H7 LED Bulbs

[bilton_d]

Hi,

Has anyone tried LED bulbs instead of Osram Night Breakers etc?

[keyap]

Partner has tried a couple of options in her's:-

1. Ring Sportz Blue H7 and H1s. Really good white light with a tint of blue (more white than the DRL LEDs but quite a good match) and quite bright although less than standard. Even though they are 80w the blue glass / filter means output sits around 1300 lumens Vs roughly 1500 as standard. For the W5Ws we added 7000K cheap version from ebay - no problems and matched the 5000k Ring's very well but very low output.

One of the H7s did however blow after around 6 months so, as we had no spares, the car was switched back to stock. A stock H7 on the same side then blew but all seems OK now.

2. A couple of weeks ago the stock H7s were switched with Osram Off Road 65W H7s. These are H9s on a H7 base and give out 2100 lumens (I think nightbreakers are around 1750 lumens) so the 65Ws are pretty much the brightest halogens you're going to get without going too high on watts - I think 100w H7s are around 2000 lumens so you'd need to jump to around 130W to beat the 65W Osrams. The H1s were swopped for Osram Off Road 100W with an output of 2600 lumens.

Both the H7s and H1s are very bright and have a great pattern. When driving the increased H7 output is noticeable and the H1 is really noticeable. The colour temp is 3200K so still yellow however the stock W5W is more yellow. Philips Blue Vision W5W matched really well. If you want max output from halogens and are happy with a fairly stock colour this is a great option.

With regard to LEDs, not tried any with the DS3 but have tried loads of options on my BMW which also involved some coding. It really depends what you're looking for - if it's light output forget it. LEDs can't compete although progress is being made. If it's colour then you have lots of options.

If you want white light with great output then just swop to HIDs. I've done this on the BMW and providing you buy the right parts and quality bulbs etc (UV filtered is a must) you can do it v cheap. The BMW has now had my 'homemade' HID Angel Eye conversion for over 2 years (roughly 20K miles) and there's no problems. The pictures in the link below are all 4300K - with BMWs the lens also contributes to the HID 'rainbow' effect.

http://www.n54tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16333

I also found that by buying parts seperately, 2 years ago, it was way cheaper than the kits. Kits do however seem a lot cheaper now.

One thing to be aware of though is that most of the above is illegal although it's unlikely anyone will care - seems to be an increasing number of halogen designed clusters fitted with aftermarket HIDs.

From memory I've got some other 80w 5000K or 6000K H7s sitting somewhere that I tested with and were quite cheap from ebay. I wouldn't recommend running them permanent but they would give you an idea of what a higher colour temp looks like. It's unlikely I'll use them again and postage would be around £1, which I'm happy to cover.

Am fairly new to this forum so not sure if you can do this but, if you can PM me your address I'm quite happy to see if I can find them and drop them in the post.