5 metres from a white vertical wall and post a pic., please.

[paultv]

Good idea Brian, my only concern at the moment is not to do anything too permanent - as it's still a "test phase" and yes sure I'll search out a white wall.

Paul

[paultv]

OK, so I decided rather than drive around in the dark looking for white walls and taking photo's which might represent some kind of
result but are always kind of random I thought I'd test a small number of H1 sources. As you can read in previous posts fitting the most expensive LED
was also the most laborious - but maybe worth the effort if the resulting light output performed well.

I picked a standard H1 - they are arround a couple of euros each on Amazon - a cheap LED H1 from Ebay which boasted massive power output !! An Osram Nightbreaker
Laser new generation and finally the Bettercarlighting.com 110 euro LED (pair )

I also have available two lamp housings - one is the original Bosch Smiley set and the other a modern Depo equivalent (ish) The idea was to test all the light sources in both luminaires
to give a general comparison.

I set up a lux meter set in the "hottest" part of the beam at a distance of 1 meter from the the vehicle. The ambient light in the garage registered as 2 "lux" at all times.

As the Depo and Bosch lamps produce different beam centres I adjusted the position of the sensor to find the highest ouput from each bulb on each of the lamps.

This is probably not the most scientific way to do this but the idea of driving around after fitting each test lamp to take photo's felt a bit daft and open to large errors and interpretation.
I'm also aware that this doesn't really address the all important "Beam Pattern" question.

Results stacked up like this:

DEPO.

Cheap LED 5 lux
Standard H1 130 lux
BCL LED 69 lux
Laser H1 216 lux

BOSCH SMILEY.

Cheap LED 4 lux
Standard H1 116 lux
BCL LED 93 lux
Laser 186 lux

Not too clear why the BCL LED produced such poor results in the Depo - maybe the orientation of the LED chips doesn't suit them. The cheap H1 LED was incredibly poor - almost no light output at a 1 metre distance from the lamp!

I'm now running the Depo's with the Osram Lasers for both Dip and Hi beam - and they are very very strong - the light from the BCL LED's is the same color as the Lasers but just doesn't pack the punch you need, especially for the cost.

This is what I used for the test.

I also tried some cheap H3 foglamp LEDs - equally useless - now have Laser H3's installed here as well

Paul

[martauto]

I have the Depo lights with Osram nightbreaker unlimited etc and they are soooooo much better than any Bosch or Hella that I ran in the past , thats why I choose a cheap set but they are the best I have used.

Mart.

[Cloggy Saint]

Not entirely clear on your findings! Are you saying the expensive LEDs aren't up to much?

[paultv]

Exactly that...a hassle to fit, very costly and lower light output than the Lasers.

If you use your car regularly I'd also recommend the Depo's as a daily driver and keep the Bosch set for oem look.

Thats my opinion.

Paul

[davidt]

I have the Depo's and lasers on my car and its the best combination for daily use. Thanks for doing the research .

[martauto]

I have the Depo's and lasers on my car and its the best combination for daily use. Thanks for doing the research .

Same here and as said before, the depos and the Osrams are the best I have had by a country mile.

Mart.

[twenty]

Sound like I need to do my part of the R&D with the LED set from Classic Car LEDs at https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk/collec ... sion-9-32v.
These LEDs are much more powerful at 6400LM per bulb.

[paultv]

Odd...it says they are 3400 lumen each in the blurb..

Or have i got it wrong somehow?

Paul

[twenty]

Odd...it says they are 3400 lumen each in the blurb..

Or have i got it wrong somehow?

Paul

Good catch. I was looking at a few LEDs and messed up the numbers. Were yours 4000 in total or 4000 each?

[paultv]

The Bettercarlighting ones are 4000 lumen each..apparently.

Last night I did 100km on the motorway in the dark with heavy rain....first serious test of the Osram Lasers which are " next gen" and state 160% higher output ( the previous generation were marked as 130% ).

They still can't compete with my old HID install but the best alternative and cheap at 17 euros a pair.

My H3 fogs with the same Osrams are much more useful...very good wide vision close to the car..great for country road verge lighting.

I feel better equipped with this set up, sorry to say the Smileys will stay on the shelf.

Paul