All front lights (roughly) the same colour at last!

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!

Thanks guys.

Haddock said:

Agree about the LED sidelights, I got some Canbus compatible ones (recommended by a few people on here) to match my 5000k HID4U kit and they are a bit too blue for my liking.. So Im still looking!

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I know what you mean. I used the 2 LED ones from the "LED sidelights that work" thread in my FR until they packed up (probably fried by the full beam bulb being in the same reflector, I guess). They were pretty blue, but I had a 6000K H7R HID kit at the time so they matched pretty well.
The Philips 4000K ones are certainly not blue at all. Only problem with them is that they are very much forward facing - you get a little spotlight effect rather than lighting up the whole reflector like a tungsten bulb or 'LED tower'. I don't mind that though personally. Having DRLs now, I'd never use the sidelights without the dipped beam anyway.

Haddock said:

Foglights look impressively white for a "normal" bulb.

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I agree and I'm chuffed with them. I would have been annoyed if they hadn't lived up to their promises after cutting myself getting them installed...

SteveTDCi said:

good work, i think i might try swapping mine soon, I agree with you on the xenons and AFS, they are bloody brilliant

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They're almost psychic the way they light up where you're looking... excellent gadgetry.

Cheers.

Those 382 LEDs are a bit of a mystery. The old item listing is still there if you search for it (item 180525072083) but no sign of anything similar available now.

Also, I checked on alibaba for them (as it seems to be where many of the ebay sellers buy in bulk) but there's nothing there either.

I've sent a message to the seller to see if he'll be getting any more of them.

There are loads of standard/non-canbus-compatible LED 382 'bulbs'... so you could mount a resistor and use one of those as an alternative perhaps? As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are miniature spade connectors used to attach the wires to the 382 bulb holder for the DRLs, so if you bought 2xmale and 2xfemale connectors, you could install a resistor in parallel to the bulb holder without doing any cutting/splicing of the original wires.
But if you go the resistor route make sure you mount it on something metal or use a largeish heatsink as they can get quite hot, so I'm told...

The sidelights are much easier to sort: you can either buy lights with integrated resistors, or use any non-canbus-compatible 501 LED by getting plug and play resistor wires (which plug into the bulb holder and you plug the LED light into the other end).

Just had a response from the ebay seller (extremely prompt!):

Hi thank you for your email, at the moment we only have them in Red, and it may be 6 weeks befor we get the white ones back in.
regards Peter
customer care

- trade-prices-direct

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So looks like they will be available again in a couple of months if you can wait that long.

The Philips 4000K are very white with no discernable blue IMHO. Colour wise, if you want no hint of blue I think you'll need 4000-4300K HIDs. H7R is the type intended for reflector headlights and you'll need "can-bus compatible" ballasts. Installation is a minor faff as you'll need to drill 25mm holes in the plastic covers on the back of each headlight. The beam pattern isn't fantastic which may or may not have MOT implications. Technically, I don't think aftermarket HIDs are legal either unless installed with all the fancy levelling and washers etc. I had them on my FR and quite liked the colour and brightness but the beam pattern wasn't well defined like with the Philips X-treme H7 bulbs I tried before the HIDs. Not sure I'd buy them again if I had another car without factory HIDs/bi-xenons.

FR_Flavoured said:

Ok, will place an order for the Philips sidelights, they sound ideal + no blue tint!
To work with the can-bus system, might also need to order the sidelight ballasts too, pretty cheap though.

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You will need resistors, yes. You can get a simple plug-through version made by Xtec from hids-direct.co.uk... means no faffing with cutting/splicing wires and scotchloks etc and the resistor is built into a little heatsink block so it doesn't get too warm - they're what I use.
The Philips LEDs are very expensive for what they are but hopefully they'll be reliable and it doesn't matter which way round you install them so you won't have polarity to get wrong.

I agree with your comments re: HIDs. Pretty much matches my experience of them tbh. They're kinda pretty but don't match proper factory HIDs and I think high quality normal bulbs offer better visibility albeit not the same lovely colour.

You also mention the upgrade halogen bulbs, for better lighting. I've also heard alot about the Osram Night Breakers - any idea how they might compare to Philips X-tremes?

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I had the Philips ones for dipped and the Osram Nightbreakers for full beam in my FR. The Nightbreakers were slightly whiter in light colour but seemed just as powerful. I think you'd be satisfied with either. Just to confuse matters, I'm sure I read a review on here comparing Nightbreakers to "Ring Xenon Max +100%" and they were apparently even better. Might be worth shopping around to see if any of the three are on offer as I don't think there's much between them? All three of these 'highly strung' bulbs will perform better than the standard/original bulbs in terms of visibility although perhaps at the cost of reduced lifespan.

Good man.

I ought to be on commission at trade-prices-direct as I think I've already sold the stock he's expecting of those 382 type canbus LEDs!

Doubt the warranty would cover a bulb as they're classed as consumables... but are you sure there aren't two messages on the computer? One for one bulb and one for the other. Sometimes it warns you if it thinks a bulb is on the way out but before it actually fails... so could be that both are dodgy maybe?

Dunno what to suggest I'm afraid. I've only ever seen them for sale from that one seller so my only suggestion is to keep trying (or leave him alone for a bit then retry)...

He did say it'd be six weeks before he'd have some and that was 28/9, so may be worth looking again in mid-November?

I've just had another look at that ebay shop and can't see the red ones listed either at the moment.

There are a zillion different non-canbus white 382 LED 'bulbs' available online (see my first post in this thread for a few examples), so if you can't wait until they're back in stock, you could just get a 382/p21w LED resistor kit, a pair of male and a pair of female mini-spade connectors (from Maplin or similar), and build a DIY solution - remembering to mount the resistor on a heatsink or something metal...
... it's more faff but still doesn't require any cutting/splicing of OE wires as you could put your own resistor in between the bulb holder and original wires, using the spade connectors.