evan8

Hi all, I am thinking of asking local MB shop to install LasFit H7 LED on my 2012 GL450. Front halogen headlight seems to be getting dimmer. I have the Philips xtreme bulb but still not bright enough as before for some reason. Headlight housing is in good shape, not cloudy. Anyone has any suggestions on if this will cause issues or things shop need to do to avoid issues/system errors? Thank you!

Yup497

Are you saying you want to put an LED bulb in the reflector high beams?

Or are you saying you want to put LED bulbs in your projectors?

The light scatter would be pretty bad and you may end up blinding oncoming traffic.

If you want to swap the projectors for actually LED projectors, it is doable. Checkout Lightwerkz online. They have a wide selection and have LED projectors that can be retrofitted.

Be advised, you may not get the output you're looking for with LED projectors.

On my 2010 GL550 I baked the headlights and opened up lights. Swapped OEM projectors with EVOXR projectors and Osram CBB bulbs. In the hot spots I'm hitting over 900-1000 lux on low beams. A very crisp cutoff line too.

2010 GL550 Osram D1S CBB with EvoXR projectors.

AZN Optics

You'll need canbus enabled LEDs to work, not just any generic LEDs. Also HID conversion will give a much better result.

repguns

I used AZN on my 2012, the HID kit they have is great. I did have them professionally installed, so total cost was about $300. Huge difference and pretty good cutoff on them. Trying to figure out how to raise them just a bit, I would like about 10 more feet of road illuminated

eric_in_sd

Not necessarily. I put in LED bulbs and the beam pattern is excellent.

eric_in_sd

LEDs can work great, but the procedure is not for the faint of heart. For some reason the bulbs need a special little bracket, and you will shed some tears trying to get them to sit right.

Ignore the guys that call you a crazy dummy for saying it can work. They're just defending the $$$ they sank into an HID retrofit.

I should post some nighttime pics of my beam patterns to quiet the naysayers.


One issue is, last I checked, the only color temp available on LEDs was 6500K. This is a bluish-white. Technically it's preferable for nighttime illumination - your eyes are more sensitive to that spectrum in low light conditions - but if I had my druthers I'd put in more like 5000K or even warmer. The blue-white looks a little unnatural.

The shopping is also difficult, as there are many junk LED bulbs out there.

All this my experience from a couple of years ago. The situation may have changed.

BlownV8

My HID kit was around $35. Lights closer to 4300k to 5000k produces more usable light with 4,800 producing the most lumens. The higher in the spectrum the fewer usable lumens it produces. The main issue with LED's is the short wavelength of light throw so it illuminates close very well and is bright but, for long distances and in the stock housing, they are not so great

eric_in_sd

In lower light levels, your eyes are more sensitive to the blue spectrum. This effect is not included in the standard lumens measurement. There is a measure called photopic lumens, but no one uses it. So 6500K is actually better at night, but not if you are distracted by the fact that your lights have a bluish tint.

Bright light at 5000K appears white to your eyes. However, in low light levels, you'll see it as more bluish. Think moonlight. A nighttime what you see as white will be closer to 3000K.

My LEDs in stock housings work great at both short and long distances.

Yup497

Eric,

Would you mind posting a picture of your lights illuminating a wall or garage at night? I'm very curious to see.

eric_in_sd

Ask and ye shall receive. I backed the Beast up, facing the garage door from the inside. It's about four feet away from the inside of the door.

This is low beams:


This is high beams (low + high):


This is fog light only (helper blocking headlight)

Note the fog lights are centered on the garage door hinge, while the low beams cut off higher.

Yup497

Eric,

Very impressive. Just confirming, thats an LED bulb in a projector housing?

If so, what LED bulb are you using? Hiw did you focus the bulb with that cutoff?

eric_in_sd

Yep. Glad you like. I'm happy with them, now that I got all the bugs worked out.
I did a whole thread on it. Let me know if you can't find it.

I didn't have to do anything special to focus. I did, however, have to cut off these funny buttons mounted on the end of each to not have a hole in the center of the beam. I'm pretty sure that's in the pictures in the thread.

Here's a few pointers, summarizing from memory:
1. Get lights with the smallest led array possible. That's what gives you the quasi-point-source which is what gives you the clean beam pattern. Basically you need to copy the H7 with its itty bitty filament in the center. I skimmed the available types and looks like they've settled on this design, so it doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.
2. The high beam bulbs mount upside down relative to the low beam. Flipped 180.
3. You have to get a metal bracket for it to fit. This is because MB, and other German makers, use a metal bracket to hold in the regular H7 and you have to copy that. Try putting the metal bracket on first and then mounting the bulb to that.
4. You must get LEDs with an outboard (inline) resistor. This is an aluminum box. It dumps like half the power so the CAN bus is fooled. It gets hot. Put it someplace safe.
5. You will discard the housing dust covers. Not only will the bulbs probably not fit with the dust covers in place, you want the bulbs ventilated anyway.
6. Most LED bulbs, at least when I shopped, have cooling fans. You ought to get ones with fans, because heat is the LED bulb's enemy. It needs to be able to dump waste heat. At some point they may improved the design so waste heat is not a problem, but my impression is not yet.

Yup497

Very impressive. However I have already opened up my lights and replaced stock projectors with EvoXR projectors and Osram CBB bulbs. I have the cornering headlights.

What Kelvin rating output do you think you're getting?

What lux readings are you getting?

eric_in_sd

Oops. I thought you were the OP. Well, the tips apply to anyone else interested and reading, anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if your projector assemblies have a better beam pattern than the stock. Mine have the creeping yellow and spots on the lens.

The bulbs are supposedly 6000K / 6,000 lumens per bulb. I have no way of measuring exactly.

Be careful of the lumens measurement. Lumens applies to bright light; in dim light your eyes are much more sensitive to the blue spectrum. This is one reason 6000K bulbs look so much brighter on the road. Thus for a given power input, a 5000K bulb will have a higher lumen output - but would look less bright at night!

You're also trusting the manufacturers to not lie. They just take data from the LED manufacturer, who may lie. The same holds true for HID, though companies like Osram stand behind their products, as opposed to the no-name Chinese LED makers.

The engineering on LEDs seems to be still improving. Home LED bulbs used to have big heat sinks on them; for some reason, they're now able to skip that.

I might put higher lumen output bulbs in the high beams. There's a lot of things I might do, lol.

evan8

Eric, that beam pattern looks very nice! I am thinking of using the LasFit H7 LED set with the metal bracket. And possibly drill some holes on the dust cover. Do you put all the dangling wiring in the light housing? Would you mind sharing what LED you are using? Thank you!

eric_in_sd

2-1/2 years ago I put LasFit in my daughter's car, with some reliability problems. I wouldn't disqualify them, but just be aware. Manufacturing on all these things is hit or miss.

I would just get rid of the dust covers.

I let the wiring and "ballast" dangle loose outside. If I cared more I suppose I'd tie up the loose wires, but the ballast should be kept open and ventilated.

I used these:


Note they're no longer made. This should give you an idea of what to look for, though. Fan cooling and point-source LEDs. Many now use a short row of LEDs, which should work fine, as long as the LEDs have a lens on top to spread the light in a hemisphere. If it's more than a small row, well, that's how you get the crappy light distribution people complain about. You just have to try them and if the light distribution is not clean, send 'em back.

Note also these have round buttons on top. I ended up unscrewing the buttons and grinding off the top. They previously had a round hole in the center of the distribution. It wasn't really a problem (it was at the top of the cutoff), but it annoyed me. You want ones that are unobstructed at the tip. It looks like the Lasfit also has that round button at the end; you'll probably want to cut that off.

I would get ones that have a remote "ballast". This is just a resistor; it makes a fair amount of heat, so adding that heat to the load taken away by the fan, well, it seems a bit pointless. It might not be a problem at all, but in my opinion, why tempt fate?

These guys look pretty good. Note the different approach to spherical light distribution. They also seem to understand the issues (see their diagrams). Good reviews, too.

You'll need to provide a ballast / resistor / "decoder" for many of these lights. Also the magic clips. And then some patience and persistence.

You're welcome; that's why we're here. Feel free to ask more Q's.

P.S. I run my headlights in DRL mode, which is a good torture test for the longevity and heat control (i.e. daytime running). So far, so good.

evan8

Thank you Eric for the detailed info! The 360deg one does look good.