How does the Xenon Depot XTR VF work?
Today I have one of the most unique LED turn signal bulbs I've ever seen here at Headlight Revolution. This bulb is the new Xenon Depot XTR VF bulb, and today, I'm going to show you guys just how bright it is and how you can get it set up correctly and installed in your headlights at home.
Now before we dig right into getting this thing installed in your headlights at home, I want to show you guys what exactly you get when you purchase the Xenon Depot XTR VF bulb.
As you can see here, it's got a very adjustable collar on it. This product is a unique bulb design that we've never seen here at Headlight Revolution before. This thing is wild. And I'll walk you through the whole thing.
Installation
This adjustable collar here (shown below) has got many different slots for different set screws. The set screws imitate and mimic the plastic notches that feed into your headlight. So where you'd typically insert this and turn it to lock it in place, you're going to put those set screws in the same location as the plastic, and you'll turn this bulb and lock it into place in the headlight housing.
(Above: Showing set screws along the adjustable collar of the bulb)
Now, depending on what you're installing this in at home, you might have a socket like this (factory bulb shown below), but with different configurations as far as the plastic tabs go, and thanks to all of these set screw holes, you can perfectly imitate that.
(Above: Showing factory vs. the XD XTR VF bulb)
So, you've got a bulb that's going to lock into the same place that the factory socket did. The reason this bulb is called the VF bulb is it stands for virtual filament. What this is here is it's a little reflector on the top of the bulb itself. It's not a light source in itself, and it's not an LED up here.
We've got some acrylic down here (shown above) below it, and the light source itself is down here in this tube. It's incredibly unique. We've never seen that before, and I'm excited to see how well it imitates this factory halogen bulb.
What's In the Box?
When you open the box to your Xenon Depot bulbs, you're going to get the XTR VF bulb itself, and you're going to get this baggy here.
This baggy includes all of the additional hardware you may need when you go to install this bulb. And this bulb is designed to be universal and fit most applications right out of the box. Thankfully with this supplied hardware, you've got a few different rubber washers, a few different metal washers, and a couple of extra set screws so that no matter what, you can customize this bulb to fit your application.
Now for most applications, you're going to find that this foam piece below the collar (shown above) is sufficient as far as bases go to seal the headlight.
(Above: Demonstrating pulling the washer over adjustable collar. This will create a seal for the bulb into the headlight housing)
You can pull it up, take the washer and pull it over the adjustable collar like this, and it's going to stay right there. That's going to provide the seal you need when you install it in your headlight. It's going to twist into place. These set screws will engage the plastic notches in the headlight. Doing this will cause it to sandwich down, and it'll seal up just fine.
Align the Virtual Filament
Now, the way you set this bulb up is you take your original halogen bulb, you take your XTR VF bulb, put them side by side, and what you want to do is take this virtual filament right here and align it with filament in your light bulb. Now, if you've got a dual filament bulb (say you've got a bulb that does parking light and turn signal), you want to align it with the bottom filament. The bottom filament is the brighter filament, and that will provide the best possible result. As you can see here (shown below), I've got the virtual filament aligned pretty well with that lower filament.
The bases are aligned reasonably well, and I can twist the adjustable collar to get the set screws aligned with the plastic notches.
Now once you've got the bulb set up the way you want it, you can tighten up these set screws. You don't have to go too crazy with them. Just take the supplied Allen key, turn them in a little ways, work your way around.
What I found is that by holding this next to the factory setup, the factory plug with the factory bulb, you can get this really close. So you can always tweak it later. It's super easy to work with. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort. So if you want to get it in your headlight, take a look at it, tweak it from there, that's an excellent idea.
Installation
Now you might be wondering, what does this possibly plug into? This bulb doesn't have a plug that you're going to find on any vehicle. This design is specific to this bulb and designed to work with the different adapters that are available for this bulb. Like I said earlier, this bulb works in almost every application. Because of that, it's very adjustable.
So we've got our vehicle-specific connector here (Shown below). In this case, it's going to work with a 74-43 bulb, which is what our 18 F-150 headlight takes.
(Above: Vehicle-specific connector for the 2018 F-150)
Now, as you probably know, with LED bulbs, if you throw an LED bulb in a truck, more often than not, you're going to get a hyper flash. You're going to get a bulb-out warning. It doesn't have the required resistance to work properly with the vehicle. It's not a problem. You can use a T like this one (shown below), connect it to the bulb.
These are nice weatherproof connectors on these connections here. You don't have to worry about anything getting in them. The resistor connects to this section of the T, and finally, this end would go to your 74-43 bulb base.
Now at this point for the 2018 F-150, you should be good to go. This bulb is going to install. It's going to imitate that factory turn signal pattern. It's going to be a lot brighter, and thanks to this resistor, we're not going to have any hyper flash issues.
But what if you've got a vehicle that uses the turn signal or uses the front parking light as a DRL? Thanks to the technology in this module here (pictured below), you can now use a bulb with a switchback function on a vehicle that you couldn't use before, such as a Toyota Tundra. With those, all you could do was amber. You couldn't do switchback because it maintains a constant 12 volts to that turn signal light.
If you wanted to install this module, you'd make the connection right here. So we've got our resistor, and everything's still connected. You would disconnect this, plug the module in and join the other side of the module back to the main harness.
XTR VF VS. FACTORY
XTR VF VS. FACTORY: BEFORE & AFTER
SWITCHBACK
TAILLIGHT TURN SIGNAL
DRL
As you can see, Xenon Depot has found one of the most clever ways possible to create a front turn signal for your vehicle that is not only super bright, it's instant-on, instant off, and it's very customizable. No matter what you've got at home, in your driveway, in your garage, this bulb's going to work for you. It's going to install and perform very well.
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