Liseed
Veteran Member
MK4 Golf quality LED bulb retrofit.
I converted the entire car over to all LED bulbs. Most were plug and play, no modifications needed, however the stock hazard light switch need modification for use with the LED directional lights to prevent hyper flashing.
My Celis headlights needed some mods to do this. I wired the ring lights as DRL's and parking lights. I plan on adding RGB (or blue) COB LED's behind the stock ring lights in the future for added brightness to the DRL's and parking lights (they are a bit dim in daylight).
For the headlights I had to fabricate and machine some parts to allow for the larger LED bulbs to fit. I used aluminum and incorporated heat sinks into my design to help keep things cool (most likely not really necessary since LED bulbs run cooler that stock halogen bulbs, but it cant hurt!). This set up is easily 2 or 3 times the output of regular halogen bulbs + all the benefits of LED lighting! This set up should be future proof as well, allowing to simply upgrade the bulbs as better ones come out, assuming the footprint of future bulbs stays roughly the same.
Headlight housing modified as required for LED bulbs:
I had to cut away some of the housing around the high-beam access cover.
High-beam side required a custom spacer made on my milling machine to allow for the larger bulb and eliminate interference with the existing wiring:
Low-beam side and fogs required custom caps made on my lathe and milling machine to fit the larger bulbs and allow some airflow behind the bulbs. The bulbs do fit without modifying the cover, BUT the bulbs are right up against the cover and would most likely overheat due to fan airflow being blocked. I also incorporated a heat-sink to help cool things off.
Foglight cap was challanging to machine because of the uneven surface of the headlight bulb cover behind the foglight bulb. It has 3 different surfaces, and one of them is curved!
COMMENTS: (some are condensed from replies to this thread). These comments apply to the Celis headlight reflectors only.
LOWBEAMS: I have tried 3000, 4000, and 5000 lumen bulbs behind the stock celis low beam projector. I settled on the 5000 lumen bulbs at 6000K color. 5000 lumen bulbs about match the stock halogen bulbs in terms of wattage (power use), but they are a little over 3 times as bright in terms of lumen output! At the 5000 lumen output, I find they seem to about match the brightness of modern LED headlight systems (just by eyeball comparisons) and yet have a nice crisp cutoff line just as they did with stock halogen bulbs without glaring oncoming traffic. I have even noticed a few LED headlights in new cars that were even brighter than this, but I did not want to exceed the wattage of the stock halogen bulbs, as there are possible wiring harness issues if you exceed the wattage the car was designed for. The 3000 and 4000 lumen bulbs were still fantastic improvements, however. There are even higher lumen bulbs out there, I have not tried them, but I would not recommend them for on road use.
HIGHBEAMS: I tried 3000, 4000, and 5000 lumen bulbs in the stock celis reflector style high beams. I settled on 3000 lumens at 6000K color. 3000 lumens is about 2x the brightness of stock halogen bulbs, but it sure seems like more. Bright but not dangerously bright, IMO.
I can drive at 100 mph (on a track, of course) and not over-drive my headlights with these, easily. Really makes a difference on dark country roads! I can see deer I was not able to see before because the sides of the road are lit up further to the sides and MUCH better than before.
5000 lumens is definitely off road only! (I really mean it, lol). Turns night into a bright day! Way too bright for on road use, for many reasons.
4000 lumens was just a tad too bright also, (it only turns night into a normal day) as when I dipped to low beams after using these for a while, it was actually a bit blinding, kind of like when you take dark sunglasses off on a bright day, it took a minute or two to readjust, even with the brighter low beams, and I found that to be dangerous, especially when there was oncoming traffic headlights added into this effect.I will try a 3500 lumen bulb here if I can find a quality made bulb at that output.
FOGLIGHTS: Mine are flip chips, which means they flip from yellow (3000K) to white light (6000K) just by turning them off and on again. I absolutely LOVE this!! Again, I LOVE this! Mine output 3800 lumens. They seem put out about as much light (maybe a tad dimmer) as the low beams on the road. The fogs don't have a projector like the low beams, just a glass lens with a metal cutoff. Like the low beams, these also have a crisp cut off line without glare above the line. The cutoff line just about matches the low beam cutoff line on mine. They are bright enough to use just by themselves, even at night. The yellow light really makes a difference in inclement weather, it really adds to contrast (just like wearing amber lenses in your ski goggles). I often run the foglights on white with the low beams as this lights up the sides of the road in rural areas even better than low beams alone.
If anyone is interested, I can fabricate these parts and/or modify your existing headlights for you. Or supply complete modified assemblies.
.
I converted the entire car over to all LED bulbs. Most were plug and play, no modifications needed, however the stock hazard light switch need modification for use with the LED directional lights to prevent hyper flashing.
My Celis headlights needed some mods to do this. I wired the ring lights as DRL's and parking lights. I plan on adding RGB (or blue) COB LED's behind the stock ring lights in the future for added brightness to the DRL's and parking lights (they are a bit dim in daylight).
For the headlights I had to fabricate and machine some parts to allow for the larger LED bulbs to fit. I used aluminum and incorporated heat sinks into my design to help keep things cool (most likely not really necessary since LED bulbs run cooler that stock halogen bulbs, but it cant hurt!). This set up is easily 2 or 3 times the output of regular halogen bulbs + all the benefits of LED lighting! This set up should be future proof as well, allowing to simply upgrade the bulbs as better ones come out, assuming the footprint of future bulbs stays roughly the same.
Headlight housing modified as required for LED bulbs:
I had to cut away some of the housing around the high-beam access cover.
High-beam side required a custom spacer made on my milling machine to allow for the larger bulb and eliminate interference with the existing wiring:
Low-beam side and fogs required custom caps made on my lathe and milling machine to fit the larger bulbs and allow some airflow behind the bulbs. The bulbs do fit without modifying the cover, BUT the bulbs are right up against the cover and would most likely overheat due to fan airflow being blocked. I also incorporated a heat-sink to help cool things off.
Foglight cap was challanging to machine because of the uneven surface of the headlight bulb cover behind the foglight bulb. It has 3 different surfaces, and one of them is curved!
COMMENTS: (some are condensed from replies to this thread). These comments apply to the Celis headlight reflectors only.
LOWBEAMS: I have tried 3000, 4000, and 5000 lumen bulbs behind the stock celis low beam projector. I settled on the 5000 lumen bulbs at 6000K color. 5000 lumen bulbs about match the stock halogen bulbs in terms of wattage (power use), but they are a little over 3 times as bright in terms of lumen output! At the 5000 lumen output, I find they seem to about match the brightness of modern LED headlight systems (just by eyeball comparisons) and yet have a nice crisp cutoff line just as they did with stock halogen bulbs without glaring oncoming traffic. I have even noticed a few LED headlights in new cars that were even brighter than this, but I did not want to exceed the wattage of the stock halogen bulbs, as there are possible wiring harness issues if you exceed the wattage the car was designed for. The 3000 and 4000 lumen bulbs were still fantastic improvements, however. There are even higher lumen bulbs out there, I have not tried them, but I would not recommend them for on road use.
HIGHBEAMS: I tried 3000, 4000, and 5000 lumen bulbs in the stock celis reflector style high beams. I settled on 3000 lumens at 6000K color. 3000 lumens is about 2x the brightness of stock halogen bulbs, but it sure seems like more. Bright but not dangerously bright, IMO.
I can drive at 100 mph (on a track, of course) and not over-drive my headlights with these, easily. Really makes a difference on dark country roads! I can see deer I was not able to see before because the sides of the road are lit up further to the sides and MUCH better than before.
5000 lumens is definitely off road only! (I really mean it, lol). Turns night into a bright day! Way too bright for on road use, for many reasons.
4000 lumens was just a tad too bright also, (it only turns night into a normal day) as when I dipped to low beams after using these for a while, it was actually a bit blinding, kind of like when you take dark sunglasses off on a bright day, it took a minute or two to readjust, even with the brighter low beams, and I found that to be dangerous, especially when there was oncoming traffic headlights added into this effect.I will try a 3500 lumen bulb here if I can find a quality made bulb at that output.
FOGLIGHTS: Mine are flip chips, which means they flip from yellow (3000K) to white light (6000K) just by turning them off and on again. I absolutely LOVE this!! Again, I LOVE this! Mine output 3800 lumens. They seem put out about as much light (maybe a tad dimmer) as the low beams on the road. The fogs don't have a projector like the low beams, just a glass lens with a metal cutoff. Like the low beams, these also have a crisp cut off line without glare above the line. The cutoff line just about matches the low beam cutoff line on mine. They are bright enough to use just by themselves, even at night. The yellow light really makes a difference in inclement weather, it really adds to contrast (just like wearing amber lenses in your ski goggles). I often run the foglights on white with the low beams as this lights up the sides of the road in rural areas even better than low beams alone.
If anyone is interested, I can fabricate these parts and/or modify your existing headlights for you. Or supply complete modified assemblies.
.
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