Monday, January 9, 2017

Modernizing the Front Lights (Part 2)

Happy New Year everyone! Hope 2017 is a better year for all.

Anyway, as you recall in my last post I swapped out a first generation T10 LED parking lamp, as well as the OEM D2S Xenon bulb on the left front headlamp, for new units from Philips - both rated at 6200K in color and supposedly brighter than the norm.   

The results were promising
So, next on the list was to access the hi-beams and replace those too.

Wouldn't it be nice if all three bulbs gave off the same color?
Unfortunately, in order to access the hi-beam bulbs, the front bumper had to come off (by design - as reader Sam T commented in the previous post) because each of the headlamp housings are secured on the side by a bolt that is located directed directly under the upper side part of the bumper.  My friend (and BNR34 owner - check out his excellent blog HERE) Alessandro kindly offered to come by and help - I know from past experience that this task, while relatively simple, goes by much faster with two people.

See how compact Japanese garages are? 
So after driving it up onto ramps, I jacked the car up.
Safety first! Placed jack stands under the car.
Then I crawled underneath to unbolt the 3 piece undertray.

Truth be told, this was AFTER I cleaned it up, there was a lot of grease and oil on it! (see next photo)
Meanwhile Alessandro was busy removing the front grill and the two turn signal assemblies. And while I was under the car, I went ahead and removed the front lip spoiler as well.

Note, only the right side air duct came off. A rusted bolt prevented me from removing the one on the left in similar fashion. Something to resolve in the future!
So after removing the front undertray and the front lip spoiler, we realized that we did not have to remove the entire front bumper cover. This was because I have small hands and fingers which allowed me to access each of the single bolts on the sides of the headlamp housings. So instead of removing the bumper cover entirely, we only had to undo the two bolts on the left side to loosen the bumper cover in that area.
Green points to where that single troublesome bolt resides for the left side headlamp assembly.
 Orange is where I reached into to access that same bolt on the right side.
Then, all we had to do was to remove the nuts and 1 bolt holding the assemblies onto the frame of the car.
Green arrows point to the bolts and nuts that were removed.
On the left side, all that was left to be done was to replace the high beam H1 bulb.
You can see the base of the H1 bulb.
The OEM H1 bulb.
And here are the OSRAMs. Compared to OEM they are blue tipped.

And so how did these compare? Given it was still dusk, it was a bit hard to tell initially, but the photos show the difference (which admittedly is not drastic):
With OSRAM
Without OSRAM

Being winter time, the light quickly faded soon after and I was able to get the following photos:
The left front (right on photo) has been changed out, and is whiter than the OEM on the right (left on photo)

In the dark, the difference is more distinct - whiter, and more crisp with less distortion.
So, while not really close to the white of the Xenons or the parking lamps, you can see there IS a difference between the bulbs. First, the OSRAMs appear to be slightly whiter; second, the glow of the light given off was crisper, if that makes sense.

At night, to be honest I could not really tell much of a difference - the biggest difference was how bright the parking lights are now - with the garage door closed there was hardly a difference between them and the Xenons!

In any case - there is still room for improvement. So, I will continue to monitor light bulbs in the hope that one day, I can get an H1 bulb that is whiter AND brighter...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it is best to revert to target ~4000k across the board for all three lights? To my knowledge halogen bulbs cannot really get to D65 without strong filters. Generally speaking it is also worth noting that heavy fog tends to absorb blue more strongly than other parts of the visible spectrum. However, I'm not sure that the high-beams will be on that often regardless, so I suspect it isn't too critical to achieve a color temperature match.

Aki said...

Just as you say, I RARELY use the high beams, so it's not that critical to achieve a color temperature match. Further, if I AM using them, I would want the brightest light possible, so K rating is not important then.

Thanks for the comment!

Unknown said...

This is great great blog, I really love it. . The under cover, Is it handmade or is it mass production?

Aki said...

Emilio - thank you!

Undercover was made by a company here in Japan called SilkRoad. Not sure if they still make them...

http://www.r33gt-r.com/2011/07/new-front-diffuser_23.html

Aki

Unknown said...

Thanks!