Maybe with headlights, but other bulbs could be replaced with low energy long life types when they fail.
I dunno about the US, but in the UK it's common to see older cars with many of the rear lights, etc, not operating. The use of quality well designed LEDs, more attention to grounding rear lights properly and 'hard' wiring to the bulbs should end this as they should last the life of the car.
Therefore incandescents will always be around. They still make buggy whips too (just not very many).
Yeah I had a British car once too.
(I'm in Canada BTW, not the US; although I lived in LA for a decade I preferred Canada. I'm also the evil bastard that convinced Stern to move to Canada; he lives a couple of hours from me)
Yeah, ABOUT that. The first time I saw a real LED work back in the 70's I looked at it and thought "man, this is gonna change everything". 30 years later they show up in some flashlights and as 18-wheeler taillights. I'm still waiting. There isn't one single drop in replacement LED signalling bulb I'm aware of and while it may happen in time, that time aint yet.
And then you have the purists. These are the guys for which not only does the bulbs have to be correct it has to be exactly the same as the one the factory shipped it with, all markings intact etc. I do realize it's a very niche market but you're not gonna win a concours with a batwing CSL or Gullwing with LED taillights.
Which really is what I meant.
;-) Perhaps it's the fact that old Japanese cars go on and on that leads to so many rear lamp problems.
Ah - that's the best way. No motor makers to create myths round.
There are 'drop in' types, but not E marked so not legal in Europe - although this may change. Although rather the same applies as using discharge types in a lamp unit designed for tungsten - the optics aren't optimised for an LED substitute.
Indeed. My comments referred to what is likely to happen in the near future with new production.
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
[LED replacements for existing vehicle lamps]
Won't. "LED bulb" retrofits are not safely usable *not* just because they lack an E-mark, but because they are fundamentally incompatible with optics designed for use with a filament bulb. It's not a question of "optimisation", as you stated. It is a question of fundamental optic design, and the output characteristics of LEDs differ so radically from those of filaments that a drop-in "LED bulb" replacement is just not physically possible right now.
About 10 days ago, I had dinner with Osram Optoelectronics' LED R&D chief, and we discussed in detail the question of an LED device to directly and effectively/safely/legally replace a standard filament bulb. He's thought about this question at great length, and done a great many experiments and studies. At the **CONCEPTUAL** level, it could theoretically be done using a Lambertian-emitting LED powerhead (this is the side-and-rear emitting type which has the same surface luminance regardless of the angle of view -- in contrast to the conventional "straight ahead" emitters which produce a spot beam facing straight away from the emitter). The powerhead would have to be engineered such that its surface luminance and far-field illuminance are within the 90th percentile tolerance of the luminance and illuminance of the specific filament bulb one wanted to replace, *from all polar angles*. For a P21W or P21/5W replacement, this would take an estimated 10,000 man-hours of R&D because no existing product even remotely approaches the 90th-percentile tolerance range relative to P21W or P21/5W. The R&D chief estimated this would begin to become an economical product to develop at high OEM volumes of around 10 million, which defeats the point of developing such a device, because at that point it becomes more economical to develop a new LED solution independent of what went before, i.e., we discard the notion of backwards compatibility with filament bulbs. There is an existing first-generation Lambertian-emitting LED powerhead, the Osram Joule,
DS
So that would be your recommend upgrade for an E46?
Yep. Hit Candlepower ( snipped-for-privacy@candlepower.ca) to get 'em.
How about checking a junkyard to see if you can find a set of BMW OE Xenon HID adaptive lights? I would imagine it would be a straight swap. Brand new, it sold for a *bargain* price of $700 or $800!
Not at all a trivial swap. The headlamps themselves are usually a direct bolt-in, but there's a great deal of additional wiring and ancillary gear (steering angle sensors, yaw sensors, vehicle height sensors), additional brain boxes and/or different and/or reprogrammed BCM.
Cool. I'm curious, don't you want to sell them to me? I found them easily on your Web site, while finding candlepower's Web site a bit, err, opaque.
We're talking about the high-beams, here, right?
Be happy to. Send me an e-mail. I don't like getting all commercial-like in public, is all-obviously, I was meant to be a marketer, LOL!
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