Thread: Electrical artwork for new D4

Originally Posted by GregMilner

Without shelling out $1,000 or more for dedicated driving lights, would an HID upgrade for the standard D4 high beams do a passable job? I did this on the just-sold L322 but never got a chance to test them on a country drive at night.

I'm not sure that you can do that on your model (2016). Do you have separate high/low beam lights / globes in yours, or are both from a single bulb ???

In the earlier models like mine, there is a separate "high beam" light (commonly referred to as "infill" lighting. Generally speaking, this light is not worth two knobs of goat ****, as it cannot be adjusted separate to the rest of the headlight body, and is known to be a "possum spotter". While the possum spotters come on with hi beam - the real hi beam lighting is provided by the same globe which gives you your low beam lighting - in the case of HID - both hi and low beam are therefore HID. To be honest, if I pulled the globes out of the possum spotters, I don't think it would make a scrap of difference to what I can see in front of me, even with the driving lights turned off.

I upgraded both hi and low beam to HID in my D2. To be honest, the benefit in doing this is really only seen on low beam. Yes - there is some improvement on high beam, but it is not that flash and you will still find yourself wanting a decent set of driving lights to go with it.

My current D4 has factory HID lights, hi and low beam. Low beam is great - hi beam would probably be OK if I lived in suburbia and did not venture out onto country roads at night. If you travel in the bush at night, you are going to want some auxiliary lighting, whether you have factory HID hi beam or have upgraded from halogen to HID yourself.

You can get a very good set of driving lights for about half what you have mentioned. My preference after trying many different types of lighting over the years is Fyrlyt, and I have their top of the range "Nemesis" which cost close to $1,000 for a pair. But you only really need these if you are doing a lot of long distance driving on long, straight roads where there is plenty of wildlife around. I would expect that the cheaper 12 volt Fyrlyts at around $500 a pair would be plenty good enough for most applications on the east coast of Australia or around the Perth / Bunbury region - I found that what I have on mine was definitely overkill last time I was over east and in Tassie. You simply cannot use the range that these lights provide unless you are well inland.

Mmm, not sure about the lights on my D4, it's bog standard SE specification, so "bi-xenon" as quoted in the LR spec sheet. The low-beam I believe are LED. For the very little night driving we do, I'm thinking a 20 inch LED light bar might be more than enough to get us out of a fix.
Bearing in mind that most of our long distance travel is towing a camper trailer, we don't want to be setting up in the dark anyway if at all possible. And if we do get caught at dusk, we certainly won't be driving at 100kmh.
Stopping more than 5 tons in a hurry is never going to be ideal.

If you have "bi-xenon" headlights - that means that both hi and low beam are already HID. Same as what I have.

Easy way to tell - when you first turn on your headlights, do they flash on very bright for a split second, then drop to a much lower intensity output before gradually increasing again to their normal output ?
This is very typical of all HID lights.

I could be wrong on this and no doubt someone will correct me if I am - but I'm pretty sure that no D4's come with LED low beam. The fact that you have said "bi-xenon" as quoted in the LR spec sheet" tells me that you have HID and not LED headlights.

A 20 inch LED bar would be more than enough to supplement your high beam in most circumstances, particularly if you do not do a lot of night driving. This is all my son has on his Amarok (and his headlights are not HID) and he is quite happy with this. I have a 40 inch "stealth" LED bar mounted under my roof rack. This throws a hell of a lot of light out and turns night into day. But it is a very "white" light and after a while gets hard on the eyes - especially if there are a lot of reflective road signs etc in front of you. I tend to turn the LED bar off most of the time these days, and only use the Fyrlyts that are on the bullbar. These produce a more yellow light which is a lot easier on the eyes - and actually allows you to see animals etc on the road a lot better than you can with only the white light from HID & LED.

If you don't have a bullbar on your D4, the Autospark store you have been dealing with also supplies stainless steel brackets that mount in behind the grille of the D4 and stick out through the bottom of the grille, so that you can mount either a LED bar or I believe that someone has used these to also hang a pair of Fyrlyts on. Very well made brackets ...................... but expensive for what they are. I would be making my own at that price, but I understand that others may not have this option available to them.

I wouldn't get a light bar unless you just want a lot of light close to the car. They don't provide much light at a distance I have found.

I have driven on heaps of country roads at night with the standard SE Bi Xenon lights and the only real issue is that they light up the tops of the trees a lot and also don't give much light at a distance. OK if you don't do more than about 90 to 100. I now have LED driving lights and they are fantastic and provide huge amounts of light as well as distance, when you can use them! They make the HID headlights seem like candles, even on low beam, which seemed very good until I turn the driving lights on and then dip them for on coming traffic.

Having only had the car for 10 days, I haven't yet driven it at night, even in the suburbs so no idea of the headlight starting characteristics. I note in the 2015 spec sheet it says "Xenon Headlamps with Signature Day Time Running Lamps (DRL)" whereas some of the car site tests over hte past year talk about "bi-xenon".

So I'm a bit confused. I'll take it into Barbagallo and ask them for a definitive answer.

Either way, I think a light bar will do the job for the small amount of night driving we do. And yes, I've seen those stainless brackets they use at Auto Spark in Osborne Park, very neat they are too.

Originally Posted by GregMilner

Either way, I think a light bar will do the job for the small amount of night driving we do.

Greg, if you don't drive much at night the standard headlights are fine. The light bar won't help much at all unless you can get one with good light projection at a distance. The standard headlights have the same sort of range as any light bars I have seen or used and it is the short cutoff length that is the issue with the standard headlights, not so much the lack of light close up.

I suggest you go for a drive for an hour on Brookton Highway or similar to see how you like the standard headlights before you get a light bar. Watch out for roos though.

If you have Xenon headlights in a D4, then you have "bi-xenon". They are one and the same.

Xenon lights (whether headlights / driving lights etc) are also known as "HID".



You may also have LED DRL's - these are not your headlights. Different thing entirely.


Also - there is generally NO DIFFERENCE between the output of an LED light bar and round LED driving lights, provided that they are using the same or similar LED's and have the same number of LED's in the unit. It is simply a different layout of exactly the same light source in most cases. There are some exceptions to this, but these are generally in the "high end" LED driving lights where different LED's are used with larger parabolic reflectors. The commonly available LED driving lights that you see on many vehicles are no different to an equivalent light bar often supplied under the same brand name.

As for the range of LED bars - like anything, you get what you pay for. A decent LED light bar (such as the one that I have under my roof rack) will easily out perform the standard D4 HID headlights on high beam, in brightness, light spread to the sides, AND in range.

The light bar can't match decent halogen or HID driving lights for range (neither can round LED driving lights) - but they can certainly beat headlights.

The trouble is all light bars are not created equal!! Good to know that there are some that work well with decent range. They all put out lots of light and lots of spread but range is not equal between different light bars. I have driven with at least 3 that did not increase range significantly at all.

From what you are saying, BMKal, you need to look at the size of the reflectors on the LED's. If they are small like all the cheaper light bars seem to use, the range is rubbish. If they are nice big reflectors on each LED then the range can be similar to the driving lights which have nice big reflectors! There are no guarantees, though. They all seem to make similar claims so how can you really tell how good they are until you try them out?