Nightlifephantom

Has anyone done a LED conversion to their stock HID headlights? (Meaning replacing the D2S bulb with an LED headlight bulb).

raj99

Why?

You'd have to remove the ballasts and I've yet to see LEDs have the same visibility as a good set of Xenon bulbs.

https://youtu.be/hRqxTl4rxlg

Nightlifephantom

Well, I've seen various videos explaining the differences of both LED and Xenon's and there are videos saying Xenon's are better... LED's are better... Blah blah blah.

I've recently installed HID's in both my GF's 2012 civic and a friend 2015 F350 Super Duty. I did not like the way the HID's looked in the 2012 Civic. There was not enough lighting in my opinion so I ended up returning those HID's and got LED's instead. I installed them and kaboom... the headlights were way brighter, you can see further up the road than you could've with HID's and you have a more wider range. So that was pretty much my test to see which was better. I've also lined up the Civic with my A6 and you can tell a night and day difference. The light output from the Civic was far more better than the A6 xenon's.

As for the 2015 F350... The Civic (in my opinion) still out performs the F350 with HID's in the headlights and fog lights and with all of them on. You can still see better, brighter, further, and wider than compared to HID's.

Now, I did purchase a D2S to LED conversion kit. Apparently, the kit is plug and play. After dropping the bumper and removing the headlights, I realized that the kit does not work for our cars. The kit came with LED bulbs and a ballast. The kit is supposed to bypass the original stock ballast (meaning it is supposed to plug into the plug that plugs into the ballast). I contacted the manufacture of the kit and they stated it should work. Apparently, our A6 C6 doesn't have the standard D2S ballast plug/connector that all other car manufactures use in their cars. (They sent me photos of the kit working in various BMW's, Mercedes, Acura..)

I was curious if someone had did this conversion yet somehow and how did they go about doing it. From my perspective, in order to make the kit work, I would have to cut the connector off that goes into the ignitor and get all four wires exposed. Then wire up the ground wire to the ground pin from the kit's connector and the other 3 wires to the 2nd pin of the connector...

Either way I have the D2S to LED kit and a set of brand new D2S bulbs. I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to install the LED's without much work and if there will be error codes or any other issues popping up.

Nightlifephantom

Here's a picture of the connector that is supposed to plug into the plug that plugs into the stock ballast:

raj99

The civic came with halogens and the housing is not optimized for HIDs, therefore that should be part of your decision making. Also, when was the last time you changed the headlights in your A6? Since, even xenons degrade over time. When I changed my bulbs in my A6, I noticed a demonstrable difference pre and post.

Lastly, installing non-halogen lights in a halogen housing can be blinding to folks, be aware of that.

LEDs in Halogen housing

Nightlifephantom

That is true, the Civic's headlight are stock and meant for halogens and can also cause glare. I was planning on getting her some aftermarket headlight projector housings. Another thing that I forgot to mention was that the visibility in the rainy weather with LED's are far more superior in my opinion compared to Xenon's.

As far as the last time I changed my D2S bulbs, I cannot say. I purchased the A6 a few months back and had never changed the bulbs yet. I did however noticed that the Driver's side headlight was much brighter and clearer than the Passenger's headlight. I also notice that it looks like the Driver's side headlight was replaced recently due to the fact that the lens is a little clearer than the Passenger's side and also because there is no AFS built in it, only my Passenger's side currently has AFS. Looks like when spring rolls around, there will be some headlight mods being done.

Unless someone who had done a D2S to LED conversion chime in sometime soon... looks like I might just put in the new set of D2S 6000k that I have.