Anyone got HID kit from bold-sport?

[Milos2504]

So I got most of the bulbs installed last night (the passenger-side high beam and parker defeated me in round 1 due to the lack of space behind the headlight). I did the driver's side first and then took these photos of the differences. You can see the subtle colour difference between the new bulbs and the original bulbs.



(original bulbs on left)



(original bulbs on right)

As you can see, the Philips X-treme vision bulbs are not much whiter that the originals but seem to have a much better spread/coverage. I'm happy with these as I wasn't looking for a super-white look, just better output (intensity, spread and distance) as I've always felt a bit underlit at night (I wanted more of 'see where I'm going' than 'be seen by other people').

I'll complete the swaps over the weekend (headlight needs to come out) and do the fog lights as well.

Looks pretty good mate, do you really need to take out the headlight to replace the bulbs? Are you replacing both high beam and low beams?

[Mattlock]

Yeah, I'm doing the high beams, parkers, dipped and fogs. On the passenger side, the air intake pretty much blocks the access to get the bulb out and it gets tangled up in the retaining clip. I can't get my hand in enough to pull the parker unless I tug on the wires (and they will snap).

It's either take the headlight out to get the room or disassemble the air intake. I'm not sure which is the lesser of 2 evils!

[Milos2504]

Yeah, I'm doing the high beams, parkers, dipped and fogs. On the passenger side, the air intake pretty much blocks the access to get the bulb out and it gets tangled up in the retaining clip. I can't get my hand in enough to pull the parker unless I tug on the wires (and they will snap).

It's either take the headlight out to get the room or disassemble the air intake. I'm not sure which is the lesser of 2 evils!

Ohh okay, I want to change all of those too, so at the end we will be able to compare the look of Osram Nightbreakers and the Phillips Xtreme Vision.

Is it hard to take the headlight out? Do you have to remove the bumper?

[Mattlock]

I watched this ECS Tuning video last night (after nearly an hour of cursing and thinking I almost had it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryUllFJoVg

It looks like you only need to remove the central grille and then take out some of the screws on the main bumper to give it enough movement to release the headlight unit. You do need to get to 2 screws in the front wheel arch, so it may require jacking the car up on that corner to get the wheel out of the way.

Through trial and error last night, I got over 50% of the way through this process in under 10mins (I didn't do the wheel arch screws or the 2 in the main bumper under the grille), so I suspect it's not that hard.

I did have some trouble re-seating the central grille piece and this morning, I have realised it's not seated properly on 1 side, leading to a gap that shouldn't be there.

Considering VW give you little extensions to twist and remove the dipped beam and indicator bulb, they clearly thought that the main beam and parkers would never be removed/user accessible. It would be fine except for the packaging of the CAI. The driver's side is fiddly but perfectly possible with the headlamp unit still in the car.

[Milos2504]

Anyone got HID kit from bold-sport?

Sounds like a bit of a PITA. I might have a look at it on the weekend and see if I can get to it.

Lucky there is a video on how to do it, so it shouldn't be really hard. I took the grill of the other day, it wasnt hard at all.

But it deffinitely sounds like a lot of work just to change the parkers. Did u look into taking the airbox out?

I just had a look at a photo of my engine bay, (I'm at work but got a photo on my phone) it doesn't look like there is anything behing the light, so I think mine should be alright.

[Mattlock]

Yeah, so that gap behind the light on your picture is completely filled with air box on my GT!

Looking at the Forge Motorsport CAI installation instructions, it should come out with an unclipping of the hose and a single 5mm allen bolt so I may be able to lift it up and out of the way enough to give me the space to work. I might try that first. Ideally, I would be in a position to just replace the CAI at the same time! In fact the Forge CAI removes all of the plastic behind the headlight and if it was already installed I wouldn't be having that problem!

I will take a picture of it today.

[Mattlock]

So I finally got the bulb out after removing the air intake!



(Distinct lack of space)

[Milos2504]

Looks pretty good man, the fogs look so bright.

I'll post some pics when I change mine too

[Milos2504]

Got these in the mail today.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[team_v]

Keen to see how the upgrades go!

[skywing]

My dipped/high beam bulbs are all H7 fittings but at 55w. My fogs are HB4 and the parkers are W5W.

I bought on eBay from MetroDirectUK (part of the powerbulb company) and paid $36 a pair. They arrived this morning and took about 12 days from order to arrival. Interestingly, the same bulbs on the powerbulbs.com were $56 a pair! Go figure.

The HB4 fogs came from China but are OEM. They said they were in VIC but that's not true and I will reflect that in the feedback. However, they were a sharp price and arrived yesterday. I've not fitted them yet.

I bought the Philips over the Osram as they were fractionally cheaper but with more reviews and a very marginal difference in performance. I then decided to stick with Philips for the rest of the bulbs as I felt it would give me more consistency across the front of the car rather than mixing and matching manufacturers.

I'm looking at replacing the dipped and high beam bulbs (and maybe parkers) in my MKV as well. Do you mind sharing where you bought the bulbs from?

What should I be looking at for the whitest (cleanest) light whilst still being legal?

[Milos2504]

Ok just replaced the bulbs. The LED parkers look awesome but the Osram Night Breaker Unlimited didn't make much difference. I haven't driven the car so I don't know if the visibility changed but they don't look much different to stock bulbs at all.. I'm pretty sure on my first car which was a Golf MK4 I had just some no brand bulbs off ebay and they were more white-blue then the Osrams. So if anyone is going for that white-blue look I don't recommend the Osrams.

This is parkers LED. I think they look pretty good..




Stock bulb on the left, Osram Night Breakers on the right.




And all changed..

[Mattlock]

Good job Milos2504.

The lights are only slightly better than the stock bulbs. They are a touch whiter but the ADRs mandate that so there's only so far they can go and be legit.

The parkers are a marked difference. I didn't go LED so mine are only a bit whiter. I didn't want to stuff around with the in-line resistors to cut the bulb out alert.

I used my lights in the dusk last night and they were washing out against the sodium street lights. However, this morning I drove in the dark to the airport and they were good with much better definition and range.

[Mattlock]

I'm looking at replacing the dipped and high beam bulbs (and maybe parkers) in my MKV as well. Do you mind sharing where you bought the bulbs from?

What should I be looking at for the whitest (cleanest) light whilst still being legal?

Hey skywing,

I got the parkers and dipped/main beam from MetroDirectUK on eBay. This is the same company as powerbulbs.com but cheaper. The invoice from Metrodirect, references PowerBulbs!

The HB4 fogs came from eBay too from user new-value. The only issue with this seller is that they list the items as being in Vic but they're in China! I will be mentioning this on the feedback as I chose them to avoid them coming from China. As it turns out, that wasn't an issue as the bulbs are genuine items.

The LED rear licence plate lights came from Bestmatch2013 on eBay.

Osram NightBreakers or Philips X-treme vision bulbs will all be ADR compliant and around the 4200k colour range (the maximum allowed). These 2 also seem to be these best brands to pick and come with extensive reviews and testimonies on their quality.

As Miolos2504 and I have found, don't expect a standout 'wow' difference to the stock bulbs. If you want that, you will either need to fit the full HID kit (where this thread started) or LEDs that may get you stopped.

[Milos2504]

I'm looking at replacing the dipped and high beam bulbs (and maybe parkers) in my MKV as well. Do you mind sharing where you bought the bulbs from?

What should I be looking at for the whitest (cleanest) light whilst still being legal?

Skywing, I have replaced my H7's with Osram Night Breaker Unlimited and you can see in the photos what they look like, Mattlock has also replaced his whith Philips bulbs, you can also see photos of before and after a couple of pages back.

I bought all my stuff from ebay.

Good job Milos2504.

The lights are only slightly better than the stock bulbs. They are a touch whiter but the ADRs mandate that so there's only so far they can go and be legit.

The parkers are a marked difference. I didn't go LED so mine are only a bit whiter. I didn't want to stuff around with the in-line resistors to cut the bulb out alert.

I used my lights in the dusk last night and they were washing out against the sodium street lights. However, this morning I drove in the dark to the airport and they were good with much better definition and range.

I know, I was a bit disappointed but it's okay I guess hopefully they will provide better vision. The parkers look awesome I think, I bought the CANBUS LED's so they should cause problems.

This is the ones I bought.
2 X T10 Canbus 5 LED 5050 SMD 194 168 W5W 131 CAR Side Light Bulb Tail Xenon | eBay