Hello,

I am also new here. I bought an 05 S40 in December and the lighting is rubbish, I am amazed at Volvo as you associate them with safety, or did. I live in France so the headlights are set to the continental B setting. I am on the point of buying a new set of LHD headlights to see if there is any improvement? I do have an HID conversion kit available but am a tad put off by the earthing comments on the forum.

Thanks for any advise,

Charlie.

New headlights won't really help, they were miserable from the factory.

Lots of misinformation on the boards, but the issues w/HID conversions (and solutions) explained here: https://www.skbowe.com/a/issues/

HIDs really help, but the best performance is with a compete projector swap (to D2S projectors). You can get a functioning re-base retrofit for about €200 (including SKBOWE), maybe €400 for projectors.

LED Bulbs Option?
 

My 2011 C30 has Bi-Xenons and I have to say they are excellent.

My fun/waste money car is a 2005 MINI Cooper S. The wasting money is going well and it is a lot quicker and handles a lot better than when it left the factory in 2005. It has Xenon dips and Halogen mains. I'm old and "my eyes are dim, I cannot see". The lights were pathetic. So I've put Osram Nightbreakers in both. And had them set to the absolute max permissable height. Much better, but still not great.

Thought I'd share a recent thread posted on the MINI Forum I use. Guy seems to have found good Philips LED bulbs, very bright, that work perfectly with the Halogen reflectors and aren't an MOT issue:
Finally a workable LED option for halogen headlamps
http://www.mini2.com/forum/second-ge...ml#post4441151
Thought you folk struggling with your lights might find it interesting.

LED retrofitting is a bit tricky - really hard to find a decent replacement and as it has been discussed on this forum, 99% cases its a miss, especially on our cars and their optics. So far - I have seen only 1 proof of the decent LED implementation, so I still think its the inferior solution to HID retro, but with proper research and quality components - it LOOKS like it can actually work (judging just from photos and user's info).

LEDs in H4 reflectors hovewer - well.... :/

I agree absolutely about the LED 'conversions' and I wouldn't touch them.

What I find interesting about these, which Ive never heard of before, is:
A) they are designed, made and marketed by Philips who are not Chinese and are totally reputable
B) the price - reckon a huge chunk of that is recouping the research, can't be reflective of the manufacturing cost
C) Philips say, quite clearly, that they have been specifically designed to work with the halogen reflectors.

And if you look at the fitting video in Matrick's post you can see it isn't simply a case of 'take out the halogen and plug in the LED jobby'. More to it than that.

I've PMed the guy and asked if I can have a look when I'm next passing. When I have I shall report back.

Hmm, I actually missed the links in that post (not really standing out for some reason). Vid looks good and close inspection on those LED bulbs - loos damn impressive, I admit. Far end of the "chinese ****" sold on amazon for 19.99. Installation though is straightforward - you just plug them in, no fiddling with reflector , position or anything - one way in, one way out, just a bit fiddling with extra cabling so that doesnt really affect beam pattern or anything.
But all in all - looks good, I admit. If Philips can sign itself under this product, well.... who am I to say otherwise.... being not "road legal" means nothing as its simply legal bull*** that must be put on box, main thing is - if it doesnt glare other users and produce decent pattern - its a win.
Defo interesting product, thanks for sharing. Not usable on our cars, but still :thumbs_up:

There's also a H7 version:

https://www.powerbulbs.com/product/p...ed-headlamp-h7

From Philips blurb:

https://www.philips.com.au/c-p/12985...headlight-bulb

Are they worth a shot in our cars?

Well, see, thats where it goes to gray area with "unless someone tries it, it probably wont work". In general most LED retrofitting examples looked like this below:

http://i68.tinypic.com/jgl1mr.jpg

so call me sceptical :) BUT, I also have seen a really good looking beam output from another user on SS forum so maybe those LEDs are getting better...

All in all - if you can get LED set with possibility of returning (like on AMazon) and you are adamant you dont want to go HID retro, trying those out may be worth it. Just make sure you do a nice writeup with pics :)

Same here running HIDS4U 55W Stealth kit for over 2 years now with 5000K bulbs.:thumbs_up:

Think I will go for them in my MINI. Lot of money but can always send them back.

But I do remember seeing a slightly worrying proviso in the blurb somewhere - "in most cars". Looking at the pics of them, I'm assuming that relates to the way bulbs are fitted and accessed and how much room there is? Will have to go back through it. And I will ring Philips' techs to get it from the horses mouth.

The MINI guy in the link I posted is using the H4 versions. Mine takes the H7s ...... so not absolutely proven in my MINI.

Come on someone, give them a go in one of your Volvos with useless lights and post a thread.