0 seconds agoMy 2010 glk 350 got my low beam bulb needs replacing but how do i get to the bulb when there is a black plastic thing blocking it when i opened the round cover.thank you

 

You can see pretty much what you need to do in my LED conversion video - just watch between the (approximately) 2:00 and 3:00 points for the actual removal / installation. It's pretty easy once you see what you're actually doing with your fingers (no way you can do that while you're removing / installing the bulb)...

 

Habby , how do you like the beam pattern of LED? Do you have the projector style lens of older models ?

 

The pattern was great, and the rotatable design of the LED bulbs allowed me to fine-tune it to the point it's actually cleaner and sharper than with the original halogen bulb.

My lights are the pre-LCI projectors.

 

Your lucky with projector lenses , my 13 has the large style , I don’t know if led would be better. I put in HID years ago.

 

From what I've seen, the LED is a better option for a reflector headlight, because the light source is at a single fixed point, allowing the focusing of the beam by the reflector. With an HID bulb, the light emits from the length of the tube, leading to a much fuzzier and less focused beam pattern. This is what causes the "blinding blue white flash" from oncoming traffic (normally when a halogen reflector headlight is converted to HID, or to the "wrong" LED "bulb" with the light source at a different point relative to the base than the original halogen bulb).

 

Hid come in a variety of Kelvin - light temperature, or color . Halogens are about 3000k , old incandescent about 2800k . Hid for cars from like Phillips or Sylnania from about 3000 - 6000 I think . The “blue “ color you notice is from HID or led higher than about 5000k. I forget but my HID are 4500 or 5000k and have zero blue light blinding . Many people think the Blue light is cool to have , but it’s completely annoying to all oncoming cars . The thing is to not get high Kelvin lights like over 4500 or 5000K . When I did the conversion not being one of the idiots that blinds with Blue light a priority . As far as lens , the 13 reflector was designed for halogen which have the same pattern as HID. I am skeptical that the LED with output on the side of the bulb would work. For your projector style they do work. HID bulbs can last 10,000 hours . Halogen maybe 2-3000, but LED although they can last 10,000, heat reduces LED life to a very short life , I see the come with fans . But I wanted a tried and true light . I’ve had to many high out put PIAA bulbs fall every year . I’m know the new LED stuff is much improved now . I did this HID conversion 10 years ago.

 

Halogen bulbs do not produce light from a single fixed point but rather, over the length of the filament. An LED with a single fixed point of light output is certainly a compromise, in that respect.

 

Lifespan of an LED can be short but it's not a given. Having said that, an engine compartment is a less than ideal environment. A little fan, with possibly cheapo bearings that may not last that long under "normal circumstances", aren't in for a good life with the heat of the engine compartment and are pulling in already heated air in an effort to cool the LED. How long will those little fans be spinning anyway? Once they fail the LED will be even less happy.

 

sidenote: I assume that the OP figured out how to replace the bulb (?), as no follow-up.

Just throwing out my personal opinion | observation from 52 years of driving (and motorcycling). I've never done a bulb upgrade. Okay, yea, incandescent bulbs are very inferior for headlights, but aren't those days gone.

Heck, there are absolutely zero incandescent bulbs used for any light bulbs in (or exterior of) our house!!

Anyway, we're in a semi-rural area. The "main" road that leads us back to civilization (you know, like a grocery store) is a 2 lane blacktop (with zero street lights). It's easily a 20 minute drive to the nearest freeway, to then travel further to the town. We've had a general rule to avoid driving (especially biking) at night.

However, on the rare occasions to drive at night, I have never thought, "dang, these headlights don't provide enough of a light beam". Not sure what our 2001 Jeep uses, but its lights also provide great lighting.

So, what's the encouragement to upgrade headlights? Most freeways provide lighting. Majority of urban streets are lit. ( Sorry I didn't get all technical 😀 )

 

People drove for decades with "only" incandescent headlights without crashing left and right while driving at night. That said, the average car has become much more powerful (faster) so the possibility of over-driving your headlights can increase. HID and LED can provide a color temperature that better replicates daylight. A good thing. HID and LED use less power/are more efficient. In addition, some people do drive a lot at night and good night vision is not a given, by any means. Some people have quite poor night vision and need all the help they can get (he holds his hand up).

Of course HID and LED are more complicated and expensive. There's also the endless battle of one-upmanship. Once the first manufacturer introduced HID, for example, the others just had to follow. Similar to how the infotainment screens keep getting bigger and bigger in cars - to the point of being ridiculous.

 

What type of bulbs are in there, regular H7? Black plastic thing? Are you trying to remove the high beam, theres a version that has a large plastic holder.

First time driving my W204 at night and i could not believe how bad the headlights were, I felt it was dangerous with how dim the road ahead looked. I searched online looking for the brightest H7 replacement bulbs I could find being sold at the time and ended up getting a set of Osram Nightbreaker Unlimited. When I went to swap the bulbs out I noticed that the Silverstar Ultra were in there. I did install the Nightbreakers and did not notice a difference at all.

I noticed Mercedes has a bulletin for upgraded H7 bulbs which from my research are just Philips X-treme Vision bulbs.

I ended up installing a can bus type hid kit and that completely solved the low lighting issue. If I were to just install H7 bulbs back in I would probably go with the latest nightbreaker bulbs.

 

True, but that filament usually runs parallel to the base of the bulb, or is pretty short (compared to an HID bulb) so it's at a fixed distance from the curved surface of the reflector. The LED output area is very similar to that of the halogen bulb, if it's designed correctly. Here's a screen shot from the last conversion I did showing the difference...




This LED "bulb" (kind of a misnomer, really...) was installed in a reflector housing in my newest project car, a 2013 Mini Cooper. You can see how well the LED elements line up with the position of the filaments on the original bulb. The light focus / pattern ended up actually improving with the LED, by virtue of being able to "fine-tune" it by rotating the "bulb" inside the base.

As for not needing good headlights because the city is so well-lit... I suppose (hey, how many times have us city-dwellers seen someone driving down the road at night with their lights off because it's light enough they simply haven't noticed their lights aren't on).

But I have to tell you that doing my 'cross-country road trips, including a LOT of high-speed miles in the heartland, you need lights that really reach out to stay alive. You really don't want to spot the cow or elk or deer at 200 feet doing 70mph if you could see them at 400 feet! ;-) I've seriously upgraded all my lights accordingly, including my 1996 Jeep Cherokee and 1978 GMC motorhome (both have LED projectors now). Call me paranoid! ;-)

 

I agree that this thread has been effectively hijacked. The OP has either solved the problem or left in disgust.

Here is how I see it. Well aimed low beam headlights are aimed some point on the road. Even if they are very bright they aren’t in the eyes of oncoming traffic on a level road. High beams, however, are aimed straight ahead. Maintaining aiming and going to low beams only are important on roads with opposing traffic.

Early LED replacement bulbs did not match the near point source of the halogen bulb’s filament. The light dispersion was poor. They sent light from even properly aimed low beams into other drivers’ eyes. The elements from later LEDs are much closer to the where the filament sits in a halogen bulb and should be much better.

Headlights evolved over time. By the mid ‘60s sealed beam headlamps were the standard. They were incandescent 50-55 Watt tungsten filaments encapsulated in technical glass with fresnel lenses to focus the light into a beam with metallic silver reflectors. The filaments were run at a very high temperature to get a light color of near white using argon gas to extend filament life. 95% of the light produced, got to the road.

Style and fashion demands led to the development of rectangular headlamps using the same basic technology. Light patterns and dispersion got worse.

Then style demands and the cost of developing a new shape of technical glass for every model created a shift to halogen lamps in acrylic housings with aluminum reflectors. Halogen bulbs are tungsten filaments run at high temperatures in quartz envelopes with bromine gas. They perform well when new. They last longer than sealed beam lamps. But the envelopes are so small, they darken quickly because of filament ablation and redeposition on the envelope. As a result, 1 year old halogens in plastic headlight assemblies only show about 80% of the light produced. My ‘13 C Class was awful. The recommended MB update was a lot better but barely acceptable.

Then OE LED headlamps arrived. LEDs allow designing the emitters with the headlight housing so that pattern, intensity, and whiteness can be controlled. In my opinion, they come close to the performance of the OE HID headlights with shaded low beams. We have a GLA & a GLB with very good lighting.

Our ‘15 GLK was no where near as bad as our C Class. If your GLK doesn’t have HID, then good aftermarket LEDs should be a suitable solution to light output problems.

 

Thanks for the detailed replies, @MBKLUE , @habbyguy , and @Odd Piggy .

Regarding rural animals. We got those all around us. Heck, got 3 horses right here - neighbor across street has about 30 cattle. Our property is situated such that deer cross it almost daily (mostly at night).

I can't think of the last time I have ever replaced bulbs on the GLK or Jeep. Heck, I had to step into the garage to check the 2001 Jeep. Can't replace the bulb - got to buy an old fashioned sealed beam (housing & glass) with sealed in bulb.

 

Oh dear, those deer!
There’s a winding 3-4 mile 2 lane secondary road to the property we travel about 20 times a week. It’s like an obstacle course dodging them in the fall.
My wife has never been hunting, but she got a nice buck with the ML350.
Some kind of animal encounter (documented somewhere in here) resulted in the end of our GLK350 and a hospital stay for her.

 

Kind of (OK, entirely...) unrelated, but my progressive upgrades to my 1996 Jeep Cherokee are many. It came equipped with the rectangular sealed-beam bulbs, and I needed a white cane to drive it at night. Notoriously bad lights. The first thing I did was to install a relay kit to bypass the (horrible) wiring associated with the vehicle (that dropped over a volt before the power got to the headlights). That helped. Then I ordered a set of "Euro-spec" headlights that had replaceable H7 (IIRC?) bulbs, and much better focus and lights. Following that, a set of high-power LED bulbs to replace the incandescent H7 bulbs (requiring cutting a hole in the panel behind the headlights to clear the fans). Much better. But then, I got a chance to score a set of dual-projector lights, and now the humble XJ Jeep lights up the night like it should...

 

I really take that kind of thing seriously - driving through parts of rural Texas at night on 60-75mph backroad 2-lane roads is "interesting" with lights that don't reach out far enough. That didn't save me from having my 2005 Audi A3 wagon totaled by a dog, because it hit me from the side (chasing a cat at night - did enough body damage to total the car, and the dog lived). My granddaughter collected a wild boar with my "project" 2012 GLK at night, but happily the damage was minimal (cracked front bumper cover and ripped out the front inner fender liner, basically). I was impressed at how well the GLK came through it all. Better yet, they got to cut the tail off and turn it in for the $10 county bounty! ;-)

 

The ML350SE W163 was a tank. It had great HID projector headlights. The big whitetail buck didn’t have a chance when he darted out from tree cover that came to within 2 feet of the road.

The GLK350 had decent headlights with Philips X-treme vision bulbs but the same situation ended differently because my wife dodged and it went downhill (literally) from there. Really liked the GLK but it wasn’t as stable or study as the ML.

 

I replaced my GLK with LED bulbs now I get a message to check the low beams. I just press OK and keep on truckin but is there a "fix" to fool the computer? Thanks!

 

The problem is that the LED "bulbs" draw much less power than the incandescent bulbs they replace. So when the car "tweaks" the bulbs with voltage pulses (which often cause the LED bulbs to strobe slightly), it reads the lack of current as a bad light.

You need to get a resistor across the leads, which adds to the current drain, bringing it up to the point the car's computer is satisfied that there is a (halogen) light bulb in place. There are a number of devices that do the job - a plain ol' resistor will do it, and there are devices that go under various names like "canbus adapter" - some of them are set up so you just plug them in between the car's wiring harness and the LED light bulb.

FWIW, most LED bulbs seem to have worked out a way to prevent this error from occurring, even without an external resistor or adapter. But some cars are more finicky than others.

 

Thanks for the reply. I had to add a resistor to my compass when I switched to LEDs because they flickered very badly and that did the trick. I'll look for some for the GLK. Thanks again!

 

Good info on this thread. My wife's low beam bulb just went out on our 2012 GLK350. And I want to just replace everything with LEDs like my cars. I know low, high, and fog take H7, H7, and H11 but what about the small bulb closest to the grill on both sides? In my C and CLK that's just a 194. Is it different in the GLK?

 

Do you mean the turn signal? It's a PWY 24W.

 

The small daytime bulb under the high H7 high beam.