hi all about 18 months ago i installed a pair of Osman night breakers builds.
seems to of lost some of there power now .
so what is the best set of builds to get don,t wont H I Ds (as illegal unless you have automatic headlight leveler).
cheers j

them hids are also illegal if you put them in head lights that have the glass/plastic fronts on for ordinary bulbs

I have just ordered a couple of sets of Philips Xtreme Vision +130 H7.

I am hoping they will give more light. Don't want to go down the illegal bulbs route.

I use ring xenon ultima have done for a while they seem to be pretty good ,supposed to give 120% more light on road .

I have some fairly generic H4 bulbs in my 90, and TBH never find lack of light to be an issue. Especially on dipped beam, where the cutoff pattern means brighter bulbs won't help you see further at all. On high beam, they light enough of the road to see where I'm going, and I can stop in the distance I can see.
I think a lot comes down to the reflector and lens pattern in the headlights rather than brighter bulbs. If long-range visibility is a problem, a pair of narrow-angle spotlights is probably better than excessively bright bulbs- they won't affect the dipped beam brightness and can be switched off when not needed.

always be careful not to put a bigger wattage bulb in as it will melt those plastic fronts .

dog-man said:

I have just ordered a couple of sets of Philips Xtreme Vision +130 H7.

I am hoping they will give more light. Don't want to go down the illegal bulbs route.

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Just swapped to these today from NightBreakers. Beam is more precise (with the Osram I had to use the headlamp adjuster and knock it down one notch) and good light output. I managed to get them for £18/pair from Amazon, which is a bargain.

Amazon product

I purchased two pairs for £33.14 from 'Upgrade Bulbs' with free postage.
I just hope they are good as I am fed up with spending big money on trying to find a good legal bright bulb.

I've just replaced my low beam with a pair of H7 Bosh giga light 120+ they are a lot better and safer than the old standard bulbs they replaced
plus replaced the side lights with some LED's doesn't half change the look

tyrefitter said:

I use ring xenon ultima have done for a while they seem to be pretty good ,supposed to give 120% more light on road .

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The % brightness increase is very misleading. There is a maximum allowable light output from head lamp bulbs. From memory an E marked H7 bulb output is limited to 1500 lumens + or - 10% at 13.4 Volts. This would give a maximum legal output of 1650 lumens at 13.4 volts. These high performance bulbs simply output close to the 1650 lumen end of the scale. Additionally they generally have smaller filiments. This gives a tighter focus in the reflector, and so longer range. However this extra range is only any use if the headlamp is adjusted to use it. The claimed % increase is in comparison to an aged, standard halogen, not necessarily a new halogen bulb. All incandescent bulbs age over time, reducing the light output.
If more light is needed, there are a few improvements available. So are completely legal, some less so and one is completely illegal.
First legal improvement is to change the bulbs to better quality replacements. Those listed above will work and are much of a muchness. I like Osram Night Breakers but Alite +120, sold as Ring +120 are good. Philips Vision Extreme are good too.
To improve on these, you need to increase the voltage delivered to the bulbs them selves. This means adding relays and improved wiring. This reduces voltage drop at the filiments, driving them harder and so brighter.
Moving on from this, things get less legal. Most bulb manufacturers make higher powered versions of standard bulbs. These are considerably brighter than those legal high performance bulbs. For instance an Osram Rallye H7 pumps out 2100 lumens at 13.2 volts, up over 500 lumens. However because it's a 65 Watt bulb, it's not E marked therefore not legally allowed on the road. However because it provides a light that looks standard, it would likely not be noticed by the Mot tester.
The next improvement is completely illegal and likely to be noticed by everyone. This is the aftermarket HID conversation. These aren't to be recommend and they don't actually provide better a light. The burner is much to large for a standard reflector. This gives a huge amount of light leakage out of the lamp, mostly in a direction not intended by the reflector. This gives very high lumen levels but little of it goes where you want on the road. Also the Mot tester will fail them and they are easily spotted by the police. So in my opinion, these HID conversations are out. Additional to the light leakage, HIDs should be self leveling and have headlamp washing.
Hopefully some of this will help.

Having previously owned a few tratters, complete with their delightful arcing headlamp switch, I did some checks on voltage at the bulb on the Freelander and was pleased to see 13.6v at the lamp, with 14.2 at the battery (2 minutes of idling from start).

With high quality relays and some seriously heavy duty cable I *might" get that up to 13.8v. As anything much over 13.8 will start frying lamps very quickly, not worth the effort on a Freelander. VERY different numbers on a tratter though - I had 11.4v at the lamps on a (then 6 months old) 2010 90 and immediately set about wiring in some relays and 20A cable.

Using a relay per bulb, 4 in total and good quality wire and soldered connections, there's no reason not to see 14 Volts at the headlamp bulbs. Every 10th of a Volt will help light output a fraction.
Admittedly bulb life is reduced at higher voltages. My D3 used to supply 14.4 Volts at the headlamp bulbs. I was seeing bulb life down to 50 hours or so. The lights were lovely an bright though!

Another advantage to HID on my D3 - The HID ballast manages the voltage and you only use the halogen main beam lamps intermittently so shorter lamp life is less important.

Saying that I have some HID Driving Lamps on the Freelander and the strike-to-hot time is too long for my liking. May change them for LED once prices for good quality LED driving lamps (round 150mm or thereabouts, not lightbar) come down to a sensible level.

I'm going to fit one of those 24" 120 Watt LED lighting bars to my Freelander. I intend to install it in the grill space. There's enough room and will be quite discrete once the factory A bar is fitted.

I'm using the Philips +130 bulbs, euro car parts has deals on them. They're definitely an improvement on my pre facelift FL1. My old facelift FL1 had fantastic lights and I was really disappointed when I got this car!

Nodge68 said:

I'm going to fit one of those 24" 120 Watt LED lighting bars to my Freelander. I intend to install it in the grill space. There's enough room and will be quite discrete once the factory A bar is fitted.

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Did you fit one, Nodge?