Osram Night Breaker Speed LED H7 'NEW'?

[Robdog]

Banging on about Halogen to LED again...every now and then I have a look to see what's new regarding Halogen upgrades for my T6.1. I've just come across Osram's latest marketing for new H7 SPEED LED's, I was assuming that they were 'not' road legal, however, there spec seems to suggest that they are 'Road Legal', at least in Europe. The blurb also seems to suggest that they would be OK for use in the UK. Anyone got any info, as there doesn't appear to be much chatter about these UK from UK websites?

NIGHT BREAKER LED | OSRAM Automotive

With the NIGHT BREAKER LED, OSRAM is introducing a legal LED lamp in the headlights of your car as a replacement product for halogen lamps.

www.osram.com

 

[Fishinbrine]

Looking at the spec sheets they look like very good LED bulbs, would be interesting to hear what actual users of these in T6.1 lights think.

 

[Robdog]

Looking at the spec sheets they look like very good LED bulbs, would be interesting to hear what actual users of these in T6.1 lights think.

As far as I can see these bulbs appear to be so new that there aren't any UK suppliers selling them at the moment, they only seem to be available via Amazon, and I can only see one UK purchaser who has made any comment in the Amazon reviews. If they are any good, and legal, then it possibly makes you question going the expensive route of swapping out your Halogen headlamps. Having said that at £114 a pair on Amazon their not cheap!

 

[Fishinbrine]

As far as I can see these bulbs appear to be so new that there aren't any UK suppliers selling them at the moment, they only seem to be available via Amazon, and I can only see one UK purchaser who has made any comment in the Amazon reviews. If they are any good, and legal, then it possibly makes you question going the expensive route of swapping out your Halogen headlamps. Having said that at £114 a pair on Amazon their not cheap!

Wow! £114 a pair! They want to be an improvement for that price most definitely, and not just a whiter white with no increase in brightness and visibility like most other bulb upgrades I have done (not in a Transporter I must add)

 

[ginkster]

They are illegal in the UK. It doesn’t matter how good, bad or new they are, it is illegal to have LED (or HID etc) bulbs in a headlamp designed for halogen bulbs. It is a mandatory MOT failure (regs were amended 2-3 years ago).

The tech is improving so hopefully better bulbs could become legal in the future. Although recent opinion polls suggest there is a considerable majority against bright headlights.

 

[Fishinbrine]

They are illegal in the UK. It doesn’t matter how good, bad or new they are, it is illegal to have LED (or HID etc) bulbs in a headlamp designed for halogen bulbs. It is a mandatory MOT failure (regs were amended 2-3 years ago).

The tech is improving so hopefully better bulbs could become legal in the future. Although recent opinion polls suggest there is a considerable majority against bright headlights.

Whilst this is indeed correct, the inspection manual does not give guidance on how to identify a headlamp that have been manufactured with LED lamps making it very difficult to fail LED headlight bulbs on MOT. Not that I'm advocating the usage of LED's nor contending the legality of their use, but the MOT inspection manual gives no guidance on identification of LED compliant headlamps only how to identify HID's.

 

[Dundee_Kev]

Whilst this is indeed correct, the inspection manual does not give guidance on how to identify a headlamp that have been manufactured with LED lamps making it very difficult to fail LED headlight bulbs on MOT. Not that I'm advocating the usage of LED's nor contending the legality of their use, but the MOT inspection manual gives no guidance on identification of LED compliant headlamps only how to identify HID's.

That is true, but led headlamps have proper led drivers fitted to them, and the lamp body usually has led stamped on it.

Normal headlamps will normally have h4/h7 stamped on them too.

Then you have the levelling device. Most cars with LEDs will have a level sensor on the suspension and not the dial in the car.

 

[Sasquatch]

Whilst this is indeed correct, the inspection manual does not give guidance on how to identify a headlamp that have been manufactured with LED lamps making it very difficult to fail LED headlight bulbs on MOT. Not that I'm advocating the usage of LED's nor contending the legality of their use, but the MOT inspection manual gives no guidance on identification of LED compliant headlamps only how to identify HID's.

Indeed. Conversely, you can bet that if you have a bad smack at night the CI's will be paying great attention to the headlamps.

 

[FWhite]

Hi ,
I have them installed from about six months, and I am quite happy. The light power is MUCH more than the original halogen, the color is a nice white (not too cold), the beam shape is nice, regular, and properly cut on top, none of the incoming traffic is complaining. No strange flickerings, except with start/stop, of course. I drove with them at night in no-man land, and they are incomparable with the originals, so much power that you use the high beams (halogen H15) only to signal (it is almost invisible beside the LEDS) .
Besides they are also street legal here in EU, with available paperwork matching the car VIN and projector code.
Last but not least they have a good WAF. She used to say that my T6.1 was much worse that her 20 y/o Fiat Panda light-wise. Now she wants H4 LEDs on it too...





As you can see above, the bulb's dimensionsions are practically the same as the original, no particular difference between installing it or a regular halogen H7. No additional cables or visible or udible fans, too. The fact that you need to remove battery and air filter to install them is not Osram's fault, maybe VW...

Now... the only problem is that the VW diagnostics radomly compain about the Right (stangely ONLY that one) dipped light being defective. Lamp icon on the dashboard. It happens usually after a while that you are driving, especially if your start/stop is active. Sometimes after one minute, sometimes after one hour. The instructions are vague about the need of a ballast, and that one may make the light not legal. Also when you get the error on your dashboard, the DRLs turn ON automatically (that is a nice help by VW) but every policeman (they ride mostly T6s around here) knows that you have a faulty lamp. Never had problems in 10000 Km though.

Worse, it seems that it is not possible to "code out" the front lamps fault on a T6.1. Nothing like the previous T6. Or even to code the bulbs correctly as LED, at least I haven't seen anything like that in THIS forum, so I can guess it is IMPOSSIBLE. If any expert wants to refute my thesis, be my guest...

 

[mmi]

Worse, it seems that it is not possible to "code out" the front lamps fault on a T6.1. Nothing like the previous T6. Or even to code the bulbs correctly as LED, at least I haven't seen anything like that in THIS forum, so I can guess it is IMPOSSIBLE. If any expert wants to refute my thesis, be my guest...

All the T6.1 lamps are on separate "Leuchte" channels which include also a parameter for "Load type". I would expect that tweaking would improve the situation.

An example about channel tweaking below -

Post in thread 'New T6.1 Tail lamps'

2 Aug 2022

Just backing up aswell like you said.

Excellent. Thanks for the fault codes - a kind of as expected... the van isn't happy with the LEDs.

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I'm afraid we have to skip the massive 480 character string for now. It would have been easy if you would have retrofitted both front and rear LEDs - we have the data for that combinations.

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Below are so called "Leuchte" sets which need to be tweaked that van "understands" the new lights correctly.

The new values are from a van with factory installed front and rear LEDs. The current values are from your van.

The...​

• mmi

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[FWhite]

Hello mmi,
yes, I "suspected" that too , I mean doing in the adaptations.
Problem is I do not know which "Leuchte" are the dipped beams and to which value to set them, for lack of documentation (OBDeleven) .
In your linked 2022 post I read that you may had them:
The new values are from a van with factory installed front and rear LEDs. The current values are from your van.
Does it happen that you have still have the sheets for the front lights?
Thanks

 

[mmi]

Does it happen that you have still have the sheets for the front lights?

Not exactly for front lights - I haven't explored that.
Also please note that OEM LED lights have their own dedicated controllers D6 and D7. Thus, I'm afraid tweaking parameters to match having those controllers onboard is not the way to proceed.

As from BCM point of view you are replacing the incandescent lamps with "low power" versions, I believe you need to find/experiment only the "Type_Of_Load" parameter to accept lower wattage.

Anyways, attached an adaption map of LHD T6.1 with OEM front LEDs (with D6&D7).

In your linked 2022 post I read that you may had them:

The (possibly) useful adaption map is actually in the thread (post #97) - which should be similar to yours currently.

What options you have available for "Außenlicht_Front-Low beam: bulb type" - currently "H7"?

 

[FWhite]

Hi mmi,
Yes you are right , of course. The spreadsheet in the 2002 thread is the relevant one.
In OBDeleven Pro there are a bunch of choiches in central Electronics-Adaptations for Leuchte6ABL and Leuchte7ABL about Type_Of_Load_.
See below ( I took only the first 4 pages, the others look empty):


At the moment it is factory set as Abblendlicht
I think a good candidate would be LED_Abblendlicht.
It is all in the first picture.
Anyone has comments/experience?

 

[FWhite]

Little update:
So I DID set both the Leuchte as above, LED_Abblendlicht
It looks like it works!
I drove about one hour in the city at night, with several start/stops, and no error messages on the dashboard.
Also, as a beginner with such tool, I must say that OBDeleven is very user friendly:
When the van wanted a password to confirm the adaption changes, it provied it to me automatically, and then it also reminded me to open the bonnet to allow the overwriting. All in all it took less than 5 minutes, once I found what I had to do...
If only it had more documentation and interaction on its own forum, it would be almost perfect.
Thanks again to mmi for the help!

 

[mmi]

Excellent -
Thank you for letting us all know