Led Converted Headlights Will Fail Mot

As of 1 January 2021, section 4.1.4 of the MOT Inspection manual reads: “Existing halogen headlamp units should not be converted to be used with high intensity discharge (HID) or light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. If such a conversion has been done, you must fail the headlamp.”

-from the Daily Telegraph 27th January

Interesting, and not that I have done it, but I wonder what the reasoning behind that is

It’s been the case for a while, just now it’s in black and white

https://www.autobulb...egal-in-the-uk/

Was posted on here a few weeks back.

I have posted about this on another site, but I expect its because of the dazzling of on coming traffic, a LED emits light in a 120 degree pattern, you either need a reflector that concentrates the beam which makes the simple changing of the bulbs for an upgrade redundant or you have to lens the bulb itself to focus the beam ( which I've never seen for sale for automotive use)

Shooter

Can you get away with it if your mini was originally on candles sealed beam units as it specifically states Halogen not SBs

These suggest same beam angle / pattern

https://www.classicc...onversion-9-32v

I guess the work around is to fit lamps which come with LED's already, not Halogen converted. There are several 7" fully complete LED units out there for various cars/bikes. 

Can you get away with it if your mini was originally on candles sealed beam units as it specifically states Halogen not SBs

Doesn't matter what the car was originally fitted with, what you're not allowed to do is fit a LED (or HID) into a lamp unit originally designed to take a halogen bulb.

So i have the ClassicCarLED warm light LED replacements in mine. They passed MOT in November 2020 even after I brought it to the testers attention, he said they were very good, he couldn’t tell. Of course now it’s black & white it will be different when I go again. Not arguing with that

However the ClassicCarLED ones seem different to the ones everyone hates, they do make a good fist of making a comparable light beam to the halogens. They work well and the light beam is good and far as I can tell, not dazzling.

...but come Nov 21, if I have to go back to Nightbreaker I will.

So i have the ClassicCarLED warm light LED replacements in mine. They passed MOT in November 2020 even after I brought it to the testers attention, he said they were very good, he couldn’t tell. Of course now it’s black & white it will be different when I go again. Not arguing with that

However the ClassicCarLED ones seem different to the ones everyone hates, they do make a good fist of making a comparable light beam to the halogens. They work well and the light beam is good and far as I can tell, not dazzling.

...but come Nov 21, if I have to go back to Nightbreaker I will.

If they give the right beam image and they're not obvious normal LED cool white then they may go unnoticed. Especially if your head lamps happen to have a shield covering the bulb so it can't be seen as my old lucas H4's have. I don't run leds by the way.

Mine aren’t particularly hidden, they’re Quadoptics. We will see.

 

(edit) can't for the life of me get the photo to display in the correct orientation...so apologies 

Edited by Pops_Guild, 28 January 2021 - 12:00 AM.

These are what the LEDs from ClassicCarLEDs look like by the way

Edited by Pops_Guild, 28 January 2021 - 12:02 AM.

Interesting, and not that I have done it, but I wonder what the reasoning behind that is

If I were to guess they're restricting the use of them because they're most often installed inappropriately which makes their light output dangerous for oncoming drivers.

Interesting, and not that I have done it, but I wonder what the reasoning behind that is

If I were to guess they're restricting the use of them because they're most often installed inappropriately which makes their light output dangerous for oncoming drivers.

I imagine it's because they're so many badly designed LED headlight bulbs out there. The manufacturers haven't considered (or cared) what a bloody nuisance a badly designed product is.