D9 lights renewal - question

[OdinEidolon]

Hi all!
I'm thinking of fitting new lights on the car.

HEADLIGHTS
- Osram Nightbreaker H7 high beams
- Osram Nightbreaker H7 low beams
- Osram cool blue W5W parking lights. I heard that LEDs in this position can suffer from heat from the high and low beams and thus smoke and fog the light?
- Philips silvervision indicators

REAR LIGHTS
- LED stop lights: http://cgi.ebay.it/2x-Cree-LED-Q5-12-SM ... 3a67ed4ac6
- LED tail lights
- LED foglights: http://cgi.ebay.it/2x-LED-Q5-12-SMD-7W- ... 3a67ed4e52
- Philips silvervision indicators
- some W5W licence plate lights

So questions:
- is it true that the plastic of the front parking light led can burn and thus smoke?
- how are rear lights arranged? I don't have the time to take them out right now. Tail light acts as a stop too? How many lights are there?
- Does the 406 saloon have 1 or 2 foglights? Mine seem to have only one but the other one may be broken!

cheers and thanks.

[OdinEidolon]

Just realized that SB could answer most of the questions (but not all of them).
Rear lights appear to have 5 lights:
2 P21W (also called BA15s): fog light and reverse light
1 PY21W (also called BAU15s): indicator
2 21/5W LL (also called BAY15d): tail light and stop light

[highlander]

HEADLIGHTS
- Osram Nightbreaker H7 high beams
- Osram Nightbreaker H7 low beams

Good bulbs, I have the NightBreakerPlus H7 on both my full beam and my dipped beam headlamps. They make an appreciable difference (at least 30% brighter) on the Coupe headlamps.

- Osram cool blue W5W parking lights

I bought a set of these:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260824514560

They are very bright, very crisp, clear, pure white lights; they make the dipped/full-beam headlamps look very yellow.

I heard that LEDs in this position can suffer from heat from the high and low beams and thus smoke and fog the light?

I bloody hope not! These ones seem to be fine so far, but I haven't had them in all that long. It might be different in the Coupe because the Coupe's dipped bulbs are of the projector type (full beams are reflectors), whereas the saloon has all reflectors. I suspect you'll be fine as long as you don't have the full-beam bulbs on a lot of the time (I rarely use mine).

I haven't changed any of my other bulbs yet, so can't really comment on anything else other than:

- Does the 406 saloon have 1 or 2 foglights? Mine seem to have only one but the other one may be broken!

Only one of the two rear foglights on the 406 are wired up, and it's always the one on the driver's side (mine is the right, yours will be the left). You may find that there is a bulb in the socket. The bulb will be fine. If you want to get the two of them to work simultaneously, you need to run a wire from the connector block on the working side over to the connector block on the opposite side. I've not done this myself, but have heard of others who have (I think Tatsfield on the Coupe Club forums said he'd done it).

[OdinEidolon]

Thanks HL, great info as always.
I'll investigate further about the W5W issue. The coupé headlights are however very different to the saloon and estate, as you said.

I was thinking of these w5w: they have a small heatsink and could thus be better?
http://cgi.ebay.it/2x-3W-LED-SMD-T10-W5 ... 3cb53b84ef

non thermically regulated SMDs could die from heat, SMDs are pretty sensible to heat. But then that's just me a little bit paranoid

[highlander]

The heatsink on those bulbs would allow heat generated by the SMD LEDs to dissipate more readily - but would equally make it easier for it to absorb the heat generated by the main beam and dipped beam bulbs. Plastic casing for the LEDs should be better in this respect as the LEDs themselves don't generate much in the way of heat (they only require a couple of watts in comparison to the 55 watts used by the main bulbs).

[OdinEidolon]

The heatsink on those bulbs would allow heat generated by the SMD LEDs to dissipate more readily - but would equally make it easier for it to absorb the heat generated by the main beam and dipped beam bulbs. Plastic casing for the LEDs should be better in this respect as the LEDs themselves don't generate much in the way of heat (they only require a couple of watts in comparison to the 55 watts used by the main bulbs).

All true, but the metal heatsink, while maybe heating up more than the simple plastic body, would not smoke!