OEM Headlight LED Bulb Upgrade?
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Joined: Oct 2011
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From: Philadelphia
2002 CLK55 AMG: 2004 S55 AMG: 2009 C63
OEM Headlight LED Bulb Upgrade?
Has anyone upgraded the Turn signal and small "day time" running light bulbs to LED, and did they work properly without throwing a dash light?
I was having an Issue with my Driver side headlight flickering and eventually going completely out. Thinking it was a ballast, i swapped the ballast with another used unit and the same thing would happen. I pulled the headlight out and was going to replace the bulb until i noticed a lot of the wiring harnesses inside the headlight was disintegrating pretty bad. Wires were touching and the covering was very brittle and breaking apart in my hand. I took some Liquid electrical tape and doctored it up best i could. I replaced the HID bulb with an 8000K bulb, the turn signal bulb with the same part number LED, and the small little 194 DTRL bulb with an LED as well. I'm getting nothing from the turn signal bulb, and the DTRL bulb flickers on occasion but will not stay on. I did try to flip them to confirm polarity, however the turn signal bulb will only go in one way, and the DTRL bulb made no difference.
If in fact the headlight can not support LED's, I'll just replace them both with a stock OEM bulb and move on. If they do and something else is wrong, for example the wiring harness inside the headlight is damaged further in then what i can access, i'm going to just resort to buying new headlights.
Unrelated, I do like the way the 8000K bulb looks. It's just a slight bit more blue/purple then stock, and gives the car a very classy look. I wasn't sure how it would look but i must say it looks great.
Any help is appreciated. It's been extremely cold here in the northeast, but i'm trying to tackle some small items that need attention before spring.
- Joe
I was having an Issue with my Driver side headlight flickering and eventually going completely out. Thinking it was a ballast, i swapped the ballast with another used unit and the same thing would happen. I pulled the headlight out and was going to replace the bulb until i noticed a lot of the wiring harnesses inside the headlight was disintegrating pretty bad. Wires were touching and the covering was very brittle and breaking apart in my hand. I took some Liquid electrical tape and doctored it up best i could. I replaced the HID bulb with an 8000K bulb, the turn signal bulb with the same part number LED, and the small little 194 DTRL bulb with an LED as well. I'm getting nothing from the turn signal bulb, and the DTRL bulb flickers on occasion but will not stay on. I did try to flip them to confirm polarity, however the turn signal bulb will only go in one way, and the DTRL bulb made no difference.
If in fact the headlight can not support LED's, I'll just replace them both with a stock OEM bulb and move on. If they do and something else is wrong, for example the wiring harness inside the headlight is damaged further in then what i can access, i'm going to just resort to buying new headlights.
Unrelated, I do like the way the 8000K bulb looks. It's just a slight bit more blue/purple then stock, and gives the car a very classy look. I wasn't sure how it would look but i must say it looks great.
Any help is appreciated. It's been extremely cold here in the northeast, but i'm trying to tackle some small items that need attention before spring.
- Joe
