LED low beam conversion

nghtshd88

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Is this worth it? I see a lot of people saying that you cant see anything with led headlights but most new vehicles come standard with them today. I was looking to mimic that on the LS. Also found a very nice set of gen1 headlights i could use. Currently have factory HID.
 
well its not a simple answer... first off there are cheap LED bulbs that have a bunch of little LEDs all around them, these almost always suck terribly. then there are good quality light bulbs that have a super bright single or dual LED (and usually have a heat sink coming out of the back of them), there are still cheap ones like this, but the good ones can sometime be very good, however halogen headlights are not designed to have light come out the same way as a LED bulb and often throw the light in weird directions that usually blind oncoming traffic. this method is also illegal. then there are very nice cars that come with LED headlights from the factory. these (while not every time) are often very very good, however I don't know if they are really any better than HID lights(there are definitely some hardware benefits...)
 
Yes I was looking at single high quality ones with heat sink but correct I wasnt sure how the light would project in these housings.. I havent seen one person with it so was tempted..
 
I have a fair bit of LED bulb experience, however haven't gotten around to trying some in the LS head lamp assemblies. I have some spare (both GEN's) head lamps down in the basement for such experiments at a later time.

However ... allow me to comment on LED Bulbs in general.

Over the past, I'd say, year and half, I've been purchasing many of different brand LED bulbs for my work truck, a 2016 Peterbilt 579 full condo sleeper. Primarily because I do a lot of night driving and clock anywhere from 1000 to 1200kms per shift. 5 days puts me in around 5150kms (3200mi) each week. (give or take, give the directions of my loads).

Regardless ... for the most part, I drive at night and the original stock halogen 9005 & H11 bulbs were too yellowish and weak. Little to no range and was tough to spot the wildlife. ( I deal with a lot of Moose running out West Canada and back in the deep secluded woods along Hwy 17 Lake Superior ).

It's tough to spot these large monsters in the dark with simple weak Halogen bulbs and last thing I need is to bounce off the rocks or into the ravines over the edge and kill myself. I had to do something and we are not allowed to drill holes anywhere to install LED light bars, so I had to opt for just upgrading the Bulbs.


Small collections of bulbs I had been experimenting with.

IMG_0240.JPG



IMG_0241.JPG



IMG_0242.JPG


IMG_0243.JPG



In my Peterbilt work truck I settled on,

9005 High's = ATSHARK, 100W @ 8000Lms in 6000K output.
That's 50W @ 4000Lms per bulb.

H11 Low's = ATSHARK, 80W @ 7200Lms in 6000K output.
That's 40W @ 3600Lms per bulb.

THEY ARE STUPID BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT !!!!

I had tried several other brands and variations of outputs but it just wasn't going to get any better.



It's difficult to determine if the next bulb is better then the last.
It comes down to such a small fraction of a difference I simply couldn't tell if it was brighter or not.

I eventually stopped spending more money and settle on what I had, I put the same set in my 2009 Silverado. Although they do fit, I had to remove the whole lamp assembly, insert the bulbs, ensure the polarity then remount the lamps.

They are so tight, the back end of the bulb/cooling fan is near touching a cross member within a few millimeters.

STUPID BRIGHT WHITE light at 6000K output.


Thing to watch out for with all these LED bulbs for sale on both eBay and Amazon is that there are many vendors or sellers that are doing Private Labeling from China. If you look close enough at all the ads, you'll possible note that they are the same bulbs but with different packaging and name branding.

I also found that after 40W 3600Lms @ 6000K white output per bulb, they are all the same. Such a small difference it's barely noticeable or even any better/worse.

I picked up a cheap set that promoted in the ad that they were 100W's a set, meaning 50W bulb per side but they were cheap Private Labeled brand and total garbage. For one, it was slightly less bright then my best set and second, one bulb, the fan would shut down after about a minute and thus turned the bulb off due to excessive heat. Some sort of thermo problem. I managed to get my money back on those on a return. I claimed they were false advertising and simply defective out of the box.

I've also picked up a set, although good output and clean spread, they fans' are very noisy compared to other Bulbs I had tried. Not a huge deal, good output was more important than fan noise which you'd not really notice once the hood is closed and going down the road.

It's tough to do a recommendation of brand names, there are a couple good big brand name LED bulbs available but I can not understand why they'd want 100 to 150$ a set when the average pricing all over Amazon is somewhere between 50 to 80$.

I just settled for what I had already purchased, it wasn't going to get any brighter.

You'll want to watch the size of the cooling fans on the back end of the LED bulbs, you'll need the room to keep them inside dust covers or lamp assemblies.

My 2009 Silverado, the bulb just simply protrudes past the lamp housing. My 2016 Peterbilt work truck, it's all contained within the housing and accessible via a large round dust cover. I ended up putting a set of 9003 Hi/Lo in my Polaris XC800 Edge Sled also. Had a retaining clip to keep them in place, works just as intended and is simply STUPID BRIGHT WHITE light in front of me when out ripping around in the farmers fields or trails.



I don't have any 'still' pics of bulbs installed, I do have some sample dashcam videos I could share.



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Keep in mind, my Dash cam does not capture near as much as I can see further in the distance out the front glass. It's just the way it is with night time dash cam footage.

The LED bulbs actually light up much further down the road then the Dash cam captures.


LED_001.mp4


LED_002.mp4


LED_003.mp4 (Out of my way, Ladies!)


LED_004.mp4


LED_005.mp4



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Watch as I light this cracker-Jack up ...
LED_CutOff.mp4



Really bright white light in the white snow.
LED_SteepGrade.mp4



Lot's of LED while serious snow driving.
LED_BadConditions.Mov


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Creatures of the night, hard to spot!
(keep in mind I see further then cam records)

LED_Wildlife_001.mp4


LED_Wildlife_002.mp4


LED_Wildlife_003.mp4




Anyhow ... LED bulbs are great, a huge improvement over stock halogen bulb.

CANBUS errors are common on these type of Bulb, I had a couple of sets that gave me constant Bulb Out errors on the dash. You can get CANBUS ERROR Free / ANTI FLICKER load resistors for such issues. All plug and play inline with connectors to bulbs.


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