I really like the look of my factory bi-xenons (as well as their effectiveness for visibility and the cool AFS function) - very pleased that I ordered them with the car at great expense...
... but they make all the other front lights - sidelights, DRLs and foglights - look very yellow/orange and it spoils the aesthetic, in my eyes.
Even though the DRLs are never on at the same time, it annoyed me how yellow they looked; I don't like the Golf mk6 DRLs for the same reason, in fact. They look even worse now that even the non-premium car brands are jumping on the white LED bandwagon that Audi so successfully pioneered.
So, over the past couple of months I've gone about swapping the OE bulbs with equivalent ones that look that nice HID-style white colour: roughly 4500-5000K colour temperature.
Sidelights (501/w5w type)
These were relatively easy. You can buy 'canbus compatible' LEDs of many flavours now, but I still had some plug'n'play resistor cables that I took from my FR when I sold it, so I've used those in my Ecomotive, together with some Philips 4000K LED 501s. They are a decent match for the bi-xenons. Maybe a tad warmer white but close in colour, and importantly they don't have that obviously-after-market look and make the reflector blue when they're switched off like the 501 bulbs with blue glass do.
Daytime Running Lights (382 type)
These were an absolute pain to get right. I started with some MTEC Super White Chrome-effect 382 bulbs. These look OK - they're an improvement on the OE yellow candles - and they're certainly easy to install, but mine looked quite blue from specific angles which annoyed me a bit, so I decided to look for something better. After several failed experiments with 382 LED units that either didn't work at all or worked but triggered bulb warnings on the dash, I found a 'can-bus compatible' white LED 382 bulb on fleabay. Using 40 SMD LEDs per bulb in an ingenius design with two crossed double-sided PCBs, they are a lovely cool-but-not-too-blue colour and the crossed-PCB design gives a nice subtle 'crosshair' look to the DRLs from a distance:
Only trouble is, I haven't seen any more of these can-bus compatible white 382 LEDs on ebay since I bought mine. The seller was called trade-prices-direct...
Fog lights (HB4/9006 type)
I wouldn't normally bother replacing fogs for aesthetic reasons, as I don't care about looks much when there's visibility of <100 metres (and I'm not an idiot who drives round all day with fog lights on!)...
But my MY11 Leon has the 'cornering fog lights' function so my horrible yellow/orange fog lamps come on of their own volition whenever I'm turning into a sideroad, reversing or even just sat at traffic lights with an indicator on.
So, I bought some MTEC Cosmos Blue-White 9006 bulbs which claim to be 4750K colour temp - just what I was looking for. In this case, installation was a bit of a pain. I basically followed this helpful guide, but importantly the design seems to have changed since that was written...
The first bit about taking the black plastic piece off is right, albeit it feels like you're going to snap it off as you have to pull quite hard to free it from the bumper... but then rather than unscrewing three torx screws to release the fog light module, you now have to twist the unit to free it from the bumper (similar to the 382/DRL bulb holders, but on a bigger scale). Mine were both so tight that there was a bit of swearing required to twist them free, followed by a lot of swearing as the passenger side one suddenly came loose and I took a chunk of flesh out of my right index finger on a sharp edge of the bumper moulding.
Anyway, here's a pic of the end result:
... all front lights looking pretty much the same nice cool white colour and not a yellow candle in sight!
... but they make all the other front lights - sidelights, DRLs and foglights - look very yellow/orange and it spoils the aesthetic, in my eyes.
Even though the DRLs are never on at the same time, it annoyed me how yellow they looked; I don't like the Golf mk6 DRLs for the same reason, in fact. They look even worse now that even the non-premium car brands are jumping on the white LED bandwagon that Audi so successfully pioneered.
So, over the past couple of months I've gone about swapping the OE bulbs with equivalent ones that look that nice HID-style white colour: roughly 4500-5000K colour temperature.
Sidelights (501/w5w type)
These were relatively easy. You can buy 'canbus compatible' LEDs of many flavours now, but I still had some plug'n'play resistor cables that I took from my FR when I sold it, so I've used those in my Ecomotive, together with some Philips 4000K LED 501s. They are a decent match for the bi-xenons. Maybe a tad warmer white but close in colour, and importantly they don't have that obviously-after-market look and make the reflector blue when they're switched off like the 501 bulbs with blue glass do.
Daytime Running Lights (382 type)
These were an absolute pain to get right. I started with some MTEC Super White Chrome-effect 382 bulbs. These look OK - they're an improvement on the OE yellow candles - and they're certainly easy to install, but mine looked quite blue from specific angles which annoyed me a bit, so I decided to look for something better. After several failed experiments with 382 LED units that either didn't work at all or worked but triggered bulb warnings on the dash, I found a 'can-bus compatible' white LED 382 bulb on fleabay. Using 40 SMD LEDs per bulb in an ingenius design with two crossed double-sided PCBs, they are a lovely cool-but-not-too-blue colour and the crossed-PCB design gives a nice subtle 'crosshair' look to the DRLs from a distance:
Only trouble is, I haven't seen any more of these can-bus compatible white 382 LEDs on ebay since I bought mine. The seller was called trade-prices-direct...
Fog lights (HB4/9006 type)
I wouldn't normally bother replacing fogs for aesthetic reasons, as I don't care about looks much when there's visibility of <100 metres (and I'm not an idiot who drives round all day with fog lights on!)...
But my MY11 Leon has the 'cornering fog lights' function so my horrible yellow/orange fog lamps come on of their own volition whenever I'm turning into a sideroad, reversing or even just sat at traffic lights with an indicator on.
So, I bought some MTEC Cosmos Blue-White 9006 bulbs which claim to be 4750K colour temp - just what I was looking for. In this case, installation was a bit of a pain. I basically followed this helpful guide, but importantly the design seems to have changed since that was written...
The first bit about taking the black plastic piece off is right, albeit it feels like you're going to snap it off as you have to pull quite hard to free it from the bumper... but then rather than unscrewing three torx screws to release the fog light module, you now have to twist the unit to free it from the bumper (similar to the 382/DRL bulb holders, but on a bigger scale). Mine were both so tight that there was a bit of swearing required to twist them free, followed by a lot of swearing as the passenger side one suddenly came loose and I took a chunk of flesh out of my right index finger on a sharp edge of the bumper moulding.
Anyway, here's a pic of the end result:
... all front lights looking pretty much the same nice cool white colour and not a yellow candle in sight!