LED Headlight Globe Upgrades 508

J

John Wiltshire

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
Jun 20, 2001
Messages
70
Location
Sydney Australia
Hello all,

I do a lot of country night driving and I'm wondering about an LED headlight globe upgrade in my 2013 508 wagon.

Standard fitment globes are H7, but there is hardly any space between the back of the plugs and the dust covers.

Philips globes look the best but because of the cooling fins at the back I doubt they would fit. Narva seem to be the other commonly available brand but same problem here and I'm not always convinced of Narva quality.

There are other options that use flexible cooling braids rather than solid fins that should fit in the headlight housings, many claim to use Philips LEDs. There are options from expensive from specialist LED retailers online down to fleabay cheapies. Any of these could be an expensive experiment.

Has anybody done this upgrade? I would be interested to know what you used and what were the results.

Many thanks!
 
I have in the past adjusted the dipped beam up a tad and that made a big difference but just confirming the remote headlight adjustment is set to max = 0
 
Thanks folks for the advice. Much appreciated!

I've already done the adjustment and picked the lights up a fraction.

I've done a fair bit of reading on LED upgrades and the new generation globes that have the LED chips in the same position as an incandescent globe filament are reported to work fine without focus issues, so it's really a case of fitting in the housing and reasonable quality (and not upsetting teh CANBUS system either).

Thanks for the tip on the Night Breakers, I'll look into these but I've tried high-output globes from Philips before and these didn't really seem to do a lot for visibility and with increased purchase cost and shorter life. Xenons are great (had them in my 407 - probably the best part of the car :p ) but I feel that buying Xenons now is a bit like buying a VHS player.
 
Another option is to add LEDs to the high beam only so that low beams are legal still if the constabulary see you with low beam LED's (if they know anything about cars!). Its more likely rego inspections that pick up the issue.
I use the direct fit replacement type in High beam only so the original dust caps can be reinstalled to the back of the headlights.
Read through the reviews on Google or ProductReview for each type as Narva seem to have a high failure rate as you point out. They also seem to be phasing out their fan module type bulbs now.
Im not yet convinced of the Stedi and other brands that needs the copper strapping hanging out the back of the headlights for cooling. Time will tell I guess on that issue.
 
Thank you - good advice! Although LED upgrades are not legal, I think the likelihood of being picked up in a 2013 model car with them is pretty low.

From what I have read the copper braid cooling seems to be a legitimate approach, Philips had these before but don't seem to have them any more.

Which brands have you used, and did you think it was worthwhile?

The other alternative would be a pair of driving lights, but in the days of plastic bumper cars there is nothing to mount them to :(
 
Hi folks, I eventually gave up on the LED idea as there wasn't anything that would fit the housings easily of recognised quality (eg Philips). I didn't want this to turn into an expensive experiment.

I found Osram Nightbreakers on Amazon delivered from the UK for less than half of the best price I could find here. Installed and carefully adjusted they have been serving well for a few months now. Not up to LED quality but a distinct improvement on the globes I had.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top