The H7-equivalent LED lamps came yesterday. I installed them. First I put an H7 in the spare headlamp to see what stock lighting looked like, aimed around the yard at night. Surprisingly feeble, with a rather short-height high-beam bar of light. But it works well on the road. (I drove the car with the properly-installed H7 in it, the high beams are indeed _much_ better this way. So, that had been a problem ever since we got the car.) Then I put in an LED lamp. Nothing exploded, and light came out. The pattern looked pretty similar, but did seem perhaps 2x as bright, and was certainly whiter. (Verging on blue-ish, but I don't think objectionably so. And, these are high beams, so how they appear to oncoming drivers is largely irrelevant, since they shouldn't be on in those conditions.)
Testing, such as it is, passed, I installed them in the car. That was a bit fiddly, it looks like the bulbs are intended to go in multiple ways, just in case they have to be rotated due to the unavoidable directionality of the LEDs vs the reflectors. (Probably for use with low beams, which I would not do. I also noticed that the city light socket on the other side is also broken, and was wedged into place with a wad of blue paper towel. Perhaps I should have ordered two replacements?) I then took another test drive. Yes, noticeably brighter. The light pattern seemed good while driving, and turning high beams off made the lighting seem much dimmer, which was not the case when I first started investigating. We'll see how these hold up, I put the old H7s in the trunk just in case the LEDs crap out on the road. There were no lamp-out indications, which is good. (Some cars don't like some LED bulbs.) -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
