upgrading MR headlights

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upgrading MR headlights

Postby viking shippy on Fri Jul 31, 2020 8:04 pm

Hi ..thinking of replacing my hi /hb3/60w and lo /h11 55w halogen headlight bulbs...is it possible up the wattage a little with these projector lenses without overheating them...
what's everyone else doing the standard bulbs a quite dim..no I'm not into led unless they are around 4200 k and below I'm not into the whitest brightest popularity contest.BS..just more usable light that lights up the road better with a good colour range and brightness... I know halogen has the best colour range.. and my fyrlyts are awesome..happy to consider warm white led at 4200 k
but i don't think they are available...
what have you fellas done..???now for the 5th??
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby NowForThe5th on Fri Jul 31, 2020 9:53 pm

You have a couple of choices.

Staying with halogen, replace the HB3 high beams with Phillips HIR1/9011. Even better if you can find the Toshiba bulbs but they're getting a bit rare now. These bulbs use an infra-red technology to boost output and are much better than the Plus series bulbs. They are optically compatible with the HB3, so the filament is in exactly the right position, but they do need a small notching modification to the base to fit. Amazon is usually the best place to find them but if you have no luck then let me know and I'll give you some other supply options.

For the low beams, replace the H11 with H9. This should give you around 30% more low beam output. As per the high beams, optically identical and also need a small modification of the base to fit.

Whatever you do, don't put high wattage bulbs in those enclosures. The extra heat will burn them out, sometimes explosively, and they don't give any more light than the better engineered and designed HIR1 and H9. LEDs are too blue (even the "warm white" varieties) and give an awful beam pattern. There is a new technology that has the potential to blow everything else out of the water, but general availability is a couple of years away.

Stretching legality you could go to HID in the lows. Phillips used to make a bulb which was almost the same colour temperature as halogen at 4200K but these are out of production now. Stay with the standard 35W (higher gets too hot) and name brand bulbs and ballasts, not Ebay rubbish. In the shop we carry high quality bulbs at 5000K which is white, but not blue. PM me for more details.

I have HID lows and HID highs. By themselves the HID highs are a pain with warmup times but, in conjunction with the Fyrlyts they are awesome, whitening the overall output and providing fill and spread while the Fyrlyts provide the "instant on" that you need. My lows are the Philips ones mentioned above, but are due for replacement now. I'll replace with these new 5000K bulbs.
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby WUNSIE on Sat Aug 01, 2020 5:41 pm

This is what I did for the wifes ASX Low Beams, in fact Ive done it for years with anything that had H11 as standard, VZ SS, etc
The Lumens out put is far greater given the H9 are only 10 watts difference
Takes all of 5 min


https://headlightreviews.com/h9-vs-h11-headlight-bulbs/
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upgrading MR headlights

Postby viking shippy on Sat Aug 01, 2020 7:47 pm

Click to view larger picture
Click to view larger picture
this is what i could find
only thing is the wattage is higher??
both 65w
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby viking shippy on Sat Aug 01, 2020 7:59 pm

thanks the fifth and onesy.(legends)...!
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby NowForThe5th on Sun Aug 02, 2020 1:09 am

viking shippy wrote:only thing is the wattage is higher??


Yes. Wattage increases from 55W in low beam to 65W. Lumens go from 1250 to 2100. Big increase from an extra 10W!

In high beam wattage remains the same but lumens increase from 1700 to 2300. That's a 35% increase.
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby Jair on Mon Sep 28, 2020 12:46 pm

NowForThe5th wrote:Stretching legality you could go to HID in the lows. Phillips used to make a bulb which was almost the same colour temperature as halogen at 4200K but these are out of production now. Stay with the standard 35W (higher gets too hot) and name brand bulbs and ballasts, not Ebay rubbish. In the shop we carry high quality bulbs at 5000K which is white, but not blue. PM me for more details.

I have HID lows and HID highs. By themselves the HID highs are a pain with warmup times but, in conjunction with the Fyrlyts they are awesome, whitening the overall output and providing fill and spread while the Fyrlyts provide the "instant on" that you need. My lows are the Philips ones mentioned above, but are due for replacement now. I'll replace with these new 5000K bulbs.


Hi, just got a set of H11 HID bulbs for my lows (MR Triton GLX) and just realized the bulbs sit inside the headlight housing under a round cover. How do you install the ballast & cables? Just drill the housing or am I missing something?
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby NowForThe5th on Mon Sep 28, 2020 2:09 pm

Send them back and buy a set of Osram Night Breaker Laser H9s. You will have to modify a small tab but they will fit and they're optically identical to the factory H11s. They will put out up to 2240 lumens which is maybe 500 more than the crappy LEDs which will give you a terrible beam pattern and blind every other driver on the road.

Drilling holes in your headlights for cables or poor fitting grommets is an invitation for condensation and eventual ruining of your (quite expensive) lights.
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby WUNSIE on Mon Sep 28, 2020 5:58 pm

Ive never understood why people instantly think of LEDs when it comes to headlight upgrade.

Some cheap, chinese ebay shit show less light than a $2 torch from bunnings, but people love them because they blind approaching drivers, ( wow look how bright my lights are, I cant see bugger all when it rains but bend down and look into them ) :roll:
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby Jair on Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:08 pm

I don't know what LED has to do with my question? :mrgreen: But I agree LED are garbage.

I understand the potential problem with drilling/condensation so that's out of the question now. Is it safe to install the HID ballast inside the headlight housing? The ballast is small enough to fit inside after all.
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby NowForThe5th on Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:21 pm

Jair wrote:I don't know what LED has to do with my question?


:lol: :lol: Nor do I. Well yes, I do. I was putting together a response for another forum on LEDs. Clearly I got confused. :oops:

If you can safely and securely mount the ballast inside the light then that is ideal. No better protection than in there. I've never been able to fit one, but then I only use Hylux and they are a bit bigger, even the slimline ones.

WUNSIE wrote:Ive never understood why people instantly think of LEDs when it comes to headlight upgrade.

Some cheap, chinese ebay shit show less light than a $2 torch from bunnings,


Because they're cheap and relatively easy to fit and the light colour makes them (the owners) think that they have more light when, in most cases, they have significantly less, not to mention the horrible beam patterns. I know one member here who installed name brand 7" LED lights on his Defender. "Disappointed" is mild for his reaction. Has now gone back to halogens and is much happier
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby Jair on Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:44 am

Well I can confirm the HID ballast/cables fit inside the MR GLX light housing no problem.
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Re: upgrading MR headlights

Postby AussieJoe on Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:53 am

The replies to this post have not been my experience on my MR GLX+.

I too was a LED hater but the technology for use in projector housings has been here for a while. You just need to buy the right LED bulb thats designed for that task. Reflector housings however are a bit hit and miss as they cannot account for every shape reflector. Common to see rotatable LED bulbs for reflector housings and that’s purely to find the sweet spot otherwise you can simply throw a lot of scattered light down the road with no penetration.

Look at STEDI’s H11 LED bulbs. I bought the copperhead model. Very similar color temp to HID and like HID projectors, they kill any Halogen and retain perfect and very accurate shape and cut off. No hot spots, no cold spots and the STEDI bulbs are cooled by copper cores only. No fans needed. If $130 is too much, look at Gemtek Lightings range of bulbs. I was very close to buying a set of these before the STEDI’s.

I’ve done the HB3 / HB4 upgrade to HIR1 or HIR2 in reflector high beams before on other cars and the results have been far from impressive in my opinion. Especially when your usually paying $60 per HIR1 bulb (genuine OSRAM who I believe now hold the HIR licence. Might be a different story in a projector lens but the improvements are lacking in reflector housings from my experience.

Of course, you also want a low beam that compliments the high beam that compliments your additional driving lights in brightness, penetration, color temp, and what your night time driving involves and how long you are driving for at night.

Sit behind a $60 “120 million lumen” eBay light bar for 6 hours straight and see how fatigued it makes you. And how blind you feel every time you flick back to low beam adding to the fatigue.
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