LED headlights

[Surrey006]

I have a mark 3 FABIA and wondered if I can fit LED headlight bulbs or is it not as straightforward as that? Also, would it benefit my car to use ultimate unleaded petrol? I have the 1.2 dsg monte carlo?

[krigl]

Stick to something like bosch plus 90 halogen or similar. Led are not road legal. 

The fuel defenetly benefits the engine on summer temperatures and should also be cleaner due to stricter standards than regular fuel. 110 PS is the minimum you get with low octane fuel in this engine. Good fuel can give up to about 10% power gain in right conditions with turbo cars because it reduces knock in boost conditions and enables engine to get more ignition advance. Do a little research. Tuned engines moatly require the higher grade fuel not to ruin them due to higher temps.

 

NA engines get very little improvement with higher octane fuel. 

[thamestrader]

We run our 1.2 Tsi 110 DSG Fabia on Shell V-Power Nitro and it runs beautifully and seems to go very quickly! There are more powerful and brighter bulbs from both Phillips and Osram that will give more light than the standard bulbs. Fitting said bulbs can be tortuous if you have large hands and the non-projector headlamps - my dealer fitted mine at the service!

[malcster]

1 hour ago, krigl said:

 

The fuel defenetly benefits the engine on summer temperatures and should also be cleaner due to stricter standards than regular fuel. 110 PS is the minimum you get with low octane fuel in this engine. Good fuel can give up to about 10% power gain in right conditions with turbo cars because it reduces knock in boost conditions and enables engine to get more ignition advance. Do a little research. Tuned engines moatly require the higher grade fuel not to ruin them due to higher temps.

 

NA engines get very little improvement with higher octane fuel. 

 

[krigl]

Ok, then lets us hear your comment on this subject if it is that funny? 

[Surrey006]

Thanks for all your replies.

My FABIA is on a PCP loan with 18 months to run. Someone told me I could get it mapped when the car is mine. Would this give a significant change in power? I noticed there is a limited edition 1.4 fabia but not available in the UK. Shame.

[Gerrycan]

I think it is fair to say that Krigl may have oversold the benefits of higher octane fuels.

It is a topic covered many times in Briskoda and personal opinions and experiences are varied and conflicting from believers and non-believers.

If you use fuel with a lower octane rating than recommended for your engine then you are likely to notice the difference, but if you run octane higher than recommended then you are unlikely to notice the difference because even the most optimistic sources suggest only 1% improvement per octane rating is available for power and consumption improvements running higher than minimum recommendation.

Your engine probably has the '95 octane or higher' manufacturer's recommendation and 95 octane is the legal minimum available in Europe and UK.

My usual recommendation is to try a few tanks of higher octane fuel and make your own assessment as to the benefits of the higher cost.

The other aspect of higher octane fuels is the manufacturer's claim that they contain higher detergent levels that maintain engine fuel-line, injector and engine cleanliness and again there is a lot of conflicting anecdotal and real (independent and peer reviewed) evidence. Probably some benefit but not as much as the marketing people may claim.

 

Simple performance mapping or adding  a tuning box can provide substantial (20-30%) performance improvements and may even improve fuel economy (in like for like driving) as the tune probably compromises emission outputs. Lots of existing threads on the benefits or issues of remapping, most love the results.

You will almost certainly be required to run higher octane fuel with a remap and probably a wise precaution.

 

The advice about switching to higher performance Osram/Phillips/etc halogens (from a reputable source) is the safest and most cost effective legal solution. 

Recent threads have suggested the  MOT test is looking far more closely and failing cars with the issues from cheap (and not so cheap) Chinese sourced LED headlight bulb upgrades.

 

[Surrey006]

Thanks Gerrycan

I will run on the fuel for a while and see if I notice any difference. The mapping sounds good so I will give that a try when I can.

[krigl]

Your right, i will not go in the pointles argument regarding fuel, youtube is full of them. 

I express my findings and research. I have a tuned car and yes I use 100 octane fuel in my car. I did this on stock car also. The fact that a higher octane fuel in my car does higher mpg than regular fuel, this makes up for higher price and also implies something regarding affect on the engine imho. 

 

I  will end my input now regarding this. 

[Shenanigans000]

For what it's worth...

 

I cannot comment on the fuel discussion as we don't have so many fuel flavours Down Under, but LED headlight bulbs - I've tried 3 different pairs, and two different types oh HID bulbs, so I can confidently give some real world feedback.

 

Note that I have non-projector, single bulb (H4) headlamps in my Fabio.

 

So, the LED's which I purchased off eBay were pretty much useless - unfocused beam pattern, and gave CanBus errors (even though they weren't supposed to). I did purchase a much more expensive pair of LED bulbs from a bricks & mortar retailer, which were actually reasonably good, but again the beam pattern wasn't quite correct.

 

I also tried a pair of HID bulbs and they were actually excellent for light output (really bright) and correct beam focus / pattern. But the problem with those was that there wasn't  enough range between low and high beam: if I adjusted correctly for high beam, low beam was too high and dazzled oncoming drivers, and if I adjusted correctly for low beam, high beam wasn't high enough. 

 

In the end I just fitted a pair of Osram Night Breakers, which are good enough.

 

Note that HID bulbs in projector housings do seem to work much better. My last car had projectors and the HID bulbs I put in were brilliant (pun intended). 

 

None of this pertains to the legality or otherwise of fitting these bulbs. I know that where I live, while technically illegal to fit these types of bulbs for on-road use, the reality is police aren't too bothered about pulling vehicles over and issuing defect notices for them. In other states which require mandatory annual vehicle inspections it might be more of an issue.

[rum4mo]

Strange though it might seem in this period in time where many cars have moved over to factory fitted LED headlights, but I read that Philips Auto seems to be bringing to the market place approved LED headlight bulbs for retro fitting into normal headlights - now if that includes both projector type and reflector type normal headlights I can't say, but someone in the Polo forum was chatting about reading VW Driver in his VW dealership while waiting for a service to be carried out - and noticed an article covering these new LED headlights, though I seem to remember reading that they are coming "some time" in the future so not available yet - I would have thought that these LED replacements for halogens should have been ready for sale many years ago to make the research carried out being able to get repaid by the sales of these LED bulbs before we all end up having LED headlights on our car fitted from factory, maybe I'm wrong there!

[Surrey006]

In the end I went to Halfords who supplied and fitted new much brighter bulbs. Paid £46. Can't remember what spec they are but pleased with the result. 

[Tim1631]

On 17/10/2018 at 02:20, krigl said:

Your right, i will not go in the pointles argument regarding fuel, youtube is full of them. 

I express my findings and research. I have a tuned car and yes I use 100 octane fuel in my car. I did this on stock car also. The fact that a higher octane fuel in my car does higher mpg than regular fuel, this makes up for higher price and also implies something regarding affect on the engine imho. 

 

I  will end my input now regarding this. 

 

You’re

[Eccles]

The problems with LED's are 1. Getting them to focus so that the require wide beam spread for road use is achieved (they are very different to traditional lamps). 2. The current crop are so bright that eye damage can occur (similar to looking directly at the sun). I learned this when I began using them for night time fishing and noticed a warning on the packaging of one lamp which I bought. Now their light emmissions can be damped down to get over this problem but in the EU the authorities have not yet been satisfied by anything currently available. Interestingly some cyclists now seem to be using certain really bright lamps at night but they are probably illegal (risk of eye damage to oncoming drivers).

[rum4mo]

I'd think that these really bright LED lights that some cyclists are using are being sold for off road use only, ie night mountain biking trials.  A guy at work used to manufacture them for much money!

[AGFalco]

I have a torch which runs on 4 AA batteries and is smaller than 120 mm long and 50 mm in diameter.

At maximum light output it is better than my Fabia's dipped beam but not as good than main beam.

I run the Fabia with 4 X H7 Osram Night Breakers fitted.

It is listed at 1150 lumens on maximum power but will only run for 150 minutes.

On it's lowest power of 0.5 lumens it will 'only' run for 80 days.

The Thailand cave boys might have found it useful.

You can get a bike clamp for this torch. Not that much to buy.

 

Thanks AG Falco

[J.R.]

My eyes in particular the left one are particularly sensitive to bright lights having suffered a string of detached retinas, I run with a running club and train with them 3 or even 4 evenings a week (have just returned from tonights session) at this time of year and especially after the clocks go back this weekend it becomes really hard for me, I wear a LED headtorch but when climbing learned very quick the etiquette of only using it when necessary and not shining it in peoples faces, sadly its beyond the comprehension of many here, they are seen as just another toy, the brighter and flashier the better, they switch them on even when there is good streetlighting and some of the idiots even use them in flash mode, maybe they think I am epileptic as well

 

 

 

 

[AGFalco]

A good rule of thumb I use when driving at night is:-

If my dipped beam headlights are lighting up the number plate of the car in front I am too close.

Or the headlights are set to high/ you have a heavy load in the back/boot.

 

Thanks AG Falco