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Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:16 pm
by SW480
Hello all

Looking for some advice here .

First question , want to replace all the front lights as bright as can be as I do alot of night time driving . The same is to be said for the rear lights .


Could anyone advise on the best option seen some xenon 100w bulbs but not sure on them .

Also getting alot of LED replacement bulbs comming up in searches for the rear tail and brake lights any experience with these ?

Second question , light motors not going down in one pop up light . Is it worth changing full motor ? Or can there be another cause ? I know thats a broad question but a good check point list may be a good place to start before I do so .

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:10 pm
by dragonflyjewels
light motors not going down in one pop up light
The pop up motors are the same except for the length of cable so you could try the one that is working on the duff side to check if that is the problem.

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:38 pm
by jamescarruthers
I'm not sure if the wiring will take you putting in nearly double the wattage bulbs (100W). If you really do want to blind other road users you really should install fatter wiring and some relays to control it all... it's really not necessary. The 480 is suberbly designed at lighting the road if you put good bulbs in them.

I have Philips Racing Vision bulbs in the pop-ups (H4 and 55W legal)) and they are absolutely superb. They are better than the Osram Night Breakers which I had before but only by a small margin.

I've got Osram Night Breakers in the long-range driving lamps and fog lights (H3). They're the best you are going‎ to get in that size (Racing Vision doesn't come in H1 unfortunately).

I recommend Auto Bulbs Direct and for £55 you can upgrade all six bulbs.

Obviously this advice is only good is your headlights are still nice and shiney inside! it is unlikely to have deteriorated too much on the 480 but worth checking. ‎

LED lights are just a shit gimmick in ‎my opinion. The rear lights are perfectly bright enough like they are and will outlast however long you are likely to own the car. Also, they will interfere with the  bulb failure circuit.

There's plenty of help on here with help with the pop-up motors so have a look with the search. I'd start by seeing if you can ‎wind the pop-up by hand and also if the relay (big tall one) is clean before you make the effort to remove the motor. 

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 7:03 am
by balto8
Changing the rear lights bulbs for led is a good option in my opinion.
I have changed mine for these : https://www.ebay.es/itm/Philips-Vision- ... 1520329391
They make a good difference, plus they are supposed to last forever. What the CEM does to figure if there is any blown bulb is to measure the difference in resistance between sockets. Meaning if you only change one bulb you'll have the warning on the dashboard on, but if you change all 4 it's ok. Already tried and works this way.

Still waiting for theese to come to replace all 4 turn signals. Hope it will work the same way. https://www.ebay.es/itm/Osram-382-P21W- ... 3459816923

I have also Leds installed on the DRLs. Warm white tone. They work perfectly and are an improvement. Though it is a bit different for British cars as your DRLs are supposed to dim when the pop-ups are up, ours don't.
Same thing for the rear gear lights:leds in warm tone worked for me.

For the pop ups I'd stick to some quality filament as said above

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:02 am
by jifflemon
Just to add a couple of thoughts:

LED Headlamps? Don't even think about it - Yes they'll be bright, but will they give a correct beam pattern? Nope. All you'll succeed in doing is illuminating enough of the road to see the bloke you've blinded smack straight into you.

LED's for other bulbs. Now, here's where It gets interesting. I'm a fan for the front DRL, simply due to lack of heat they produce. If you don't already know, the standard bulb can start to melt the casings. However, the light they produce is a bit too "modern" (but I tolerate it for now!)
For the other bulbs, such as brake lights, there's an argument that LED's respond quicker, have a longer service life and if you get the decent ones, work with the warning circuits, so there's a safety factor argument to be made.

The problem for me, is that the "proper" ones are around £18 a pair. and for £36, I can buy an AWFUL lot of standard brake light bulbs...

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:57 pm
by Alan 480
jifflemon wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:02 am
Just to add a couple of thoughts:

LED Headlamps? Don't even think about it - Yes they'll be bright, but will they give a correct beam pattern? Nope. All you'll succeed in doing is illuminating enough of the road to see the bloke you've blinded smack straight into you.

LED's for other bulbs. Now, here's where It gets interesting. I'm a fan for the front DRL, simply due to lack of heat they produce. If you don't already know, the standard bulb can start to melt the casings. However, the light they produce is a bit too "modern" (but I tolerate it for now!)
For the other bulbs, such as brake lights, there's an argument that LED's respond quicker, have a longer service life and if you get the decent ones, work with the warning circuits, so there's a safety factor argument to be made.

The problem for me, is that the "proper" ones are around £18 a pair. and for £36, I can buy an AWFUL lot of standard brake light bulbs...
seems a fair argument, the holders on the standard (DRL) bulb get rather toasty, I used to get three moths out of a set of 21W/4W when using car every day, now it is SWAMBOs they last more than a year before they fail. so yes I'd think about the LED for front, the rest not sure I'd bother!

and if anyone is interested i have a 'nearly new' set of headlight BUT LHD drive, car was in Germany for a couple of years and had 'local plates' etc

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 7:37 pm
by SW480
Hi everyone

Thanks for all of your response's ,

I will look into all your suggestions,

The Phillips racing vision bulbs sound decent and I never thought to much about the wiring and wether it could handle the 100w so that's a very good shout!
Last thing I want to do is cause more problems by frying wires .

I've had some experience with the LED rear lights in a few motorcycles and they've been good . The fitment I always felt was abit loose compared to standard bulbs , and yes they do look very modern in the way they light up . Maybe just stick to some really bright normal bulbs .

So the main pop ups and the lower lights do they take a different type in each and can both be classified as the main headlights? I was unsure of whether they were fog lights or not .

Ideally I want to as much of the dark bits of the M25 as possible as well as the occasional rabbit

Thanks

S

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:20 am
by Ortovox77
Regarding the pop-up motor check the relay first. Get a used relay from a junkyard to test with or if you have another Volvo 480 owner close that you can borrow from. I learned this the hard way after changing the pop-up motor twice just to find out that it was a 1minute fix by changing a relay that I had laying around :) .

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:46 am
by jifflemon
Ortovox77 wrote:
Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:20 am
Regarding the pop-up motor check the relay first. Get a used relay from a junkyard to test with or if you have another Volvo 480 owner close that you can borrow from.
Finding a 480 in a Junkyard, with a pop up relay in it, would like be like finding rocking horse poop! :rofl:

Re: Lights - Bulbs and motors

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 9:50 am
by brinkie
Ortovox77 wrote:
Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:20 am
Regarding the pop-up motor check the relay first. Get a used relay from a junkyard to test with or if you have another Volvo 480 owner close that you can borrow from. I learned this the hard way after changing the pop-up motor twice just to find out that it was a 1minute fix by changing a relay that I had laying around :) .
Ah, I thought I was the only one who made that mistake :rofl: The relays can be refurbished at little cost, though.

(lucky for me I have TWO fellow 480 owners in town and the biggest 480 breaker in the world is less than half an hour away)

About the lights, the 480 headlights and wiring should be capable of handling the 100W bulbs as I know someone who uses them in a Volvo 480. I'd rather not take the risk and stick to the Osram Night Breaker Laser or similar high brightness bulbs, they do have a limited lifespan.

DO NOT USE LED IN THE POP-UP HEADLIGHTS. The beam pattern is off by a wide margin if there is a pattern at all. You have to point the beam down up to the point its range is useless, otherwise the beam will blind the oncoming traffic and it will fail MOT or whatever the technical inspection is called in your country. They do work fine in projector headlights, but LED is not suitable for reflector headlights which were designed for H4 or H7 halogen bulbs. Period.

I have LED in the DRL, but stay away from the cheap dodgy Chinese fleabay stuff, here's a demonstration why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M05b47UtM1k

I have red Osram LEDriving in the tail/stop lights, which work surprisingly well with good difference in brightness between normal and "stop" operation, a feature that is usually bad in cheap Chinese LEDs. Also, they don't trigger the bulb failure which is good. They are a tad expensive, though.

For using LED in the indicators, you have to change the resistor to the flasher IC in the CEM, otherwise the bulb failure detection will trigger, causing the flasher to operate at double frequency. To my big surprise, the flashing is not computer controlled, there is a mysterious IC labelled VW BWR/1 which I found to be equivalent to U2043B (see http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datashe ... yzutry.pdf). The IC uses a 30 milli-ohm resistor to measure lamp current, it is constructed as a piece of bent metal next to the flasher relay. For LED operation, I sugget to replace that resistor with 0.1 or maybe 0.15 ohm, depending on the efficiency of the LEDs used. The more efficient, the less current and the higher the resistor should be, the trigger voltage is 81mV. There is a potential problem with the operation, the IC is specified for a minimum of 10 watts load, LEDs will drop just below that. To be safe, you could leave standard bulbs in the side indicators, but I think it should give no problem. If it does, you could replace the IC with one designed for motorcycles.