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Bixenon headights: high beam / fog / parking LED upgrade

2K views 9 replies 6 participants last post by  nhzruthless818 
#1 ·
Has anyone successfully upgraded high beam and fog H7 bulbs to LED?

I have not found a LED H7 bulb that would work as fog light. All H7 LED I have tried blink when installed as fog bulbs.
The last H7 LED I tried is this (2X 80W H7 LED WHITE 6500K BULBS HEADLIGHT LIGHT LAMP CANBUS ERROR FREE | eBay) - it has nice beam, but blinks when installed in fog light socket.

Can anyone suggest error free and reliable T10 Wedge LED bulb for parking light bump?
This one (2x T10 501 194 W5W 5630 LED SMD Car HID Canbus Error Free Wedge Light Bulb Lamp | eBay) has a nice beam, but after few hours of use started to blink.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Hi,

You would be far better just replacing the H7 Foglamp Bulbs with a bluer H7 bulb of the same wattage, say 6000k.

"CAN Bus error free" does not mean they work with Mercedes SAM units !!

Also, you have put an 80 W Bulb in where a 55 W came out, so that will probably overload the Electronics in the SAM units, and if it hasn't already then it will destroy them soon :frown

Those side light wedge bulbs on EBay, the compatibility guide even says they don't fit Mercedes S Class :rolleyes:

These cars just don't like LED Bulbs without proper electronics to fool them :wink

Cheers Dave
 
#4 ·
I put LED bulbs in the high beams of my 2003 S430. No CAN bus problem with flashing, etc.

I'm not really happy with the light pattern, though. The pattern is much more dispersed - they light up a much larger, but much shorter area. Okay for moderate-speed driving in suburban areas, but not great for high-speed highway driving.
 
#5 ·
I tried 35W LED headlights in a 2000 S500 with brand-new OEM Bosch (reflector) halogen assemblies. The car originally came with HID's (also 35W), so no reprogramming was necessary. These were the low beams, and since it's pre-facelift, the low-beams are also the reflector type, similar to post-facelift high-beams.

So, yes, it does work.

However, as with wallyp's high beam experiment, I found the light dispersion to be a bit more diffuse. It actually doesn't seem to be any brighter than a set of good halogen bulbs in the same fixture (this was tested). The light pattern is such that I can tell it wouldn't be very good for high beams, either. I prefer the HID projector's output, personally. The light's more focused where it needs to be.

So, the only major advantage I can see from popping LED's in there is the longevity of the bulb. You don't throw more light down the road than a halogen, but you have to change it far less often.

Now, if there's either a reflector or a projector whose focus point is optimized specifically for LED's...then I'd be all-in for LED's. But to my knowledge, those aren't generally available for our cars just yet.
 
#6 · (Edited)
I tried 35W LED headlights in a 2000 S500 with brand-new OEM Bosch (reflector) halogen assemblies. The car originally came with HID's (also 35W), so no reprogramming was necessary. These were the low beams, and since it's pre-facelift, the low-beams are also the reflector type, similar to post-facelift high-beams.
So, yes, it does work.
Hi cowboyt,

Now I'm intrigued ............

So are you saying you removed the stock Mercedes Xenon Ballasts and Ignitors, and wired 35W LED Bulbs to the Headlamp Feed and you got no faults "pinged" up on the dash display and no faults stored in the front SAM's, without using SDS to re code SAM's, EIS, Dash Cluster etc etc ?????

I'm very very curious LOL :wink

Cheers Dave
 
#7 · (Edited)
Sort of. What I did was actually replace the original headlight assemblies entirely with brand-new Bosch ones. Since I was just learning these cars, I inadvertently bought the halogen assemblies. I wasn't yet aware of the difference in HID's vs. halogens; I didn't even know that HID's existed, since the W220's are the first HID-equipped cars I've worked on. When they arrived, I learned about my mistake. They take the H7 halogen bulbs. The thinking then became, "is there a way I can use these somehow?"

The solution was to learn what HID's are and what they're about. This resulted in learning about how our cars monitor current levels of the bulbs and throw Mean, Nasty Messages when they see lower current levels than they're programmed to see. Further, I learned that the halogen assemblies, from a wiring standpoint, actually are plug-n-play replacements, with the exception of the self-leveling headlight motor plug. When I realized that, I thought, hmm...maybe there's an LED that comes close enough to the current usage that an HID uses. So, I bought a pair of 35W LED H7 "bulbs" and tried them out in the halogen assembly.

Result: headlights that work, no flashing on and off, no dash cluster message, and only a code for the self-leveling motor. As long as the headlights work, I don't care about that last one. Fortunately, there's no legal requirement for those motors to work here in the States (yet). I still have the old, and complete, HID assemblies, including the factory ballasts. The reason I didn't put them back on is that the reflectors are burnt out after 17 years of use. Were I to do anything with those, I'd be cutting them up and J-B-Welding some bi-xenon projectors in there. Hey, they're already wired for HID's, so it wouldn't be too difficult.

Perhaps someday I'll get a pair of Depos to put in there, since they A.) are projectors, thus I can retrofit Morimoto E46's into them, and B.) they have the post-facelift look.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Hi,

This is verrrrrry interesting, as you say, it must be monitoring Wattage...........

Have you tried this with a 55w H7 bulb by any chance ??

I will, but atm my car is up in the air, with a ton of building materials under it, so I'll probably not be able to get at it for a few weeks yet. :wink

I know I have seen options to alter the coding in various modules for Xenon or not :wink

So what he needs to do is to try the 55W Can type LED Bulbs in his fog lamps :wink

Doesn't explain the side lamp bulbs not working though unless they were just sh!te and have gone wrong in short time :frown

Cheers Dave
 
#10 ·
I installed the led fog beams on my w220 and some t10 crees that are canbus for the parking lights. Now if you put led parking lights the automatic headlight function acts up it will burn out the bulns in a matter of days. I lile 6500k morimoto d2s bulbs for low beams best bang for the buck they look white with a very slight hint of blue. But on my s65 i have factory bulbs for low beams.

For some reason the crees look yellow in the picture and the fogs look blue but they all color match
 

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