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-   -   Auto Lighting thread : Post all queries about automobile lighting here (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifications-accessories/93908-auto-lighting-thread-post-all-queries-about-automobile-lighting-here-718.html)

These are the only photos that I have in my mobile right now.
They are a few months old and were taken on the day of installation, which by the way was a DIY.

I have not retained any night time shots because my mobile camera is quite useless in capturing anything worthwhile at night.
The images don't show anything clear cut and don't do any justice to the actual thing.

Still if you want, let me know and I will give it a try at night time.

The lights even though claimed to be 42W LED spot beams, have some amount of bleeding, which I feel is a good thing and the beam is spread over a wide area.
I have felt that it is partly flood beam too.
So it does not create a severely bright useless hotspot which may drown the headlights and cause darkness even in the headlight's coverage area, thus rendering the stock headlight almost useless when this Aux light is switched on.
I had observed this in one of my friend's Projector Fog light setup and though he was ok with it, I didn't want that to happen in my case.

So I had to order 3 different units until I found one that matched my expectations.

The other 2 were sold on Olx soon after finishing this DIY.:)

That looks like a neat install. Please would you share where you bought the aux lamps from, also how are they mounted?
Did you use any extra relays, also what about brackets, clamps and antitheft nuts? I have a Type 1 old Zen Estilo and this might be a handy upgrade for me too.

I bought these from Ebay.
The same thing is available on Amazon too.
Search with the keywords " 42W Epistar 14 LED light bar with spot beam lens- 4.5 inch" on Ebay or Amazon.

I got this pair of lights for Rs.1300( a few months ago.)
There is a 27W 9 LED unit variant with the exact same shape & dimension as this, but with 5 LEDs lesser in each unit, and you may see that too in the search results, priced around 1100 or so.
But its output is just average only and is best suited for bikes.
This one is worth the extra 200 Rs or so, and the output is almost double that of the 27W unit.

Though it claims to be 42W, actual output when measured with multimeter is around 35W only, which is still good and not a deal breaker.
Even Original Philips 100W bulbs when tested with mutimeter have shown some 10 to 15% lower wattage readings and so it is a common phenomenon.

The lights are mounted directly on the number-plate bolt using a pair of straight brackets that were custom made at the local welding workshop. It costed just 30 Rs for the 2 brackets..

Since the WagonR doesn't have the metal cross-member directly behind the middle portion of the front-bumper like some bigger cars, getting an L-shaped bracket welded onto that cross-member was not an option.

The other option was to get a front bull-bar installed, and then fix the lights on the bull-bar which is the most common method.

But spending around 6000 or 7000 Rs for the bull-bar for mounting these aux-lights which costs only 1300 Rs didn't make sense to me.
Also I don't like the idea of bull-bars on monocoque vehicles.

Another common option is roof-rack mount, but even that is equally expensive, and also I have read that aux lights above the OE headlight level is illegal, and so it may attract unwanted attention from the cops.
So I didn't want to get into that trouble.

So finally found this simple solution after a few days of thinking & analyzing the different possibilties.

The bracket is an "I" shaped straight bracket, just like a ruler with holes at both end, and sits between the bumper and the number plate.
One hole at the top for the number-plate bolt, and the other at the bottom for the light's bracket bolt.
Then the bracket was painted in matt-black so that it merges with the bumper-grill's color and is not visible from outside.
Black zip-ties were used at the bottom to firmly hold the light units tied to the bumper-grill at the back, so that there is no shaking, rattling or vibration of the lights when the car moves.

I have been using it for more than 6 months now.
The lights are intact and haven't moved even a millimeter from its position.

No relays were used.

In my case, there was already a power-source tapped from the fuse-box at the time of my first fog-lamp installation, some 4 years ago.
Those were 55W Philips H3 fog lamps, and it worked fine without any relay for 2 years.
Then I upgraded the fogs to 100W Osram H3 bulbs and added a relay to handle the extra current.
So the old power-line was spared and unused from that day, and I knew that since 55W bulb worked fine on it without relay, 42W LEDs wouldn't be a problem at all.

But I ensured that the wires used for wiring these LED lights were 1.5 sq. mm throughout, and also that the new dashboard switch was of good quality capable of handling 6 Amps current.

So if you can include a generic 30 Amp relay in your wiring setup, it would be better and more future-proof for further upgrades.

I have no immediate plans to upgrade, but may be sometime next year or so, I may try 80W Auxbeam LED bars.
At that time, I will surely add a relay.

Thanks, but I'm actually looking for LED bulbs not filament types. :)

I had already upgraded my hi-beam bulbs to Philips +30 back in '10. They're pretty good and certainly better than the OEM bulbs. The car comes factory fitted with HID for the low beam.

So I considered 4200K LEDs for the hi beam should do a good job as well. I need to be careful about heat as I do not want the reflectors going bad. The HID specific reflector assemblies are really expensive. Hence the interest in Philips or Sylvania.

Thanks Vinod for the detailed writeup, it surely helps. You are absolutely right about the lack of a strong cross member point to mount a bracket, the same is for the Estilo too. In fact I have a 18" light bar bought from Aliexpress idle for the last few years because no shop could find a way to place it, and I do not want to use bull bars for both mine and pedestrian safety.

Your setup is quite efficient and and well done. Just one question, so the lower hole of the I holds the light right? However the lower part is in a free standing position, as in, the top hole is in the number plate that's fine, but the bottom of the I is not attached to the bottom lip of the bumper?

Am trying to visualise the contraption before going to a welding shop myself. The brackets gel well with the black background (which is a good thing!) so I cannot make them out from the pics, hence this question

I had mentioned how it was taken care of in the same post.
I think you missed that part, so let me quote myself here once more.

The lower part of the brackets where they get bolted to the lights are tied firmly to the slats of the bumper grille using multiple nylon cable zip-ties.
And it is effective and more than sufficient for the purpose.

But in my case, the car is WagonR and I have a reasonably big bumper grill underneath & behind the number plate for executing this solution.

It may not be applicable for another model car, say old model zen which doesn't have so much of grill area underneath the number-plate.

I am planning to replace the stock 7 inch headlight of my Royal Enfield Thunderbird with smaller twin ones. I searched extensively on the net for 5 inch bottom mounted ones available as whole set with casing but could not find one. My next option is to utilise the pair of existing aux multi led lights as headlights. Request any inputs and advice on:

1> links for 5 inch pair of chrome finish headlights of bottom mounting type

2> can the above mentioned aux light set be connected to wiring of headlight thereby achieving functions of high/low beam and flash?

I have a question for the gurus. I know this would have probably been answered somewhere in this thread, but I am just not able to find it!

I visited a couple of accessory shops for upgrading the stock headlights to either the Osram nightbreaker or Philips X-tremeVision. I was informed by them that it is just plug and play and no wiring is touched. But the technicians at the ASC strongly discourage that saying that the heat produced by the upgraded bulbs will ruin the headlight assembly in due course. But I know scores of people have upgraded.

Please let me know or if you can just paste the relevant link, that will be great!

There is absolutely no issue with upgrading the lamps to Nightbreakers or the Xtreme lamps as they are the same wattage and heat generation is similar to the stock lamps. The Rally versions which are higher wattage will generate more heat and those can cause damage to the headlight assemblies and reflectors.
I have used Nightbreakers/ Xtreme lamps in many of my cars for more than 7 years and never faced any issue. Only drawback is that the life of these lamps is only 250-300 hours and they will tend to fail within 1.5 years depending on usage.

The Fog lamp specification of my Kwid is H8, 12V 55W. Please advise some decent fog lamp pairs along with the pros and cons.

I am looking for a pair which I can use during the early winter mornings of Jan-Feb, North India.

Attached is the fog lamp details as evident at the back of the lamp assembly. The earlier details are wrong it seems [they were infact the ones provided by the Service Center]

I am looking for a pair which I can use during the early winter mornings of Jan-Feb, North India.

Also it would be great, if someone can help me decipher the meaning of the numbers at the back.

Osram
H16
12V 19W U
64219 L+
Germany E1 2Z3
W6W 3

@majumdarda
Best upgrade will be a HID projector setup.
Morimoto is best but costly.
You can get a pair of IPHCAR projectors, HID ballast and bulbs from aliexpress.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-...0-87f7a7d9d345

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free...5-ffca37d8de86

Thank you very much sir for providing the links.
I understand that these are of excellent quality, but looks like DIY stuff and not a direct fit. I am not too confident in doing a neat DIY and neither am I aware of any suitable shops out here who is competent enough to perform these without touching the stock wires or ruining them.

At the moment, I am looking for a direct replacement. (new bulb directly into old socket)

Though now I have my own doubts, that since its a Osram made 19W, does one really have any direct replacement alternatives?

By the way, are you aware of the other gibberish mentioned in the image, namely :-

U
64219 L+
E1 2Z3
W6W 3

Since your car already have fog lamps, these are pretty much plug and play. Any decent car accessory shop can do it. No need to cut/splice the stock wiring.

You just need to get the diameter of the fog lamp and check the space behind the fog lamp to ensure the new projectors fit. If you have sufficient space, it will be just screwed on and ballasts connected to the stock wiring via the connector.

Since the stock headlamp is with a small enclosure, I dont think you can upgrade the stock bulb with higher wattage bulbs as it it would produce too much heat.

You can try LED head lamp bulbs which consume 35W and produce light greater than the stock halogens. I can not say about the effectiveness of such setup in real fog.

If anyone is interested in upgrading the 35W HS1 bulbs on their bikes or scooters then I would recommend this one:

https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B01...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This bulb gives 45/40W output compared to 35/35W of the stock bulb and hence the intensity and throw of the bulbs is improved. I am using this on my Dio from quite sometime and I can say that it works beautifully in dark and medium lit places. I had missed spotting some potholes with the earlier bulbs and this has solved the problem to a great extent. Since its a marginal increase in wattage it wont affect the wiring and doesnt need any extra wiring. Looks like the item is out of stock, but just mentioning it in case someone is interested and willing to look in other places.

Both the links you have posted are projectors which are meant to be installed inside a headlight assembly and are not sealed to prevent water ingestion. Hence if installed in the fog light area it will lead to condensation after a few washes/driving in rains. Have you used them?