As I stated in my reply to this post on 14th December I ordered a pair of new Osram Nightbreaker Xenon bulbs for the dip beam lights on my fattie. They have now arrived and I have fitted them.

It was dead easy to do.

I removed the old bulbs and it was obvious that they were past their best. The glass stems were a bit cloudy in places and they just looked tired.

The new bulbs went in and it was obvious even in testing them in daylight that they had a lot more power than the old ones. I've now been out in the dark and whilst dip beam doesn't really light up the road much further than the old ones did they are a lot brighter and have more "body" to the light pattern. No one flashed me whilst I was out so I assume they are not dazzling anyone else on road.

The colour is not as blue as I thought they would be (and I'm glad). They have a very nice white field of vision whilst the old one was probably best described as light grey

I got the bulbs as a set of two off ebay for £85 or so, which seems to be about the going rate. Well worth it in my opinion.

I fitted LEDs to my main beams a couple of months ago, my car had filament lamps in the main beam and factory Xenons in the dip.

Recently with some evening driving, winter drawing in etc, I fnoticed that the offside beam was too high. I'd tried to adjust it, but it wouldn't go down low enough it went down a bit then there was a click and it popped back up.

So with some free time today at Christmas I decided to work out what was going on. I removed the headlamp completely so I could see inside from the back.

The new main beam LEDs are the type with a heatsink and fan on the back, and I could see that the bottom edge of the heatsink was fouling on part of the headlamp casing and was using the whole frame (which carries dip and main beam) up.

So the problem was my fault - I hadn't connected the beam height problem with the installation of the LEDs!

So I took the LED out and filed about 2mm off the bottom corner of the heatsink, re-installed and it now clears the case, just.

The beam adjuster now works just fine, so I'll realign the light later when it gets dark.

Job's a good 'un.

A


2011 Vogue 4.4 Diesel.