Let there be light!! 160W LED Bar

[Baverhanne]

As the winter is coming and the days are getting darker my wife repeatedly taunted me about my Superbs poor high beam, it's a really big difference compared to her XC70 with both Xenon main beam acting as high beam and the halogen high beam working together. I thought that it was about time to do something about it and ordered a LED bar installed below the number plate. 

 

Picture 419 is the dipped beam

Picture 421 is the high beam

This is the actual difference between high and low beam when there is little to nothing reflecting the light on the sides. If you zoom in you can see the trees.

Picture 420 is the LED bar

 

Pictures is taken with Sony A6000 in manual mode = same settings for all three pictures 

Trees are at roughly 200 meters distance.

 

As you can see there is a lot of light on the ground in front of the car, with the position of the bar this is hard to come around. This was the only place that wouldn't disturb sensors or camera and also didn't look like ****.

Overall I'm pleased with it with only one down side - when turning the bar off my dipped beam seams like candles in front of the car

 

HBA won't work and has been disabled in the infotainment. 

 

This bar makes a real difference when driving around at country roads early morning and late evenings.

Pictures is actually taken 1830 today and it's already quite dark outside!

[ionelmc]

What is your wiring setup? You added an extra button in your cabin?

[Baverhanne]

No extra button for this - firing of together with high beam. It would be easy to add a button though.

For the photo I removed the fuse and covered the headlights for bar photo.

[raimoxxl]

What number/colour is the signal cable to the highbeam? Did you use the Canm8, XBB or some other unit?

[Baverhanne]

I actually don't know. Had a shop to install the bar as it is a company car.

[MRB007]

This is probably the best LED light bar install I have seen yet!!!!

 

Can I ask a few questions?

What brand / model is the light bar?
What have they fixed it to?

What type of brackets / fittings did they use?

 

I have a MK2 Octavia and htis is the sort of solution I want.

[FatblokeVRS]

2 hours ago, MRB007 said:

This is probably the best LED light bar install I have seen yet!!!!

 

Can I ask a few questions?

What brand / model is the light bar?
What have they fixed it to?

What type of brackets / fittings did they use?

 

I have a MK2 Octavia and htis is the sort of solution I want.

 

Looks interesting. Certainly need some more info on this. Is it just wired via the high beam wire through a relay?

 

[xman]

I have to say I was almost run off the road by an idiot a few days ago who had adorned his car with a whole array of super bright leds. Looked like a UFO landing.

 

Did not respond to my flashing, I had to pull over and stop as he had blinded me totally.

 

These ultra bright add ons are highly illegal for a reason and I hope the police stop him and confiscate his toys.

[MRB007]

6 minutes ago, xman said:

I have to say I was almost run off the road by an idiot a few days ago who had adorned his car with a whole array of super bright leds. Looked like a UFO landing.

 

Did not respond to my flashing, I had to pull over and stop as he had blinded me totally.

 

These ultra bright add ons are highly illegal for a reason and I hope the police stop him and confiscate his toys.

 

Idots are everywhere can account for everything

[raimoxxl]

When driving in the darkness 8 months a year with mouses, reindeers and deers you would want to see them before they are in your front, or god forbid, inside your cabin.

 

THATs why we have them and most people people use their common sense when meeting other cars.

[Baverhanne]

1 hour ago, xman said:

I have to say I was almost run off the road by an idiot a few days ago who had adorned his car with a whole array of super bright leds. Looked like a UFO landing.

 

Did not respond to my flashing, I had to pull over and stop as he had blinded me totally.

 

These ultra bright add ons are highly illegal for a reason and I hope the police stop him and confiscate his toys.

Doesn't matter if there was HID, LED or halogen in that case... In Sweden these aren't illegal for a good reason - you need sufficient light to be able to spot the animals before they are in front of the car...

[H3ikki]

Here are my short tips for installation. More in weird foreing language at http://www.vagarena.fi/index.php?topic=32882.90

 

So the signal for relay should be taken straight from the BCM module that is placed in side the car on driver side (LHD). Almost all of the car's lights are orginally connected trough there and there are couple of un-used pins for this job. Full scan of the system will show potential pins. All of the pins are freely configurable with VCDS or OBD11 and there are plenty of different possibilities for light configurations. Depending on the pin that is selected there are couple of different connectors that can be bought from dealer or from the internet:

 

In my case I took the signal from connector C, pin 3 and coding something like this:

With this set-up the led-bar will be on when the Hi-beam is on and the HBA is in full use. I added regular switch with LED to the cabin so if necessary I can still shut of the extra light. The coding also enables possibility to disable the extra light for example if fog light is in use or what ever you can imagine. You can also make code it that the HBA won't light the extra light but it has to be light manually etc.

 

Here is the starting point for assembly.

 

I took the whole bumper and the steel bar away for the welding process.

 

And here is the finished product. Curvy led bar, Walonia Horizon with RDL bar (also connected straight to the BCM and coded so it will shut down when lo-beam is activated)

 

 

The picture won't give honest illustration for the light and it is better in real life. The light focus is very limited and it is not too intense in front of the car, I really shoud get proper pictures for the setup...

Edited 13 November, 2018 by H3ikki

[Baverhanne]

The light bar - It is mounted with a canbus canceller, with a piggyback on the signal for high beam.

Brand is "CAD" and from what I can see it's a high quality Chinese product.

Brackets are mounted to the collision beam in front of the radiator (as they told me anyway) and the brackets sits on the back of the bar instead of the more common sidemounted bracket.

This thing is rock solid and won't move a bit when pushing it.

 

But I want to be clear with one thing, this bar has quite a good spread of the beam but it still gives you a really bright spot right in the front of the car so when turning the bar off it gets really dark. It's mounted so low that it is practically impossible to avoid this no matter what bar you buy.

[Baverhanne]

@H3ikki - That looks really good! Nice touch to activate an output for the led bar!

[H3ikki]

17 minutes ago, Baverhanne said:

The light bar - It is mounted with a canbus canceller, with a piggyback on the signal for high beam.

Brand is "CAD" and from what I can see it's a high quality Chinese product.

Brackets are mounted to the collision beam in front of the radiator (as they told me anyway) and the brackets sits on the back of the bar instead of the more common sidemounted bracket.

This thing is rock solid and won't move a bit when pushing it.

 

But I want to be clear with one thing, this bar has quite a good spread of the beam but it still gives you a really bright spot right in the front of the car so when turning the bar off it gets really dark. It's mounted so low that it is practically impossible to avoid this no matter what bar you buy.

I agree that the installing positition for the light is bad in this case but I disagree about the hot spot in all lights... With lens/mirror design (chip at 90 degrees) the light shape can be very limited and the bright spot can be avoided if the bar is selected properly. Take a look on these pictures https://valovertailu.com/lisavalovertailu-2018-2019/ where the mounting height and the settings are kept the same but some lights lacks the bright spot near the light. Usually the bars that has the LED-chips mounted straight behind the glass/plastic cover has the most light in all directions and will certainly be a bad choise for low installation height...

 

Edited 13 November, 2018 by H3ikki

[Baverhanne]

I've not seen that chip configuration in a consumer product before (haven't looked to be honest). But I trust you word about the possibility to "tailor" light output to be optimal even if mounted as low as ours.

 

How much is that bar that you've installed? I've got another car that needs a bar installed and for that one (private car) I wouldn't mind spending more on a proper bar.

[H3ikki]

4 minutes ago, Baverhanne said:

I've not seen that chip configuration in a consumer product before (haven't looked to be honest). But I trust you word about the possibility to "tailor" light output to be optimal even if mounted as low as ours.

 

How much is that bar that you've installed? I've got another car that needs a bar installed and for that one (private car) I wouldn't mind spending more on a proper bar.

The light is Walonia Horizon and it is around 300 € and with the kit I think I payed 340 € or something like that. https://www.jussinmaki.net/ajoneuvovalaisimet/tuote/walonia-horizon-paketti/A552053B84D47B4252/ This light colour temperature is rated around 6000K depending on the source but as in reference pictures not that cold in real life. More like high 5000 K'ish and really white light. If looking for warmer then I would go with the Genesis 600 (same frame and dimensions as Walonia Horizon or Optibeam Commander). And actually just couple of days ago they announced a new Genesis 800 that is a bit wider and it might just fit the Superb. I am too afraid to measure because it might then result new light for my car... 

 

If money is no obsticle then the Lazer Linear series is really good and really small but they are expensive af.

[MRB007]

@H3ikki - Possibly the best install I have seen now. I need to look into my MK2 and how best to fix the light to the frame. I dont weld so need to find an off the shelf mount or get a welder.

[H3ikki]

I took some fotage from my dash cam to illustrate the shape and power of the lamp. The beam is very wide and as said it is very well kept in shape so not too much light in front of the car. In the video the road was wet an it consumes some light... Funny how there is no snow even it is mid November now... I'll make some comparasion between the bi-xenon and horizon when driving in the dark next time.

 

18 hours ago, MRB007 said:

@H3ikki - Possibly the best install I have seen now. I need to look into my MK2 and how best to fix the light to the frame. I dont weld so need to find an off the shelf mount or get a welder.

Thanks. At least this beast weight almost 3 kg and there are no solid points to mount it like this in superb unless you make it on your own. I have seen people adding the light mount that is supposed to go under the register plate straight to the crash beam and it seems to be ok ish option if you dont have welder.

Edited 14 November, 2018 by H3ikki
typos

[RickTT]

On 14/11/2018 at 17:26, H3ikki said:

I took some fotage from my dash cam to illustrate the shape and power of the lamp. The beam is very wide and as said it is very well kept in shape so not too much light in front of the car. In the video the road was wet an it consumes some light... Funny how there is no snow even it is mid November now... I'll make some comparasion between the bi-xenon and horizon when driving in the dark next time.

 

Thanks. At least this beast weight almost 3 kg and there are no solid points to mount it like this in superb unless you make it on your own. I have seen people adding the light mount that is supposed to go under the register plate straight to the crash beam and it seems to be ok ish option if you dont have welder.

 

This is going to be crazy bright once the snow falls - looking forward to that video!

[JR RS]

On ‎14‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 06:56, H3ikki said:

 

Here is the starting point for assembly.

 

I took the whole bumper and the steel bar away for the welding process.

 

 

any tips you can provide in relation to the bumper removal process?

 

did u jack the front wheels up, and remove the wheels?  looking at the pics - u haven't.   did u remove the wheelhouse liner?

 

with the headlight washer system - how do u seperate it from the bumper lines?  to u have to crim the lines, so the fluid does not keep leaking?

[H3ikki]

35 minutes ago, JR RS said:

 

any tips you can provide in relation to the bumper removal process?

 

did u jack the front wheels up, and remove the wheels?  looking at the pics - u haven't.   did u remove the wheelhouse liner?

 

with the headlight washer system - how do u seperate it from the bumper lines?  to u have to crim the lines, so the fluid does not keep leaking?

The removal process is quite straight forward job. I didn't remove the wheels or the wheelhouses, because I did this at my home garage. If I would have had possibility to do this job with pilar lift I think that I would remove both before removing the bumper. Also I didn't jack the front of the car since my garage has small step that provided some ground clearance for the removal. I removed most of the wheelhousing screws before driving the car to the garage so I could turn the wheels out of way. Helping hands i necessary if you don't want to scratch your bumper.

 

I didn't have any "special" tools for the washer in the bumper. I remember that my mate had some issues  with the washer lines when we removed the bumper and the housing from the car but  I can't remember what was it. Looking at the picture I think that I removed some part of the washer line and we used it to make plug to seal the lines...

[JR RS]

thank you @H3ikki.

 

i'm looking to remove my headlights - hence my plan is to:-
1. put the front of the car up on jack stands
2. remove the front wheels
3. remove wheelarch liners
4. remove front bumper
5. remove headlights

 

do my thing with the headlights, then put things back in reverse.

 

ideally, i don't want to remove the wheels - if i can get away with removing the wheelarches by just turning the wheels to once side, each time, then i'd much prefer that.

[H3ikki]

2 hours ago, JR RS said:

thank you @H3ikki.

 

i'm looking to remove my headlights - hence my plan is to:-
1. put the front of the car up on jack stands
2. remove the front wheels
3. remove wheelarch liners
4. remove front bumper
5. remove headlights

 

do my thing with the headlights, then put things back in reverse.

 

ideally, i don't want to remove the wheels - if i can get away with removing the wheelarches by just turning the wheels to once side, each time, then i'd much prefer that.

You should be just fine with turning the wheels from side to side to remove the screws from wheel housing that are connected to the bumper. No need to completely remove them. 

[skidpan]

On 13/11/2018 at 18:39, xman said:

I have to say I was almost run off the road by an idiot a few days ago who had adorned his car with a whole array of super bright leds. Looked like a UFO landing.

 

Did not respond to my flashing, I had to pull over and stop as he had blinded me totally.

 

These ultra bright add ons are highly illegal for a reason and I hope the police stop him and confiscate his toys.

 

Totally agree.

 

But the problem can sometimes be in the way extra lights are fitted and not adjusted correctly.

 

I would also point out that dip/main lights require installing at the correct height, the one in the OP's photo is wall below that legally permitted for all but "fog" lamps.

 

Wonder if these Light Bars are "E" marked, if not they are illegal anyway.

 

If you cannot see simply the road ahead using your lights there is a cheaper option, slow down a bit. I find the standard lamps perfectly fine at legal speeds even with only 1.5 good eyes.

Edited 3 December, 2018 by skidpan