I have put the travelin-lite head lights in my van with the Philips led bulbs, when I turn the head lights on there is a bulb out light on dash after 3 mins or so if them being switched on, spoke to Elliot at traveling-lite he sent me a new loom which has been fitted the error light came on after about 10 mins of head lights being switched on, can’t work it out any ideas?
Modern Canbus systems do strange things when they see a different current in a circuit than expected. Providing the lights are working without any flashing, just look for a local VCDS user on the map and get them to disable the warning light (you actually tick the box to turn it on strangely enough).

Can you take a photo of the back of the light unit, I'm interested to see where they put the ballast (is it inside the unit or stuck to the housing).
 
Hi Guys,

After a long period of research my wife finally decided I was to go for HQ lights rather than the VW H7 option, must say fairly impressed with the build quality of the HQ units and looks like they have tidied up the wiring behind the lights too, all be it not as good as I had hoped. I did not use the twin light loom that is an option.

On the performance front they are ok, IMHO a little better than the H4 on DIP but only because of the better beam pattern and not light output.
I have enabled via VCDS for both lights to be on when on high beam is selected and high beam performance is excellent in comparison to the H4 units.

I am running 55w Philips 130+ bulbs in both the DIP and HIGH beam units because when I asked HQ they said that I should not use 2 x 100w bulbs on at the same time if I am not using their loom, guess this is either due to the standard VW wiring not being able to manage the load requirements or that their head lights cant handle the heat output. Never got around to asking them that question.

So this now makes me wonder, would fitting LED bulbs overheat the light units or stress the wiring ?
As no-one else has replied to this.....from the information on the THQ website, my understanding was that they recommended not using 100W bulbs with their harness as it would overload the vehicle wiring. I'm presuming it takes the same vehicle feed and sends it to both bulbs without using a relay. As you have enabled both bulbs in VCDS, you have two separate feeds to the bulbs so would be in a better place to run both 100W bulbs however I did do some voltage drop tests which would suggest you are better off sticking with stock rated bulbs (I think I put the results earlier in this thread somewhere).

Regarding LED bulbs, the huge cooling fins you see are to look after the light source which is very susceptible to heat. They also use less power than a standard bulb so should be fine for the stock wiring.

There's an interesting article here from autobulbsdirect
 
As no-one else has replied to this.....from the information on the THQ website, my understanding was that they recommended not using 100W bulbs with their harness as it would overload the vehicle wiring. I'm presuming it takes the same vehicle feed and sends it to both bulbs without using a relay. As you have enabled both bulbs in VCDS, you have two separate feeds to the bulbs so would be in a better place to run both 100W bulbs however I did do some voltage drop tests which would suggest you are better off sticking with stock rated bulbs (I think I put the results earlier in this thread somewhere).

Regarding LED bulbs, the huge cooling fins you see are to look after the light source which is very susceptible to heat. They also use less power than a standard bulb so should be fine for the stock wiring.

There's an interesting article here from autobulbsdirect

So are you saying I should revert back to standard headlight bulbs or is there bulbs that are better that won’t set of the bulb warning light, none of it makes sence to me, will using the current bulbs cause an issue going forward?

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So are you saying I should revert back to standard headlight bulbs or is there bulbs that are better that won’t set of the bulb warning light, none of it makes sence to me, will using the current bulbs cause an issue going forward?

Is all that wiring for the light units? I can see a relay and some sort of controller/ballast in front of the battery and red wires running across the front of the engine bay. The Phillips units should come with a small matchbox sized aluminium box to run the LEDs.

The bulb warning is just because the vehicle electronics are seeing something different to what it expects (i.e. it expects to see 55w loading on dipped beam). Some aftermarket bulbs require 'canbus decoders' which is usually a large capacitor to stop flickering and bulb errors but for us, if it's just a bulb error and the lights are not flickering (you'd see them flashing similar to an emergency services vehicle), just get it changed in the VCDS coding. The Phillips LED bulbs are probably the best out there so if you're happy with the legal issues, just run them. At £140 a set I certainly wouldn't be putting them in the bin!
 
Is all that wiring for the light units? I can see a relay and some sort of controller/ballast in front of the battery and red wires running across the front of the engine bay. The Phillips units should come with a small matchbox sized aluminium box to run the LEDs.

The bulb warning is just because the vehicle electronics are seeing something different to what it expects (i.e. it expects to see 55w loading on dipped beam). Some aftermarket bulbs require 'canbus decoders' which is usually a large capacitor to stop flickering and bulb errors but for us, if it's just a bulb error and the lights are not flickering (you'd see them flashing similar to an emergency services vehicle), just get it changed in the VCDS coding. The Phillips LED bulbs are probably the best out there so if you're happy with the legal issues, just run them. At £140 a set I certainly wouldn't be putting them in the bin!
Thanks for your help im having the steering wheel changed soon so will get the guy to sort the coding thingy and take the light off, I will be speaking robelkiot again so will be interested to see what he says! With regard to MOT the bulbs might fail but the dipped beam going off when the high beam going on isn’t an issue as the dipped stays on when high beam is on.

The headlights look really good imo couldn’t get the genuine ones as spending a lot making the van into a campe, I agree the Philips headlight bulbs are very good, I’m not getting the flickering issue your talking about!
 
Thanks for your help im having the steering wheel changed soon so will get the guy to sort the coding thingy and take the light off, I will be speaking robelkiot again so will be interested to see what he says! With regard to MOT the bulbs might fail but the dipped beam going off when the high beam going on isn’t an issue as the dipped stays on when high beam is on.

The headlights look really good imo couldn’t get the genuine ones as spending a lot making the van into a campe, I agree the Philips headlight bulbs are very good, I’m not getting the flickering issue your talking about!
Did you get the vehicle coded to keep both lights on or is that an additional harness (it does look like another harness)? If not, you could get it coded properly and probably lose a lot of that wiring. At MoT time you're at the mercy of the tester. Although strictly speaking a fail, the tester may not realise it has LEDs fitted or even mistake it for having OEM LEDs fitted but there are obvious differences and irrespective of what Sam Lawson states above, they are usually very switched on people as they are trusted by the Government to identify unsafe vehicles. If I've ever had any concerns about anything at MoT time, I've spoken to the tester when I've booked it in a week before and asked for their advice.
 
Did you get the vehicle coded to keep both lights on or is that an additional harness (it does look like another harness)? If not, you could get it coded properly and probably lose a lot of that wiring. At MoT time you're at the mercy of the tester. Although strictly speaking a fail, the tester may not realise it has LEDs fitted or even mistake it for having OEM LEDs fitted but there are obvious differences and irrespective of what Sam Lawson states above, they are usually very switched on people as they are trusted by the Government to identify unsafe vehicles. If I've ever had any concerns about anything at MoT time, I've spoken to the tester when I've booked it in a week before and asked for their advice.
No not had coded there plug and play what ever that means, I will have a word with the guy who is doing my steering wheel and get him to read some of your posts to see if he can do what your saying there is a lot or wiring behind each head light, as long as there safe to use as in won’t affect the vans electrics then I can live with the bulb warning light for a week or two until I get it in for the wheels change.

Thanks for your help!
 
No not had coded there plug and play what ever that means, I will have a word with the guy who is doing my steering wheel and get him to read some of your posts to see if he can do what your saying there is a lot or wiring behind each head light, as long as there safe to use as in won’t affect the vans electrics then I can live with the bulb warning light for a week or two until I get it in for the wheels change.

Thanks for your help!
The plug and play is an additional harness so you can lose that with VCDS coding. Also, next time you do get the light warning, double check the bulbs including indicators, number plate and brakes are actually all working. It could be a genuine fault somewhere else on the vehicle!
 
Thanks for the reply, all bulbs look ok, I will speak to the guy sorting the steering wheel out to take out the harness and code it hopefully that will sort it
 
This is the issue with harnesses, coding and current.

The harness obviously splits the power of the main beam to supply the dipped also, this will then affect what the CANBUS see's. To me there is only one proper fix, Get rid of the harness and code the lights. The coding is so easy and quick. My VW 'specialist' charged me £20. Now the van's coded I won't ever have any issues with fake error lights.

All these bulbs that are LED and higher wattage will have different current draw which is what the CANBUS system monitors. If you fit LED's, then you need a resistor to beef up the current seen by the CANBUS system.
 
Apologies if these have been posted before..

XtremeVan have posted up a Facebook message showing some aftermarket headlamps with what looks more like a neon-style DRL.
I think I’d still prefer the chrome strip running through it, myself, but each to their own..

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I've just read all 27 pages of this thread :eek: and can't figure out the advantage of the THQs (£410) over the VW H7s (£370).

Is it just the LED DRLs, or is there more to it than that?
 
The THQ use a projector lense for the dip beam this gives a more defined and a crisper spread of light than the non projector VW H7 versions.

Not much in it, imho
 
Anyone had an issue with there THQ lights ....it seems mine have a weird projection.....I'll try to get some photos but the beam looks very short and not a straight
 
You need to get the H7 bulbs aligned perfectly and it is very easy to get it wrong as the retaining spring will still fit if it is slightly wrong......get an inspection mirror so you can see the alignment.

It should look like this with a clean cut off and good sized hot spot (NS was a touch high in this photo)
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You need to get the H7 bulbs aligned perfectly and it is very easy to get it wrong as the retaining spring will still fit if it is slightly wrong......get an inspection mirror so you can see the alignment.

It should look like this with a clean cut off and good sized hot spot (NS was a touch high in this photo)
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That's for that I'll give it a go ...I'm using PHILLIPS racing vision and the shadow looks more like a bat than straight
 
Those are GE Megalight Ultra +130 as a reference. I'm fairly sure you'll just need to get the bulbs aligned though as I had exactly the same issue.
 
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