Have you guys heard about the new LED headlight blubs? Anybody owns it? I was wondering if anyone knows if the LED headlights are any brighter than stock? or as bright as the HIDs? And whats your input on LED headlights?

LED headlights translates to less energy consumption and should be as bright if not brighter

 

how about a link?

 

LED's are very "directional" and stock housings are designed as curved reflectors.
When you use directional LED's you lose most of the benefit of the curved, reflective housings.
(beam spread, or lack thereof)

*I tried some LED's in the tail-lights and they looked like 1/3'rd the brightness.

 

I think he means Hi-output LED? Not sure if their even available yet

 

i have never heard of no such malarchy.
but if its a cluster-type led bulb, then it might be somewhere to the equivalent of a halogen. not to sure cuz it needs to be tested first ya know.

 

i have not herd anything about that? i would stick with the HID kit, cant go wrong.

 

There are only LED Headlight bulb for fogs. not for low/high beam.

 

I think the Escalade is using LEDs from Hella for the headlamps. They still have issues with heat. I would not even consider an aftermarket LED unit at this point.

 

I'd leave led's for the tails and just stick with retro's up front.

 

Yeah you can't go wrong except for using them in the first place haha.

 

For now, I agree...stick to halogen or oe hid. There are cars gradually coming onto the market with LED heads (Lexus LS460h, Audi A8, Escalade (but that might be a concept as of now, not sure) to name a few), but the technology isnt quite there yet for it to really go mainstream. To show what I mean, Lexus uses 3 high powered LEDs in projectors to achieve their beam, and it still might be considered inferior to HID in terms of output (lumens). Those LED bulbs you see online have a few small leds wrapped around a core, basically destroying the optics of your reflector. The reflector is designed for a light source at a very specific spot. By using a multi-led bulb, there are 5 or 6 different output sources, none of them lining up with the proper focal length. Same goes for HID

 

What about the shitty version of LEDs that Audi uses on the lower models? I.E. A3, A4 have you seen those? They look half as bright as the other LEDs that they use.

 

do you mean the daytime running lights or are they actually headlights? the daytime running lights rae just a strip of lights that goes across the lense. If its just the strip of leds, thats just cosmetic and has nothing to do with output, even though they are actually pretty bright. very visible even in daylight

 

I dunno if they even make this, i know the taillights, but I dont think LED can put out that much energy they are only diodes? I have A-M taillights with led's on my 93 civic and they are hella bright. I also have 12000k HiD on my 88 CRX and they are hella bright. I wanna see pics of these LED headlights. They build LED boards for growing plants and they cost around 500 bucks so I would expect a super high price on some type of LED headlight.

 

luxeon LEDs are on the audi
They're not for performance but as DRL's.
And 12,000K being hella bright???? what?? how do you drive at night or when it rains?

 

Wonder what kind of plants those are

Ya I think were talking about the DRLs. Small strip under the headlight i'll try and find a pic. Because theyre really not bright my friend has them on his A4 compared to the one his dads S5 not even close to as bright.

 

12000k is not bright it has less visible light then 4-5k and is hard on your eyes....stick to a good bulb like the osram or silverstar or get a real hid kit with the proper sheilds to maintain the correct cutoff and light pattern.

 

If by hella bright you mean hella purple and hella glare for oncoming drivers, at the cost of usable light from, say, a 4300k OEM HID bulb, in a retrofitted housing, yea, they are hella bright.

And LOL at "can't go wrong with an HID kit" above.

1) It will probably fail because it's a cheap aftermarket kit.
2) It will not focus light because it's an HID bulb in a halogen housing, too much light for it to handle- glare and hot spots all over the place
3) HIDs on a stock harness will fry it out over time. Costing you hundreds.
4) It will be a fix it ticket as HID kits are illegal. You probably wouldnt' get caught with a retro because it's OEM quality, but a kit is always more obnoxiously bright and usually comes in an obnoxious color.

< Had a 'kit' on my old car, saw the nasty output, sold, and now have a car that's OEM HID equipped.

And for the LED headlights- that's a no go. The technology isn't there yet. There are some fog replacement bulbs, but they just don't perform as well as halogen and HID. It would be a LOT of money and effort to get the new LED projectors from the Lexus, for example, and in a few years, the tech will be a lot less costly and a lot more common, and probably more reliable.

 

I think hes talkin about led signals and tail lights ot actual head light bulbs..

 

1) You say probably, not necessarily however, I never even specified the brand I use, how do you know its cheap. Thats like saying any replacement bulb you use for any car will burn out because its aftermarket?
2)Im not using the stock headlight I also have aftermarket headlight housings on the car.
3)It will not fry out due to being hooked up to the stock harness for it is all based off of 12v and the power is converted by the ballast.
4) Many new cars everyday are coming out with stock HID making it only harder for the police to catch you or give you a ticket, I have never been flashed for my lights being too bright and I can see 100% better than with my stock halogens.

 

philken, I assume the aftermarket lights you are using came with a halogen porjector? What size bulb did it originally have? Just curious bc before I did my retro, I was using a halogen projector and the spread was horrible, but I have seen some halogen projectors that take hid bulbs quite nicely (mx-5 for example). would you mind posting a wall shot?

 

1.) The replacement bulb comparison is not a good one. Replacement bulbs from Autozone for halogen setups are DOT approved. OEM HIDs are DOT approved. No kit is DOT approved. Therefore all kits are cheap.

4.) Anyone with a clue can easily pick out a car with a kit vs. a car with OEM stuff. Kits stand out like a sore thumb.

 

So you are saying the DOT determines the quality and durability of the lights to determine if they are going to burn out because they are cheap? Funny and No, the DOT makes sure the products are safe for the road, they have no say so if the product is cheap and going to burn out. Just because they are illigal in the US does not mean they are illigal in other countries, MEANING that somewhere in the world they make quality HID's. Remember the DOT also approves many parts on Ford, Chevy and Dodge and they are not very reliable as you can tell... Any more arguments?
I also highly doubt you can tell the difference from HID kits from car to car unless you can actually see the vehicle. For example if a 08 Acura TL and my 88 Crx were driving next to each other coming up the interstate and you were coming from the opposite direction, YOU WOULD not be able to tell the difference if they were in the same color temp.

I dont have any pics and my crx is in the middle of reconstruction so there is no firing them up anytime soon. I have seen people with cheap plastic AM projectors and the HID's melted them, so you wanna make sure you have something half way durable. About the HID's in a halogen casing makes no sense to me in terms of being made for certain bulbs. Maybe the different bulb sizes make a difference? From my experience SRT-4's come with stock HID's and the Neons the same year have the same headlight assembly with halogen bulbs. TWO of the SAME headlight assemblies with different bulbs and no problems. Thats kind of like saying that by using a CFL light in your lamp instead of an indescent light will put out rays differently. Light is light and the reflection in the headlight is made to reflect it in the same direction no matter what the bulb is-----When changing to HID you dont change anything other than the color of the bulb in actuallity.

There are a few different measurements of light. The two confusing measurments is the tempurature and lumens output with is both measure is "K". In the instant of HID kits 12000k is refering to the tempurature, and its the different temps that the lights burn at the give it a different color. The lumens of the light is measured differently and is the measurement of how bright the light really is. A 12000k light CAN be as bright as a 4000k - 5000k light. For instance I have a hps light that puts out 3100k in temp but the lumens add up to for example 14000k. Than I have a set of floro lights in my house with a color temp of 3500k but it only displays 4000 lumens.

 

damn should i school you, too philkhen?

 

And this is where you start spreading false information that will harm anyone trying to figure out the truth and the best setup for them.

1) All non-OEM HID kits use cheap Chinese made parts. They aren't built to exacting OEM standards that ensure they have a long life and come without any poor fabrication. Even if you buy a 'kit' with OEM brand ballasts (such as Hella or Philips), you are most likely using non-OEM bulbs if they aren't 4,300, 4,500, or 6,000k (which are the only bulbs i know of that those companies produce). These are also not legit; these companies wouldn't produce kits like that if they were worried about it's performance and reliability, which is too variable as aftermarket kits. If it costs at least $75 bucks for new OEM HID bulbs, and around $200 for used OEM ballasts, it's no wonder that a $150 HID kit is not up to the same standards and quality. The truth is, if you know how to look, you can get a decent OEM bulb/ballast combo for only a little more than you would pay for some cheap Chinese kit.

I've seen people come onto various forums whining about how their cheap $100 or $150 dollar kit's ballast blew out and they can't get ahold of the seller anymore, because they were a fly-by-night company selling cheap ****.

2) What housings? I know of only one company that made aftermarket housings that were even decent at focusing HID light, and DEPO headlights are hit or miss doing that even within the same make and model. I've seen an EG DEPO projector headlight that created a decent cutoff, but not a good even dispersal, and another EG DEPO projector that splattered light everywhere like some 5 year old with a paintbrush. Again, an example of the problems with build quality between OEM and cheap aftermarket. I'll withhold judgment of your wonder headlights until I see pics of their performance with the HID kit on a wall from at least 20 feet away.

3) The startup (ignition of the xenon gas) draws a LOT of power. Link to info:

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a

"How can I ensure that I do not fry my cars internal headlight harness?

During normal HID operation, you use only 42 watts (35W to run the bulb plus 7W in heat losses in ballast) instead of the 55 watts that the halogen bulb uses, which is less, but, during HID cold startup, and for the first several seconds during warmup, the HID system can draw up to triple the normal operating power to run the ignitor circuit during that time. As the bulb warms up, the current draw tapers down to the normal running level. By powering the ballast through a relay straight from the battery to HID ballast, the heavy load is removed from stock headlight curcuit. Triggering the relay only requires 0.1 amps, so stock headlamp curcuit has no problem powering that. A relay is just a remotely mounted heavy duty switch, and the trigger power that goes to it just draws a small amount of current through the headlight switch to run an electromagnet that mechanically closes the contacts inside the relay which in turn hooks battery power strait to HID ballast power terminal. This insures that you wont ever overdrive the ratings of your vehicle's harness.
Name an example of an insufficient wiring harness?

Most HID kits comes with some sort of relay. The important part is that the relay is powered through a high current circuit like directly to battery. In this picture, relay works as a polarity converter. (As a side note, correct polarity is a necessity to make the ballast work, so that is not bad.) The bad part here is that the relay does not releive the stock headlight circuit from the start current peaks. Also the ground connection in this example goes through stock headlight wiring, which on most cars has too thin wires. This harness will function properly for a while, all depending on how oversized your headlight circuit is. It might start failing after 100 start/stop cycles, it might take 1000, but on most cars it will eventually prematurely wear out at the weakest point. The parts mentioned in above DIY relay only cost a fraction compared to trouble shooting labour and parts in the headlight circuit. "

4) You're right about seeing 100% better. If you have a 12,000k kit, the amount of light output you've given up in return for the color probably means you're putting out about the same amount of light (100%) as your stock halogen bulbs. I'm sure you've blinded people, and maybe you've been inattentive to people trying to signal their complaints.

And you almost had a good argument, noting how many cars on the road come with HID standard nowadays. However, the first car to come equipped with HIDs standard was the 1993 BMW 7 series, and the first Honda or Acura so equipped came in model year 1999. So it's fairly obvious that your 21 year old economy car didn't come with those stock. Cops know that late model cars most likely came with them stock, but they're also now being trained to look for colors that stick out, ie blues and purples (that color comes from the way the light is focused in a projector on an OEM car, the light is not that color. It's easy to spot the difference of tint vs optics.) Luckily it's usually only a fix-it ticket.


Not sure what kind of statement that was, but i'll try and break it down. DOT determines the quality of light. There are laws concerning how many lumens certain bulb types can put out, and HID kits are obviously above those limits, that's why they're illegal. If they're illegal in the US, it doesn't matter if they're legal in bum**** nowhere. You're in the US too. And sure they make quality products elsewhere- but there are standards in place that make those OEM quality, and designed for OEM applications- not mass produced to make a profit in the aftermarket regardless of application, which is why the DOT has lighting regulations.


Umm...yes, anyone who isn't legally blind can tell the difference. Light distribution on the ground, height of the light (aimed light), color, and glare are all dead giveaways.

Some pics:

Kit vs retro in the SAME car. Note how the light is a different color; in real life, the BMW projector's optics would look purple from certain angles, but the light is still within the spectrum of daylight, unlike the blue 'kit' color.



Note how the light is well distributed on the ground and the 'halo' of glare isn't as obvious on the retrofitted car:



Toyota Supra: Kit in stock projector vs S2000 projector retrofit:

Cheap kit, note the triangle 'glare ghost' on the left:


S2000 retrofit, note how light is evenly distributed, and not some wack *** color:


Look at the kit's awful light distribution:


Vs. even distribution (no hot spots) from the S2k projector:


Just a summary: RAWR, I'M A BALL OF BLINDING PURPLE LIGHT!



How convenient, that your car can't prove your argument. And SRT-4's use HALOGEN 9007 bulbs, not HID D2S or D2R bulbs.

And it's true, using CFL and incandescent bulbs will produce different lighting patterns. The amount of lumens it puts out determines how far the light will spread due to it's measured candlepower, and whether it's focused or not (incandescent bulbs use a single filament in the center while CFL bulbs use a wound flourescent tube.)

Light is light, but an HID kit putting out more light than the stock optics (halogen reflectors) were designed to handle means that the excess light just starts bouncing around in there, causing glare. Engineers designed those housings to focus light from a certain bulb that produces a certain amount of lumens in a general spread (say a stock bulb puts out 1200 lumens of light, but an HID bulb puts out 2000; where is that extra light that it wasn't designed to focus going to go?) Not to mention, lumens are a measure of light our eyes can perceive- if you buy a 12,000k kit, you're outside of usable range. The human eye sees better in light closer to the red in the color spectrum; that's why athletes use yellow lenses in inclement weather, the same as yellow fog bulbs help. If you use purple light, even if there's technically more light available, you won't be able to 'read' it with your eyes.

When you change out a halogen bulb for an HID bulb, you are changing the amount of light emitted into a housing designed to handle less light. HID lights are BRIGHTER than halogens because they put out more units of light, and it needs proper optics to properly focus that light so it is usable, which many halogen housings are unable to do effectively.

Not only are you changing the amount of light, you are also affecting the geometry of the housing. If you notice, halogen bulbs and HID bulbs come in different shapes and sizes. Once an HID bulb is 'rebased', or designed to fit in a halogen housing instead of a standard D-series housing (H4 or 9006 HID bulbs, for example), you have lost that geometry. Say the halogen bulb filament emitting light precisely one inch into the housing, in the direct center of the bulb. HID bulbs, on the other hand, are longer and narrower, and the xenon capsule is offset towards the top of the bulb. Now you have altered where the light is coming from- it's, say, one and one quarter inch into the housing, one half inch longer, and a millimeter or two higher than the placement of the halogen bulb. That plays havoc with the way the light is distributed within the housing. More light in a different location means that the reflector can't focus it.


OK now you're just DEAD wrong. Lumens are measured as 'lm', not K. K is a measurement of 'temperature', and when used in regards to light, measures the color spectrum. It is, in the simplest terms possible, based on the way temperature of flame changes the color- lower temperatures are in the red range, and higher temperatures burn blue. Scientists are able to study the temperature, composition, and direction stars are traveling based on their color spectrum, measured in Kelvin.

Depending on the manufacture, a 12,000k bulb CAN put out the same amount of light as a 5,000k bulb, but the problem is, that our eye can't see it, as I mentioned. the lumens, or units of light we can measure with our eyes, degrade the higher up the color spectrum you move. So it's useless. Sunlight comes in right around 5775k, and our eyes work best between 4000 and 6000k, generally.