I recently looked into getting spare bulbs for my Uebler bike rack (the X21S to be precise), and the official set (E1641) seemed a tad expensive (between €70 and €115 depending on supplier). After some brief research, I discovered that all the bulbs are just generic car bulbs (I suppose that would be more obvious if I’d ever owned a car with regular bulbs, but I learned to drive late enough that my first car is already on LEDs) – and Uebler even document the required types in their manual – with one small catch for the unwary.
To save you me time, here’s the corrected table of bulbs:
| Purpose | Type |
| Rear + Brake light (2x) – Red | P21/5W |
| Indicators (2x) – Orange | HY21W |
| Reversing light (1x) – Red | PR21W |
| Fog lamp (1x) – White | P21W |
| Licence plate illumination (2x) | C5W |
These are reasonably easy to find at many car parts suppliers – most of them (except for the PR21W) can even be found at many general online stores. Some suppliers only offer packs of 10 for some bulbs, so maybe find some friends with the same carrier? (Be careful when searching: sometimes search engines will try to push you to an alternative bulb – they don’t seem to like the HY21W for example.)
A significant number of other Uebler bike racks, but not all of them, use the same set of bulbs. (The replacement set lists all of: F22, F32, F32 XL, F42, X21S, X31S, P22S, P32S.)
The gory details
The manual does actually list the required bulbs, but it contains one mistake:
Try as I might, I really struggled to find a PR21W in white. I could find plenty of PR21W’s in red, and plenty of P21W’s in white. After much puzzlement, I realised that maybe – just maybe – Uebler had made a typo. The difference between P21W and PR21W – colour aside – is also that they have different bases, namely BA15S vs BAW15s – they’re similar, but the pins are angled differently. So I figured I should go and check the actual bulbs, but first…
I took another look at photos of the official set, which is where I noticed: one of the bulbs is in fact a P21W. Problem solved.
I have not yet contacted Uebler for comment, but plan to (reply not expected).
Further thoughts
I’m a little disappointed that Uebler didn’t opt to install LED lights, but I can also understand that that might drive the price up (after all, replacement LED lighting units for my car cost thousands…). Given that these bike racks will see much less use than the car they’re used on, that’s probably an acceptable tradeoff. In fact, I’m sceptical that I’ll ever need my replacements. I’d rather have spare bulbs on hand, as a form of insurance – but they’ll probably go unused. In fact, even for the bulbs that are duplicated, I was planning to only buy one spare. In the event, it’s difficult to buy these bulbs alone as opposed to in a multi-pack, so I ended up with many pairs.
It is possible to buy LED equivalents of (all? some?) of the bulbs above, but they end up being much more expensive – and given that I don’t expect these bulbs to burn out in the first place, doing so seemed like a total waste of money (or you could say: even more of a waste of money than my buying any spares in the first place). There are some cheaper LED options on Aliexpress, but I am unsure of their legality.
Postscript
As I live in somewhat of an e-commerce island, getting all the replacement bulbs turned out to be a little more complicated than I may have implied above. Three of the bulbs were easy to find, at a low price. One bulb was more difficult, and the semi-affordable versions are delivered loose. I gave up on the fog light because it’s hard to find where I live, and I don’t expect to ever use the bike carrier in foggy conditions. Result – I’m ready for many future trips:
