Originally Posted by aviography

I don't have anything on hand at the moment to counter your comments that H6W are used as DRL in Europe.

However, realistically the 6 watts (as confirmed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ght_bulb_types) incandescent H6W bulbs that came standard with the car can only produce a very small amount of light that surely can only be very visible at night, how is that going to be effective as a DRL

DRLs are NOT used for roadway illumination but for being seen at a fair distance by an oncoming driver. For that purpose a single forward focussed 1W LED will often suffice.

when the DRL on modern (non LED DRL) cars are often the high beam bulbs running at reduced voltage (or duty-cycle), so at half the voltage (or duty-cycle) the high beams bulbs are still run at close to 30 watts, far brighter than the 6 watts H6W bulbs can achieve.

You'd be surprised to learn that the 55 watt incandescent high beam bulb running a 1/2 voltage oftentimes produces enough HEAT to melt the glass encapsulation..

Incandescent bulb filaments have a POSITIVE temperature coefficient, as the applied voltage rises so does the filament resistance. Lower the voltage to 1/2 and the bulb begins producing more HEAT than LIGHT.

Put 30W high beam 6 volt bulbs in and note the light output difference.

After discovering that the glass encapsulation was melting on my 2001 RX300 highbeam DRLs I disabled the circuit and installed collimnated 1W LED with the fixture.

Unless daylight in Europe is much closer to night time in North America.

Can any US owners confirm your US cars actually use the H6W as DRLs? i.e. do they turn on either automatically or when the handbrake is lowered after engine start?

On my 2000 Canadian car, the pair of HID headlights come on full strength as soon as I start the car and remain on regardless of ambient lighting level until I turn off the engine, i.e. the HID headlights in my car ARE the DRL, and very bright, which then completely overpower the little incandescent H6W bulbs whenever the engine is running.

My first 996 was a 1999 C2 and like yours the HID was used for DRLs. With my '01 I jumped the seat heat power to the H6W socket and installled 1W LEDs with coliminator lens inplace of the H6Ws.

Pulling and turning the headlight switch counter-clockwise to the two positions from the off position also individually turn on the left or right sides city lights, front side marker lights, and rear tail lights on the side selected.

Originally Posted by BAD.TAG

No, these are only on when you turn on the parking lights. Not full time.

WWest - can you get a picture of what these look like when on. A shot of the car facing a wall would be helpful to see how much light is actually broadcast

Originally Posted by aviography

Not these ones specifically, but same ones with the wrong base with the two little pips 180 deg apart rather than 150 deg apart of the H6W in our cars, they were US$3 a pair shipped to me in Toronto, so I bought two pairs with second pair as back up.

So far all 4 units work, the head section of one unit is loose which then turns continuously when trying to install into the socket, but the light itself still works which I found strange.

The vendor is going to replace this unit for me, the pair in the car has had about 10 hours of run time and are just fine so far.

For the low price, I don't really mind even if they burn out because they don't really serve any real purpose in North America! And I don't think the heat build up is very high anyway within the huge volume inside the headlight housing.

Originally Posted by aviography

There is no need for "50W" LED for this application, these are supposed to be "city lights" to consume a small amount of energy while parked at night so other drivers can see your parked car on the side of the street. 50W is overkill and will drain your battery quicker if you actually use them with engine turned off.

I also have a hard time believe the individual LED chips are 5W each, I think they are playing with words that the power consumption with the current limiting resistor is 5W each, not that the LED chip itself actually consumes 5W, else it would be either a very inefficient LED, or an ubber ultra bright LED that would cost much, much more, or overheats in no time!

As well, at least on my car, these lights come on when my main headlights are on, they are completely overpowered by the HID headlights, serving no purpose at that point, no idea why Porsche wired them in such manner.

Originally Posted by aviography

I may have spoken too soon, it appears the two units installed in the car have stopped working, I will remove the bulbs when I have some time this weekend so I can use a battery to power the lights directly to verify if they are in fact burnt out.

Originally Posted by ait109

Like many of you, one of my parking lamps failed and I decided to replace them with LEDs. I used these from ebay.

A few items you can see from the attached photos:

1) These are significantly longer than the original bulbs. They are slightly more difficult to wriggle in because of that and they stick out into the lamp housing.
2) One of my bulb holders broke and the piece fell into the lamp housing. I was able to get the piece back out and used crazy glue to reattach it. This piece is what secures the bulb in the housing so I hope this lasts. Upon close examination it appears that the bulb holder is thin and fragile.
3) I took a photo of the parking lamps on comparing the LED and the original bulb. The original bulb is at least 5 years old and it is noticeably brighter than the LED.

It doesn't really show in any of the photos I took (and I took a lot using a Canon T4i), but from a few yards away, the human eye can easily detect 4 separate LEDs as the light source.

Overall I like the look, the install was easy (except for the broken bulb holder part) and it was inexpensive. I wish the bulbs were brighter. Lets see how long they last.

Ed