Recently I decided to have another cheap styling option by throwing away the yellowish halogen lamps from the back of the car. I'm a big fan of pure white (5000 Kelvin) light. I hate yellow hue of halogen lights and also the usual blue hue of LED lamps.
License plate lights
I found out that the license plate lights are W5W. I believed that by buying CANBUS LEDs I would skip the use of VCDS to cancel bulb monitoring. Did my research on eBay and found these 8 SMD 5630 bulbs:
www.ebay.com/itm/2-Bombil…87501?hash=item43d9dd99ad
Ordered and fitted. Light is indeed 5000K and intensity is very good. In the first seconds of switching on the lights there was no problem. I thought that I had find the answer to the problem (VCDS or extra resistors) but…no. Orange triangle appeared and I had to follow the well known VCDS solution with the following steps:
1. Click [09-CENT. ELECT.]
2. Click [SECURITY ACCESS-16]
3. Enter code: 31347
4. Click [ADAPTATION-10]
5. Select Channel Leuchte25KZL HA59-Lasttyp 25
6. In New value drop down menu insert 43 — allgemeine LED
7. Press Do it!
8. Select channel (6)-Leuchte25KZL HA59-Dimmwert AB 25 and change value from 100 to 127.
9. Then press the CAR button and View->Vehicle status->Factory settings->Lights->Reset
Everything worked as it should and license plate is now illuminated in bright pure white light
Reversing lights
I found out that the license plate lights are W16W and 310 lumens but W5W are perfectly compatible. I wanted the reversing lights to be as bright as I could find. I used some old non CANBUS bulb of 6 SMD 5630 and found that it produced no error. For this reason I bought non CANBUS LED lamps of 10 SMD 5630 (rated at 320 lumens):
www.ebay.com/itm/29127552…geName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Installation is dead easy, no error produced and the result is here:
In order to check if bulbs really produce 5000K light (apart from the visual inspection that no blue hue was present) I took a photograph with my DSLR and imported it in Adobe Camera RAW. By using the White balance tool on the license plate I found that the color temperature is 5000 Kelvin:
So, time to relax and enjoy these subtle changes!
Edit October 12th, 2015:
In daytime the reversing lights are still shining bright (important). The license plate bulbs are barely seen (not important)
Comments 9
White light is shit for the people behind you. Light should be warm…
Don't you think that luminosity is a key factor? I for example chose all exterior bulbs with similar to stock luminosity.Therefore my license plate number led will not blind you and my reversing lights even if they blind you (which I doubt) they are there to warn you that I am reversing (plus they are shining only for a few seconds)
If these are only for reversing — sounds good:)
You were wright. I received the package and installed — one of them white and another is blue :(
:-( On LED lamps I can not fully trust Aliexpress sellers
I'll try to discuss this situation with the seller. Maybe he can send another item…
Well, I trust this spanish eBay store: when he sells 5000K it's really 5000K. Shipping from Spain to Greece is very fast (8 days) comparing to shipping from China (20-30 days). The majority of chinese LED bulbs have a slight blue hue (in the description they most usually write 6000-6500K)
Maybe it`s true. For you) Cause there is another situation with Russia. We are not the Europian country so our china neighbours are getting clouser to us. And that`s a really sad story…
By the way, I tried to buy OEM license plate lights with about 100 good answers. I hope it`ll be good)
Well, good work I think) I`m going to do the same but I ordered my lamps from aly — they faster and the delivery is cheaper. There is no surprise with error with plate lights anywhere)