Having had to replace both burner and lamp in my Jags HID lights I yearn for Halogens at 2 and 6 each! Subaru owners are also shocked to be quoted £600 per headlamp to fix. Just keep out the water!
My civic just failed with LEDs , even through I spent ages playing with the beam pattern on the garage door, I marked the old pattern with tape and kept tweeting until I thought it was the small, the mot guy said you fitted led I said yes he said it’s failed
Oled has terrible lamp life and lumen depreciation though. I am not aware of it being available as a point source.
Exactly, the lamp is just one part of the whole optical system. The size of the light source and it’s light distribution are critical to ensure the correct beam pattern, go back 30 years when the choice was halogen it halogen you could buy a lamp of the same dimensions and connector base but with the filament oriented longitudinal or transverse. Here the filament is about 5mm long but choose the wrong one and you can have a big shadow being cast in the beam pattern and therefore light where you don’t want it and no light where you do. move onto HID and the source is now an arc about 1mm across. So much smaller and therefore the same distortion can happen in beam pattern. now today with LED, the size of the light source is much bigger and so the optics again do not work: light where you don’t want it, which can cause glare and no light where you do want it, which is no good either. I think these kits are a bit like laser speed trap jammers. There was a time when it was legal to sell them Legal to buy them Get caught using one and you can be off to jail
I think also one reason we dont like them is cars with auto dip, it's usually the large 4x4's they never dip before you are blinded, and the light some cyclist's have they are way brighter than any car light
Yes, cyclists lights are problem. The luminance of LED light sources is extremely high to the point where the are a biological hazard and are classified as such by type against safe exposure
The ones that have one searchlight on the bike, pointing straight ahead at eye level, and another on their helmet specifically used to ensure all oncoming runners/walkers/cyclists/motorbikers/drivers get the full beam straight into the eyes are the worst. Self righteous pricks as a rule, and I say this as a cyclist.
Right guys the car has now passed the mot, with the old "bulbs" Half candle power, the mot guy said now you can go home and refit the 'led's', does this mean if i have an accident my insurance is void, because of the led's, he also mentioned that the led beam pattern was fine
Technically I'd imagine that is a possibility but incredibly unlikely in most circumstances. Now if you were in a collision with another oncoming vehicle, at night and you had illegal LED bulbs, that you had knowingly removed from your headlights for an MOT and subsequently reinstalled you are toast imo -if they check the bulbs.
The company who I was going to buy my LED headlight lamps from have now put a disclaimer on their website saying they’re an MOT failure. Even though they have almost identical beam pattern and colour. I won’t be fitting any now. Trouble is Sag is 44 years old and LED would reduce current on the wiring, looks like relays and night breaker halogen then
I wish I could go that way, my car has the plastic head lights and they might melt with the heat, I also have a Triumph GT6 1973 that I have fitted legs into, and it's never had a problem with the mot's always passed at the same station
Just received a response from a Policy Specialist (MOT Testing Service) at Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. I asked, text in parenthesis excepted. Are there any exceptions to this rule? (recently amended rule 4.1.4 which instructs the tester to fail the headlight if a HID or LED bulb is fitted in the place of a tungsten or halogen bulb) If so can you please clarify. DVSA response. "Thank you for your enquiry in respect of motorcycle headlamps. Essentially, only a halogen bulb is homologated for use in a halogen headlamp. To my knowledge, there is not an aftermarket LED bulb homologated for use in this way and would therefore be illegal and justify an MOT failure. Whether an MOT tester could determine this on an MOT inspection is debatable, but there are no exceptions to the rule." So there you have it cast in stone.
A ‘light source’ means any bulb, LED or other means of emitting light. this is straight out of the manual, so does this not cover hid bulbs??
i phoned dvsa on this very matter about hid bulbs in older bikes they told me to pass any bike as long as it had the correct beam pattern visable on the light meter.
The only OE lights fitted with a HID xenon bulb are projector headlights as fitted to the 848 and 1098, and many more bikes. If you put them in reflector headlights then they will dazzle with stray light. There are many LED bulbs 90% of them are cheap shit and will also dazzle in reflector headlights. LED lights are a purpose designed unit and not a bulb stuck in a reflector.
Can you tell me which model has HID xenon but not in a projector? I think that you are wrong there. The levelling mechanisms and washers do not affect the function of a sharp cut off that a projector has.
