High beam upgrade dramas

[LINK17]

Hello All

I've searched all over the forum but no luck. After a couple of extremely frustrating hours and all of my knuckles scraped I finally managed to swap my yellow high beams (h3 - the one with the wire - rectangular light on inside of light bank in picture). The bulb is basically a wedge with a bank of leds in each side. They seemed to fit best with the wedge horizontal in the socket. Went for a drive last night and the light is much whiter - but not focused at all: they are actually worse than my low beams now. Have I installed them incorrectly or should I never buy from eBay again? Has anyone else had this problem and is there a fix?

Edited May 10, 2020 by LINK17
Wrong part number

[GTSBoy]

You have made a mistake. Who told you that LED bulb replacements were a good idea?

[LINK17]

Isn't LED always better than 30 year old yellow bulb tech?

[LINK17]

Plus I saw heaps of posts with pics showing the improvement?

[GTSBoy]

Yes, and the President of Madagascar is touting that a herbal tea they make there will cure coronavirus.

You can't believe all that you see or read on the 'net.

There are a few LED globe replacements that are getting there in terms of nearly being useful. But I'm willing to bet that you just bought some eBay trash. If you're spending serious coin on LED globes, with careful research, you're going backwards, not forwards.

[LINK17]

Ok thanks for the advice - I'll take them out and return them - dammit more frustration. What about for the low beams should I return them also?

[LINK17]

Can someone suggest an upgrade then - are the whiter/brighter light bulbs any any good. Anyone had a good result from a certain brand?

[GTSBoy]

Shouldn't need to upgrade the highbeams beyond putting Philips/Osram/equivalent +70 or whatever globes. The reflectors are a good design and they throw light decently enough. You won't do any better than that.

The lowbeams can only be improved in one of two ways.

• Simply put the best globes you can in them (as above).
• Take the headlights completely apart and retrofit and entire Morimoto HID projector setup into them. This is major work, not particularly cheap these days (currency conversion), but gives the only real improvement possible.

When simply upgrading bulbs, it is also a massively good idea to go to the effort to make sure that you convert your wiring so that the globes are powered via relays, instead of passing the globe power through the headlight and dimmer switches.

If you were to put HID projectors in, then some more clever wiring changes would permit you to use a hi-lo HID in the low beam position so you will also get HID high beam from that light (instead of it turning off, like it does with conventional globes now when you go to high beam). It is actually essential to make sure that HIDs don't get switched off the way the R32 does anyway, because they don't like it and they have "warm up" time.

[LINK17]

Thank you so much, i think I'll go with the Phillips option. What a phenomenal waste of time. Anyone thinking of LED bulbs - don't!

[joshuaho96]

http://midoriseibi.co.jp/blog/5094

Supposedly Midori Seibi has some aftermarket LED bulbs that actually work properly and have some improvement but they're expensive and nobody I know of has actually bothered to try them out. Most people go for HID retrofit or give up and run the higher brightness halogens.

[GTSBoy]

This has all been thrashed about on here before. Viz.

There was a link to a specific LED globe in that thread, but that's just one of a number that are available that are at the peak of what is worth looking at. The cooling solution,s arrangement of LEDs, adjustment options, etc etc are all major differences in the many options available. And all of them still fall a little short of being a good match for a typical H1/3/7 enclosure. Sometimes it works nicely. Many times it's just wrong in one or multiple ways., in $US

https://www.4x4truckleds.com/crystalux-g11-series-led-headlight-fog-light-conversion-kit/

Note the price, in US$. These are not your $20 eBay cheapies.

I'd try some of the better ones in my R32 projectors if it wasn't for the fact that even getting them installed is a misery.

Edited May 11, 2020 by GTSBoy

[LINK17]

True that

[TXSquirrel]

If you got time and want to save budget, you can take apart the headlights and only upgrade the lenses.  You will see improvement even running on your old halogen bulbs.

https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/479162-trying-on-lenses-with-r32-projector/

 

[niZmO_Man]

I can guarantee you that whatever LED bulb (downgrade) or high wound bulb (e.g. Philips X-treme vision) you put in there, it won't be a big upgrade. Just remember that you want your lights, a safety device, to be reliable. I've been through this already.

Take the housing apart and retrofit HID bi-xenon (G5-R, Mini D2S) or bi-LED (Koito) projectors. It's the only upgrade worth doing.

Check the DIY section for examples.

[LINK17]

Thank you sounds like good advice. Do you have a rough idea of cost?

[LINK17]

Does anyone sell whole bolt-in headlight upgrades for r32s?

[GTSBoy]

I shouldn't think so.

[niZmO_Man]

It's DIY or you send it to someone that can.

Rough cost, go to Lightwerkz website and have a look around (they're US based).

[CSB]

6 hours ago, LINK17 said:

Does anyone sell whole bolt-in headlight upgrades for r32s?

There is a site from Japan that does them 78works.

I posted on a different forum:

https://www.gtr.co.uk/threads/r32-78works-headlights.572313/#post-5810687

I'm interested in buying them but can't find any user reviews.

[TXSquirrel]

If you are doing retrofit yourself, expect about $400-$500 USD for equipment and various materials.  To retain factory adjustment, you will need to make a bracket similar to this or cut up your factory projector.

A few shops do offer retrofit service if you send over the headlights, but expect to pay double.

If you are on a tight budget, then at least try upgrading factory lens like I posted.  You can't just throw in a HID kit because factory lens is not designed for it, and the light would go everywhere except where you want it to.  So at the very minimum you still need to change the lens if you are not doing a complete retrofit.

Edited May 12, 2020 by TXSquirrel