Hella 500 H3 LED refit - Anybody done this successfully??

[MatthewCervi]

3 hours ago, ray_ said:

As Daniel had said about aftermarket HID's (in H4 housings), the splatted bright beam pattern may make one think they are seeing better.

 

But they're not.

Or sometimes you are seeing better but you've blinded everyone else on the road.  HID and LED headlights are far superior ***when they are in a housing and lens designed for them***.  I'm not sure such a thing exists for our cars.

[Tdh]

See below.  Sorry for the double post.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Tdh

[Tdh]

Just now, Tdh said:

I just finished conversing with Daniel Stern about upgrading the headlights on my '71.  Below is the response I got from him after inquiring only about fog lights and possible DDL's:  

 

The original headlamps are sealed beams. No matter what brand or when made, these are primitive and barely marginally adequate. They produce a dim, narrow, brownish tunnel of poorly-focused light, very little light on the road surface, no side spill, and a great deal of upward stray light that causes backdazzle in bad weather. You can do much better than these, but you have to be picky and shop carefully because most of what's on the market is junk (though all of it is advertised as an "upgrade").


_Halogen headlamps:_

Put in a set of Koito replaceable-bulb headlamp units, $228/pair. They are the best-focused, best-built, most efficient lamps of their type to fit your car. Commonly-available Hella units are well made of quality materials, too, but are markedly less efficient (much less light on the road, much shorter seeing distance).

There's a great deal of junk on the market, too. Delta, Roundeyes, Adjure, Eagle Eye, Eaglite, Maxtel, Eurolite, Neolite, Autopal, Rampage, and dozens of other off-brand units mostly from China or India. Avoid all of it. Also take cautious note that many vendors are offering Bosch 7" H4 headlamps at blowout prices of about fifty bucks a pair. Nice price, but they are surplus motorcycle headlamps, and though they'll physically fit, they aren't car/truck headlamps and their performance isn't adequate for car/truck service.

If the Koitos are out of the budget, the next-best choice would be the Cibies, $158/pair.

_Wiring and bulbs:_

You will definitely want to put in headlamp relays. This can be achieved with relay
kit RIK-2, $49.

The RIK is not a harness, but a _parts kit_ containing all relays, brackets, terminal blocks, terminals, plugs, sockets, fuses and fuseholders. You supply your own wire (or your mechanic does) and use the parts from the kit to build
up your own wiring harness to take the workload off the switches and bring full power to the lamps. The concept is explained at http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/relays/relays.html .
Parts are specially made premium-grade items (e.g. ceramic headlamp sockets) that accept large-gauge wire; this is not the "consumer grade" junk you can find at the parts store.

Or, I can have my harness builder custom build you a ready-to-install harness assembly using the same components. Cost for this option is $161.49 (including parts and labour; you pick _either_ one relay kit _or_ one custom-built
harness to do the entire job. It costs more than the $40 to $90 cheapy prefab harnesses because it is not a cheapy prefab harness). Installation is simple: you run the marked wires to battery positive and to battery negative, snap the
harness plug onto one of the vehicle's original headlamp sockets, snap the harness sockets onto the headlamps, and secure the cable runs and relays neatly out of harm's way.

The in-car switches continue working normally, and you will not need to cut or otherwise disturb any of the vehicle's original wires.

The optimal bulbs are precision-focus, ultra high luminance 60/55w items, $43.18/pair. It's tempting to grab for big wattage numbers (100/90, etc) but please see bulb test results posted by my colleague Virgil at http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?392498-Interesting-headlight-bulb-test-results .

Any of the "extra white" bulbs is a nonstarter as far as seeing better is concerned. It doesn't matter whose name is on the bulb. Sylvania SilverStar/Ultra, PIAA, Hoen,BlueVision, CrystalVision, TruView, Nokya, Polarg, etc. -- all the same scam. They have a completely blue-tinted glass, which blocks an unreasonable amount of the light that would reach the road if the glass weren't tinted, so they produce _less_ light than ordinary bulbs (not more), and in order to get legal-minimum levels of light through the blue glass the filament has to be driven very hard so these bulbs have a very short lifespan. And there's nothing about the tinted light that improves your ability to see -- the opposite is true, in fact. All it does is change the beam color slightly, to zero real benefit.

Note Sylvania recently got spanked to the tune of thirty million dollars(!) for the false "upgrade" claims they make for their Silver Star bulbs: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?388252-Sylvania-taken-to-task-for-their-false-claims-of-headlamp-superiority  - and theirs were the least-bad of an overall bad product category.


_HID ("Xenon") headlamps:_

"HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps (any kit, any headlamp,
any vehicle) do not work safely or effectively, which is why
they are illegal whether you buy the lamps and the kit together in one go or separately. See
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/conversions/conversions.html .

There is only and exactly _one_ legitimate, legal, well-made, safe, effective HID headlamp to fit your vehicle. It is built around the Hella high/low-beam projector used in recent Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, and Audi models. Beam performance is _vastly_ superior to what can be obtained with halogen lamps of any description, brand, or wattage. Power consumption is less than that of your original headlamps, so if your stock headlamp wiring is in good condition, no upgrade is required. Bulb lifespan is about 10 years, and replacement bulbs are readily available (and will be for many years). The toughened hard glass lenses are almost impossible to break, and they run warm enough to shed winter slush, snow, and ice. Beam coverage is very broad, long-reaching, even, and highly precise, with excellent control of glare and stray light; when these lamps are aimed correctly they are inoffensive to other road users on low beam and create no backscatter in bad weather. They have the European-type "Z-beam" sharp, stairstep-shaped cutoff on low beam, and they are fully roads-legal throughout the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Price for the pair is $1523.62 (all inclusive: lamps, bulbs, ballasts, harness, everything). That price is with paintable black bezels; if you wish chrome bezels, they're +$100/pair. These are, by a very large margin, the best-performing headlamps available to fit your vehicle, though the best of the LED headlamps described below are beginning to whittle away at the performance gap. Attached photos show them in
a Porsche, with chrome bezels.

_LED headlamps:_

The "LED bulb conversions" now flooding the market are not a legitimate, safe, effective, or legal product. The failure is at the concept level, not the implementation level. These are a fraudulent scam. Not capable of producing even a fraction of the amount of light produced by the filament bulb they supposedly replace, let alone producing it in the right pattern for the lamp's optics to work.

But there's a number of engineered LED headlamps on the market -- they range in quality and performance from pathetic to excellent. The 701C from Peterson (in Peterson or Sylvania Zevo packaging -- same lamp) is good, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OYR8MVO/?tag=2402507-20 . The Truck-Lite unit is good, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007K8AA7I/?tag=2402507-20 By a big, big margin the king daddy of them all is the 8700 Evolution 2 from JW Speaker: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GOYN3Y6/?tag=2402507-20 (chrome) or http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GMRM3KA/?tag=2402507-20 (black).

With the BiXenon HID or any of the LED headlamps, you will not need relays or a wiring harness, because these lamps take less power than the original sealed beams so the original circuitry is plenty adequate. The LED headlamps linked here are not an advisable choice if you do a lot of wintertime driving with heavy snow and slush; the LED headlamp lenses run cold so snow and ice can build up on them instead of melting off like they do from a warm halogen or BiXenon lamp lens. There is a heated-lens versions of the Truck-Lite lamp ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0193VFCO0/?tag=2402507-20 ) and there'll soon be a heated-lens version of the JW Speaker lamp, as well.




_Lamp aim:_

You will need to see to it that the new headlamps are aimed
carefully and correctly per the "VOL" instructions at
http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html (unless you put in the Peterson or Truck-Lite LED headlamps, in which case the correct setting is "VOR").  Even if the stock lamps were correctly aimed, you must check and
adjust the new lamps.

Whichever headlamp option you choose, result of this upgrade will be modern-car levels of headlamp performance: broad, even, bright white (NOT brown, NOT blue) well-focused low and high beams instead of the dim, narrow tunnel of brownish light from the original sealed beams. Also total elimination of backscatter in rain/fog/snow. Modern cars have a range of headlamp performance; your headlamp selection determines how high in that range your upgrade will get you.

_Fog lamps:_

Please see http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/fog_lamps/fog_lamps.html for thorough information about what fog lamps will/won't and can/can't do, and if your driving conditions do call for fogs, let me know and I can make some recommendations.

_Daytime running lights:_

There is a version of the JW Speaker LED headlamps available by special order that incorporates a very effective white LED daytime running light. Last time I checked, these were about $719/pair. Let me know if you'd like a formal quote.

There are other options for DRLs, too. If you want a period-correct item, it is still possible (or at least it was two years ago the last time I had a request for them) to get the mid-'70s design add-on daytime running light units as supplied in the Nordic countries when they enacted DRL mandates around that time. They look similar to the yellow-and-chrome ones in the picture here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp#Nordic_countries

If you want to add white LED DRLs to your vehicle, but opt for headlamps other than the JW Speakers with inbuilt DRL, shop very carefully; there is an enormous amount of garbage on the market. All vehicle exterior lighting functions, even the ones (like DRL) that aren't mandatory in the US, are highly specified as to their design, construction, numerous aspects of performance, etc. It's far, far more detailed than just "Well, it's a white light facing forward that comes on when the car's running and moving, so it's a DRL" or "Well, the eBay ad said DRL, so I guess that's what it is". We do not get to just declare any ol' light into whatever function we want.

There are some good add-on DRL sets that are SAE-, ECE-, and DOT-compliant:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DX6BRK/?tag=2402507-20

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7OVGTG/?tag=2402507-20

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OYR8PQQ/?tag=2402507-20

Another option that shouldn't be overlooked is simply to run with low beam headlamps (+ tail lamps and sidemarkers) whenever you're driving, day or night.



_Additional lighting upgrades:_

The rear of the car bears some attention. You'll want to add a good central brake light. I also have excellent high-quality LED center 3rd brake light retrofit kits from Hella New Zealand; see http://www.danielsternlighting.com/products/products.html#CHMSL -- definitely not the dimestore junk that flooded the market in the '80s and '90s. It is $77.59 for the lamp kit with installation supplies and materials. See example installations on 2002s in photos attached. These are installed at the bottom of the backglass, but you can also install at the top -- preferable, actually, from the performance standpoint.

Clean the front park/turn and rear brake/tail/turn lamp lenses in hot soapy water. If the reflectors are at all dull or peeling, stuff wads of masking tape in the bulb holes (or remove the sockets if they're the removable type), clean the reflectors with alcohol, then spray them with readily available "chrome" spray paint, which is practically ideal for the task.

Then, install these in the brake lights:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HWS7TRK/?tag=2402507-20

These in the front and rear turn signals and reversing lamps:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TQ8H4KG/?tag=2402507-20

You will need to swap in a new turn signal flasher:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000CL7DBG/?tag=2402507-20 (EL13c, 3-prong)

using these instructions: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/85984-signal-flasher-upgrade-easy-to-do-what-a-difference/

Also note these recommendations are very specific -- they are the only legitimate LED retrofit bulbs. There's a mountain of garbage on the market, too, so use _only_ these specific LED bulbs.