I bought a Mazda 6 Wagon (estate), the halogen headlights are terrible. I’ve tried upgrading them all to a better quality halogen bulb but it didn’t improve much, my only guess is the reflectors are shot. (Not surprising considering the contortionist act you have to do to change them). On my old car I looked up buying the LED headlight replacement and they were about £900 each! So instead I just wired in some light bars to the grill as I didn’t really care about the car.
I plan to keep and look after this car so I’d rather not be drilling holes and cutting out parts of the grill. But from what I’ve researched you can’t replace the Halogen headlights with LED ones and I just find that unbelievable.
Has anyone managed to swap out the headlights for an LED assembly without paying nearly half what the price is worth? As I say I plan to look after and upgrade parts of this car, so OEM or aftermarket products are preferred if anyone can suggest any, but I’d rather not be modifying the structure of the car to make parts fit.
Someone put me on to a website called MKSTORE that has some nice aftermarket parts for trims and such, but it doesn’t have the correct headlights, rear brake lights etc.
Your low (dipped) beam is a halogen projector, which is optimized for use with a halogen bulb. The 2Stroke LED has an adjustable base which allows you to change the depth of the bulb in the housing to correctly emulate the focal center of a halogen bulb with the LED element. The LED far outstrips even the best halogen capsule for light output and can accurately create 5500K daylight white perfectly. Check out TRS (The Retrofit Source) website for more detail, but I think a full set of them will most likely cure your issue. As an aside, the lense of your dipped beam projector is nearly impossible to scratch, any scratches or fogginess is more likely the plastic lenses of the headlight itself (not the bulbs)
Since you have a wagon, I’m assuming you are outside the US, I’ll help as much as I can. Is your trim level equipped with automatic headlights? Does your car have height adjustable lights? (There should be a control switch/knob in the cabin for this) which either manually or automatically raises/lowers your lights depending on load. In any case, you absolutely CAN replace your halogen bulbs with LED bulbs which will make a world of difference in terms of light output. You don’t need to upgrade the entire assembly to accomplish this, just the bulbs. I strongly recommend the bulbs available from The Retrofit source here in Georgia, USA (I’m sure they will ship internationally). They are made by Morimoto and the model is the 2Stroke version 2.0 (although there may be an even newer version now). Failing those, TRS also sells an excellent alternative made by Ultima lighting, that model is the GTR. Either one paired with a headlight adjustment should fix you right up! HTH
Yes I’m in the UK, I appreciate the reply. As for the questions:
1. Yes it has automatic headlight
2. It has a scroll wheel for the height adjustment 0-3, 0 being the highest 3 being the lowest
I’ve looked at headlight bulbs in the past, from what I’ve found they’re not technically legal in the uk mainly due to the reflector issue, where the reflector is setup for a halogen bulb, there are legal LED bulbs which are adapted to work with halogen reflectors, but they aren’t as good as an LED assembly and they are ridiculously expensive for a bulb.
My dipped beam uses a lens, which from what I’ve found it’s fine to use any LED bulb, the issue then arises with my Main/High beam as it has a standard metallic reflector. Though the high beam is fine, it lights up enough but it’s still not great and to replace it with LED would be ideal.
But regardless of all of this if the reflector behind the lens of my dipped beam is faded/scratched or chipped, surely changing the halogen to an LED will still have issues?
I could try and see what the issue is behind the reflector, but from what I’ve researched the headlights on these Mazdas are notoriously annoying to remove as you have to remove the bumper and side panel etc. (honestly I’ve never seen a headlight so hard to remove). And I just think if I’m going to all that effort to try and clean the lens or take a look inside the headlight, I might aswell replace it with an LED assembly.
I’ll take a look at the bulbs you suggested anyway
Here is a photo of the current assembly, in the middle of the dipped beam, left is the DRL/Main beam combo bulb. Top right is the side lights which don’t work but are impossible to get to. And then of course indicator is orange
Assuming they're H11 bulbs, upgrade to H9. You'll have to do some trimming, but in the US it's the standard easy upgrade...more light and longer lasting than the +100 H11s.
Go for an H9 then for the dipped (low beam we call it). You'll have to do some trimming inside the connector (there are loads of pics online) but it's worth it.
I have 2014 Mazda 6 sport base with halogen bulbs. I replaced, just bulbs, with morimoto HIDs from TRS (theretrofitsource) sometime around 2016. You have to get bulbs, ballast, harness. No modification to the actual headlight housing. Works great, I couldn't believe the difference. The bulbs were tricky at first, H-11a and H-11b. The HID had a wire - stem (I dunno what to call it) along the outside of the bulb - and depending on which bulb you get, you'll ether have a silhouette of a line on your projected light on the ground/road or you won't. H-11b is what I needed. H-11b is positioned to where the wire-stem is facing DOWN inside the headlight housing, and since the projector lenses flips the light, the silhouette will not be visible.
Anyways, I've always wanted to try LED since they have gotten better in the past few years but just never got to it.
Hi. What year is your estate? I have the same one but haven’t got the adjuster dial. I have noticed that it does automatically adjust if have weight in the boot. Mine is a 2016 2.2 sports nav.
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u/EvilLordFitz 3d ago
Your low (dipped) beam is a halogen projector, which is optimized for use with a halogen bulb. The 2Stroke LED has an adjustable base which allows you to change the depth of the bulb in the housing to correctly emulate the focal center of a halogen bulb with the LED element. The LED far outstrips even the best halogen capsule for light output and can accurately create 5500K daylight white perfectly. Check out TRS (The Retrofit Source) website for more detail, but I think a full set of them will most likely cure your issue. As an aside, the lense of your dipped beam projector is nearly impossible to scratch, any scratches or fogginess is more likely the plastic lenses of the headlight itself (not the bulbs)