Best H7/H9 Bulbs OR will Volvo Bi-Xenon Headlights fit?

[craigblues]

Yes this is how the volvo headlights come out. :-) Nice and easy.

However not easily noticeable apparently as I do remember not so long back my potential father in law was changing the headlight bulbs on his V50 2005 and it seems he had been gone ages fitting them.

I popped out and he was cussing. "GOD SAKE! Volvo don't make this easy do they" he was removing the coolant tank/bottle and god knows what else trying to get to the back of the unit! His bottom jaw dropped when i removed the "tent peg" as you called it and the whole unit pulled out. Think he went and had a whisky and a sit down for 5 mins after that.

[clivea]

Yes the tent peg came over from Ford, I had such system on the Mondeo. Wish all headlights were so easy.

[andyg]

I use Osram H7 "Nightbreaker Unlimited" for dipped beam on my S80. They are road legal, unlike other types you will find. They provide a white, clean and strong beam compared to the original bulbs. Really helps on my daily commute during the winter months. They are about £16 per pair with free delivery on the web. However, the other price you pay is that the service life is reduced to about 40% of the originals. To mitigate this I just switch to side/tail lights when driving in good daylight, only using the headlights when needed from dusk, at night or during bad weather. That works for me anyway.

[MartinK]

+1 for OSRAM H7 NIGHT BREAKER UNLIMITED 2 BULB TWIN PACK (sorry for the bold - copied from the ebay ad I bought from)

~£19 for 2.

A significant improvement...so much so that I also put a set in Wifey's Evoque...she also sees a good improvement...

I got at least 3 years out of my last set of PHILIPS X-TREME POWER H7 EXTREME XTREME HEADLIGHT BULBS (the Philips were a big improvement over standard, but not as good as the Osram).

However - that's 3 years with DRL's disabled

[clivea]

Yes Thassos I've had three Mondeos and there were some good features that Ford introduced into their various subsequent models.

[andyg]

Further to my post above..... Over the past 15 years or so I have owned a succession of S60s and more recently S80s with the standard H7 55W bulbs for dipped beam. On every car the dipped beam was too low in the factory. So I have adjusted them to raise the near and off-side dipped beams by the same angle. It is easy to do by parking the car and shining the beam at a garage wall at a distance of about 10 meters. Mark the existing horizontal section of the beam with tape, then raise the beam by about 5 - 8 cms. I have never had any adverse comment on the next MOT test. The result is much better illumination at night, especially on country toads. I have never been flashed by other drivers and there is always the dashboard headlight adjuster if the car is heavily loaded.

The adjustment of dipped beam is very easy with a 6mm socket on the inboard adjuster highlighted with a red arrow on the attached photo. (The green arrow shows the left/right adjuster which I have never used.) Raising the beam is done by turning the adjuster anti-clockwise by about 360 degrees.