www.jec.org.uk

Having the HID lights on my car I have always thought the sidelights look rather yellow compared to the dipped beam. This week I finally ordered some CAN bus compatible LED sidelight bulbs and I'm pleased with the improvement as you can see below.

I purchased the bulbs from ebay.

The sidelights are quite fiddly to remove, so make sure you test the bulbs before putting them back into the headlight fitting. Being LEDs I'm assuming they only work fitted with the correct polarity? Typically, when I fitted them first time around both didn't work, but I quickly worked out why. Removing the sidelights again I was able to insert them the other way around and both then worked.

Before


After


Regards,
Steve

I did exactly the same myself the other day, Steve. In addition I also changed the rear white number plate down lighters for LED lamps. My intention was to brighten up the sidelights to white and improve the illumination of the rear number plate. I also wanted to reduce the significant current draw from the side light circuit. In time I shall also be changing stop, tail and front and rear indicator lights to LED units to again reduce current consumption.

It is essential with our CANBUS system cars to fit only LED lamps which are suitable for CANBUS systems and will be described in listings as being"error free". Fitting the wrong spec lamps will result in error messages. W5W lamps are also present in the rear courtesy lamp units in the interior head lining fixtures together with 42mm festoon type in both the rear interior headlining units and also in the roof mounted central light console switch gear cluster by the drivers windscreen mirror. I`ve not yet converted to ED within the car , so that is another job to do.

I used pure white 6000K lamps to ensure that no tinge of blue was present which could be an MOT failure.. Initially I fitted narrow beam projector lamps but then swapped to the wider beam lamps which are also available and are distinguished in the ebay listings by showing multiple light emitters being placed all around the unit instead of the projector type which look more like a fish eye.

The same W5W lamps are fitted to the sidelights, the number plate and the front wing side repeater indicators although orange repeater LED lamps should be fitted in that location as fitting white units behind the orange plastic repeaters tend to flash rather yellow instead of orange. A few pic here. These little mods are well worth doing. They freshen up and generally add a good amount of extra illumination where in some cases it is sadly lacking. To date I`ve spent around £6 on these improvements and just for once is hardly likely to break the bank.

Mike K