oneyozfest182

Curious if anyone has tried these yet and had any luck.

http://opt-7.com/opt7-fluxbeam-led-headlight/

I have a 2010 C300 Luxury 4MATIC (pre-facelift) and would love the HID look & quality over halogen bulbs. Any help is appreciated!

edgalang

Can't comment on them directly, but users in another forum I frequent seems to like the idea of LED direct replacement bulbs.

http://www.clublexus.com/forums/ct-2...-enough-8.html

OvOMitch

I too would be interested to hear any reviews. I have a facelift 2012 C250 without the lighting package and the halogens are absolutely awful.

AZN Optics

Any LEDs in forward projecting housing will give off worse illumination compared to your halogen bulb. The housing just isn't designed to capture surface mounted light spread inherent in LEDs. You end up with light scatter, dark spots, and reduced throw distance. They will look nice when looking at the car, but not so much when looking from behind the steering wheel. Lumen rating is misleading here as yes they are bright, but without true 360 spread, it's not translating to usable light. That's why we choose not to jump on that revenue stream bandwagon and offer those type of lighting to our customer, we don't want you to be disappointed.

If you have halogen reflectors, might have to just go with brighter halogen bulbs, but to do it proper, you need to do a projector retrofit with xenon conversion.

oneyozfest182

Honestly, every single car I've owned I've been told this, but this will be my sixth car with halogen projectors originally, and the five before it that I swapped for VVME HIDs all got far better visibility after changing away from the halogen bulbs, without retrofitting HID projectors. The cutoff is admittedly not as clean, but I've always aimed them just a hair lower than they were before and that removed the glare for oncoming traffic while STILL providing better light than halogen bulbs.

The scale appears to go:

Bad: Halogen bulbs in the halogen projector.
Better: HID bulbs in the halogen projector.
Best: HID bulbs in the HID projector

It's still ALWAYS been an upgrade for me, and I do a lot of country/backroad driving.

OvOMitch

Wait so are these things the same as HIDs?

AZN Optics

No, I agree with you that HID kit in halogen projectors is fine, but my response was more directed towards OvOMitch who has the facelifted model with halogen reflectors, not projectors. For your setup, I'd just stick with HID conversion kit and skip these LEDs for forward projection.

No, these are LEDs, not HIDs. If you switch to these for your low beams, you will have whiter lighting, but at a cost of poor road illumination. HIDs will give you better lighting than your stock halogen bulbs, but as you have reflectors, you'll be increasing glare for other drivers. You really want to put some form of projectors to reduce this glare. Options are a retrofit or headlight swap to aftermarket with integrated projectors.

oneyozfest182

Oh shoot sorry. I just am so used to getting told that HIDs in a halogen projector is bad so I ASSumed. I certainly apologize. 😋

The thing that I really like about the LEDs is they're supposed to last longer, have no warm-up, and stay a consistent color for longer. Is there a reason you recommend HID above LED?

AZN Optics

The first paragraph of my first post goes over some of the negatives. LEDs are great for indication type lighting (signals, parking lights, etc) or short throw illumination (interior, rear plate, etc), but just not for forward projecting, especially for primary forward projecting low beams. Fogs might be ok as you're not relying on fogs to really see at night.

Take the ones you linked for example which is a fairly common dual side spread LED. You have lighting being directed in two directions only which means you're going to have uneven lighting that'll be captures in the housing reflector. The reflector the diode chip is facing will have a higher light intensity than the reflector portion to the side edges. This uneven lighting distribution can cause light scattering and dark spots, attributing to poor visibility and reduced throw distance. Some modern lighting packages have LED headlights, but those have housing designed specifically to capture that surface mounted light spread, not your current stock housing expecting full 360 spread. I'm not even factoring in focal point which is another point of discussion.

We've been keeping a close eye LED technology however and there's hope coming in the form of 3D SMDs which are true 360 light spread, but it has not advanced far enough where the lumen output in compete. Hopefully soon though.

oneyozfest182

Well not having reflectors, that issue shouldn't affect me, correct? Also, these new LED headlights like OPT7 have output specifically MEANT for headlights, hence why it has those huge cooling fans on the back of them. The other thing is I want an easy, non-permanent method and don't want to drill the way HID kits need in the dust covers.

AZN Optics

So projectors actually have reflectors behind it, just a more narrow range with the cut off lens in front so principle would still stand.

As for the OPT7, I'm not going to get too much into marketing gimmicks, but no, it's not true 360. The clear glass comes standard on many of the CREE chips (something we're actually playing with for our upcoming V6 LED version using CREE XB chip). It does help refract the light a bit, but reflector will still capture uneven brightness.

Your call though. The lighting might be good enough for your purposes, especially living in the New York where you really don't need perfect light output on well lit city streets. The benefits of LEDs with instant on, zero warming cycle, specific kelvin rating are all positives of LEDs for sure.

oneyozfest182

Is there any way to do HIDs without drilling and ruining the dust covers on the pre-facelift w204?

AZN Optics

Duct tape the opening? I think replacement covers are like $20. Our Morimoto HID kits have rubber grommets to plug the wire hole to give it a clean oem look.

oneyozfest182

Most I've seen have that grommet. There was one someone here suggested and I bookmarked at work, (started with an hy--something I think), that they said had the error free CANBUS resistors built right into the slim ballast, so you just plugged the ballast & bulb in, and I think that's what I'd like to buy. I want it as simple as possible. I'll have to look for some dust covers on eBay also; thank you.

stark.1

had them on my car for a day. Lighting was horrid and looks very ricey. Stuck with my old Mtec hids.

psbenz12

Jalopnik did a video on testing LED headlights... verdict was that while they are brighter, the throw shorter...

Here's a link-

AZN Optics

Yup, pretty much agree with everything in that video... LED technology has not advanced far enough where they would be recommended for forward projecting main lights as you'd get reduced throw distance and you can easily see the uneven lighting and dark spots. They will look great when looking at the car, but not from behind the steering wheel. That said, if you live in the city and only drive in well lit streets, you can probably get by losing those several meters in illumination.

One point with regards to the video for anyone who will go with the install, the ribbon strip really shouldn't be stuffed into the headlight housing. For heat sinks to really work well and dissipate the generated heat, there should be in a position where there's actual airflow to draw away the heat. Sticking them in an enclosed housing won't help much.

Cscals17

I have something similar to this led setup just a different brand but same installation and style and I really like it looks much better than the halogen and Hid bulbs and I dont have any problems at night driving I think their better than the halogens id get em

oneyozfest182

Can you link me to the brand you use? And do the dust caps fit on okay still? No issues with flicker or anything?

benzdude

Dear AZN, as a website developer your 1995 website design offends me.

oneyozfest182

Dematrius

I just installed these last night. Is there a clip I should buy to hold it in its place since the oem clip doesn't go on anymore?

Mbracer26

How did you get them to turn and click into place with the aftermarket bracket? I did everything i could and it wouldn't turn or stay in place. I am at a desperate stage now. please help. thanks

JsCoupe

Sorry to bump this thread, but I wanted to touch on some things brought up in here regarding LED bulbs. For example, AZNOptics is correct in saying that because of the way LED produces light and how it is manufactured, the throw is different. However one thing I do want to deliberate is that just because it produces light in a different manner, does not mean it cannot be installed in a projector housing. This does not mean I am advocating for LED installs yet, however I would like to clear the air on whether it is physically feasible for an LED bulb to be a direct replacement in a halogen projector housing.
While I understand the projector housing was made for halogens, the fact of the matter is that a lens is being used to throw whatever light is being originated, onto the road, the whole point of a lens being that it focuses light, just like a home projector. Moreso the fact being that the type of lens is a negative meniscus, so the light is "scattered" to be thrown a farther distance (AZNOptics may be able to provide more clarification on this). The Jalopnik video does not confirm whether output is increased or decreased using projectors. LED light is not coherent, so the light behaves in the same manner that light from a halogen bulb does. The only possible reason I can see the halogen bulb being a more uniform light is in the shape of the bulb itself.
I have asked myself numerous times that perhaps if another LED were mounted at the base of the "bulb", pointed backwards towards the reflector behind the projector, would halogens even hold a candle to LED bulbs? I welcome anyone debate on this matter as well, since I have not seen since a definitive answer yet, taking into account the scientific aspects as well. It's like we need a friggin particle physics professor to determine if we can install a simple bulb!

Melburnian

Having just replaced one defective headlight bulb at a cost of $60.00 I will certainly look at LED bulbs next time.