Headlight bulb upgrades

[MR.C]

The misses  car ford ka mk2, i drove the other day and the headlights were poor.

So i bought some aftermarket  H4 led bulbs, now instead of two orange candles I've two blue candles.

(both 55watt)

Philips do a racing vision (+200%) in halogen, before i try these can anyone guide me to some bright led's  

that are affordable (standard fitment)?

100watt?

Thanks.

 

[Nemesis]

Hi and happy new year, I've been using Philips extreme vision for years, they give a lot better light and pattern than the OEM stuff, in the early years the lamp life wasn't so good but later years they last just as long as OEM. The Philips lamps are road legal, the higher wattage aftermarket stuff isn't and a mate of mine melted a reflector on his motorcycle with a 100W lamp, something to bear in mind if the headlamp build is plastic.

The only negative with the Philips that I can recall is having to check and slightly adjust my headlamp aim after install, they seem to aim high, I had to adjust SWIMBO's Kia Picanto and our Peugeot Motorhome to comply with the MOT, so might be worth marking a wall up with your pattern hight before removing the old lamps.   

I had a play with some LED conversions a while back, I went to the expensive end of the market to avoid the Chinesium carp that's out there, but to no avail, bl**** awful results, really poor to non existent pattern and really difficult to find the extra space behind the headlamp unit for the heatsink. 

 

Hope that wasn't too much egg sucking for the first day of the year.

 

Nem.....

[MR.C]

Thanks, and on that basis I'll give the Philips  a try.

Happy new year.

[DamperMan]

What makes a decent difference is fitting relays and not expecting all the current to squeese though the Lucas switch gear.      Jokes...  Why do the British drink warm beer?   Lucas makes refrigerators.      Lucas switches are 3 position  On/Off/flicker.               

[7Westfield]

I always thought the correct label for a Lucas switch was off/dim/flicker

and, we all know who invented the intermittent wiper

 

why don't the British build computers?

hint---it's not Lucas

[7Westfield]

OK    it's been a day, so I'll spill it

 

because they can't figure out how to make them leak oil

[Blatman]

Is a straight conversion from incandescent to LED actually legal? I thought there were issues with beam pattern for LED's when used in place of a regular H5/H7 etc that would cause an MOT fail?

[Nemesis]

I seem to recall a while back (about the time that the only decent white light you saw on the roads were the HID's on police cars) that some owners of 3 year old TVR's were failing MOT's, they were built with HID's but didn't have self levelers and or headlamp wash, I can't remember the specifics but would think that the same requirements might still be relevant.

 

Nem.......    

[Captain Colonial]

MOT Manual Section 4.1.4

 

Existing halogen headlamp units on vehicles first used on or after 1 April 1986 must 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 for light source and lamp not compatible.

 

This does not refer to complete replacement headlamp units which may be constructed with HID or LED light sources.

 

If a complete headlamp unit has been replaced with a unit that was manufactured with HID or LED light sources, it must not be failed for ‘Light source and lamp not compatible’ but it must meet all other requirements detailed in section 4 of this manual specific to the type fitted at the time of test.