LED Headlights... who's using them?
 

Anyone here using LED headlights yet? I've read that they are getting better in design and light output. What brands are good/bad and why? Seems they are more reliable than HID with the same relative output of light but easier to use with no ballasts needed.

Thoughts? Experiences?

Berz out.

I'm having a retrofit done on a spare set of headlights I had, using the new LED projectors out of the Nissan Pathfinder.

I'll let you know once I receive them, probably won't be till the spring.

I had a customer who wanted LED low beams put in to replace the stock halogens. Similar to HIDs, it needs a bypass relay to operate correctly for a lot of vehicles. How exactly this would work using an led bulb -- im not quite sure. We had the lights flicker on and off, My thoughts are that the low output on the bulbs confuses the system and attempts to turn on/off the bulbs.

Although the LEDS do not require a ballast, there's a giant fan on the back of alot of them. The manufacture did not have this in mind, and it can cause some fitment issues (the moisture cap would no longer fit onto the headlight assembly in my case).

Although when they did work, they were really bright. The bulbs I put in were phillips but the customer ended up returning them. I believe he said he paid 180 for the pair. I would assume they would be much more reliable by being more shock proof and also less likely to fail from fingerprints on the bulbs.

just my observations. They are quite expensive and hopefully will come down in price

jalopnik on youtube did a review of them using an old 4runner. sorry i don't have the link ATM... search?

EDIT:

I have LED as factory option on my cars (my Mini, wife's Audi S7, and a company's Acura TLX).

From what I could tell, I think LED output in term of lumens isn't as strong as HID, but you get a more consistent white light with no coloring hues whatsoever.

Also it doesn't have the warm-up period that HID headlights have. It's at (or near) full capacity the moment you switch it on. This is especially useful when going in and out of garages or tunnels.

The advantage of LED is that it's much smaller, and therefore more creative patterns can be incorporated into the design (VAG, Benz, Acura... etc, BMW Group pretty much just have it straight on). So, if your headlight has enough space, I think the Porsche one looks great, although finding a pair for retrofit could be costly.

No experiences with them but I know that The Retrofit Source has Morimoto LED lights for $100USD a pair. They have a beefy heatsink in the back and do not require active fan cooling.

I've installed a few led headlight sets on vehicles of friends. Yaris, Fit, Crv, Caravan. All plug and play, straight forward installs.

The heatsinks attached to the back on them do create some fitment issues, depending on the vehicle itself. It comes with a relay module and some come with a ballast, depending on the led kit itself.

I would hold off on LED lighting until it improves. The thought of a light needing a fan or a heatsink just seems to backwards tech to me.

u need a capacitor to stop this from happening, or some other source with a constant 12V when the lowbeams r turned on. reason being is that particular headlight is designed to send 12V pulses instead of a constant 12V. so the light bulbs will see 12V 0V 12V 0V 12V 0V and so on. halogen bulbs dont flick because they are not sensitive enough. notice how when u cut power off to a halogen bulb it slowly dims away, thats the reason it doesnt flicker. if u just add a relay to the lowbeam circuit the relay will continuously click on and off when its energized, that is y u need to add a capacitor to store power so the lights sees a constant 12V.

I am using a pair for low beams on my 2015 F150 2.7 Lariat. The stock lighting (halogen) really suck on the new F150 but holy hell the LEDs are very bright and I am really impressed. I choose the OPT7 and some LED fog lights. They are both 6000k so white output and no flickering either. There a couple of small issues that need to dealt with when installing the LEDs but no big deal.

I have been driving around for about 1000 kms with them and have no problems. Drove to and from Kelowna last week through snow and lots of rain. Great upgrade, think of doing the same to my MR2. I have HIDs in the MR2 and the LEDs are just as bright. I can post some pics of the LEDs running on the F150 if you like.

As TOPEC said, this system is due to the low beams being used as DRL. The continuous on and off pulses are to create a less than 100% light output on halogen bulbs. When LEDs or HIDs are used, they need a constant power source.

oem led's use a pad of led's and use a projector or reflector to output the light onto the road. the control unit controls the level and also any left or right shifting of the light.

what i noticed with the oem LED headlights:
- light output is consistant. there are no shadows, shades, bright spots, that you would normally see even with a HID xenon headlamp.
- they tend to light the road up right in front of you better, farther away for distance wise, you need that oem control unit to control the level. eg. MB system adjusts the level further if it detects no on coming traffic (so you dont blind them). there is a second system for automatic highbeams as well

So thus, if you are doing a retrofit from halogens to LED, the projector will help (if your doing a full retrofit), but you do need the otherside of the system, the auto leveling part, to make full use of them.

The super high end oem LED systems have a 2ndary control unit, using sensors and cameras and such, to cut out part of the LED pad to prevent glaring of on coming traffic. pretty cool system. basically can use the cameras to track the oncoming traffic as it moves, and cuts out that part of the pattern while keeping the rest lit up. you can think of it as censoring off.

That's awesome tech. Keeps you from blinding oncoming cars while still giving you optimum lighting?

1Bad, what brand did you purchase and where did you get them.

I watched that Jalopnik vid yesterday and I gotta say those LED's look cheap as fuck. Could be old tech. Those "heat sinks" are a joke.

Most of the newer LED headlights can be "tuned" or adjusted to give proper cutoff so you don't get the splash effect that shitty HID's have. My OEM Dodge Ram and Caravan headlights are a joke.

Berz out.

I wouldn't mind some LED bulbs for my f150 but the only thing is that our trucks use one bulb for everything and I really don't want to be the kind of guy with daytime running light HID's/LED's

My Dodge has different Bulbs for High and Low. Could care less about the high beams as I just use my Light bar so the High Beams are pretty much useless but having the brighter Low Beam for when I'm not using the light bar is what I'm looking to achieve.

Berz out.

Berz, funny part is I just bought a Ram 1500 as well! The stock low beams suck so I swapped out the bulbs for Philips LED bulbs as well as Cree LED fog bulbs.

Much improved over stock, but not as good as a good HID projector such as Audi or VW or BMW etc. The stock projector for the Rams just suck balls in terms of optics. Easier than HID because everything is plug and play and it fits nicely into the headlight housings and the moisture caps can be tightened all the way. If you want details PM me, it's not that expensive for both the low beam and fogs, and the package comes with decoders to stop flickering/bulb out messages. So far it's been great for me.

Here's a pic of my current setup:
http://i.imgur.com/yrlmMQFh.jpg?2
http://i.imgur.com/sEm2s2Ph.jpg?1

My friend just bought a set of Morimoto LED fog lights for his STI, it's the whole housing replacement instead of just an LED bulb. Ran him over 2 bills lol, but the output is insane. He says it's brighter than his OEM HIDs (which is surprisingly bright, he has an 2011 STI). To me they look about the same, the cut off on the LED fogs are amazing

Adam, I was using Putco H4 hi/low in my em1 before I sold it. I was fairly happy with their effective output, and the light was fairly white with a slight hue of blue in it. I'd run them again, but new car has factory HID in them.

Are they these?

Subaru XB LED Fog Lights - High Performance Fog Lamp Upgrades - The Retrofit Source

Low beams - OPT7 from Amazon.com
Amazon.com: OPT7 LED Headlight Bulbs w/ Clear Arc-Beam Kit - H11 (H8, H9) - 60w 7,000Lm 6K Cool White CREE - 2 Yr Warranty: Automotive

I had to adjust/lower the low beam after installing the LEDs. They're bright, like having 2 white dwarf suns in the headlights, I felt like this world was not ready for them.

Replacing the entire stock fixture with LEDs is getting really popular with the Jeep crowd, because the stock housings are crap. JW Speaker is probably the top-rated name, but they can be spendy (I think upwards of $800 each).

And then you get this goofy shit for a whopping $45 (apparently on sale from $400...???):

http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/1009/8661927177.jpg
View Screen Capture

Reportedly these blast light everywhere BUT down the road....

Yessir, they have great fitment and the quality is amazing. I was kind of skeptical of him spending 2 bills on fog lights, but he had a cracked housing and the housings alone were almost the same price from Subaru lol

Thanks for the knowledge, RS. LEDs need a heat sink or fans? Complete news to me..

LEDs run very hot to get the amount of light output required, thus they have gigantic heatsinks on them to help dissipate heat. back then when people were installing ultra bright LEDs into their interior lights and having them burned out within a month is cus the lights are installed in a small enclosed space with no ventilation, and of course the poor quality of LEDs

The LEDs don't... the power supplies do. Depending on the design, it's probably either current-limiting resistors, or a current regulator.

LEDs are a constant voltage drop, but all have a maximum current they can handle. Increase the voltage, more current flows. Two ways to avoid blowing them up is to always run far lower current than their maximum, which means reduced brightness, or use a constant-current supply so you can run near maximum all the time without worry of voltage fluctuations causing it to fry.