The BLF Automotive Car LED headlights, results, opinions and beamshots!

Hang on… PM hatemail on the way… :smiley:

Not the best, especially if you switch to harder-driven filaments like the H9, but not terribly inconvenient, either.

You never lost an alternator on a long trip, have ya?

I literally got back to the end of my block and was just trying to back up maybe 50yds before everything just upped and croked on me.

Then again, I was running 90W/130W H4s in 4×6 format lights…

For headlights, absolutely.

Especially the last one. What good is it to throw twice the lumens as the original filament, only to have most of them scatter and be lost, or worse, throw light where they shouldn’t. Think of glare to oncoming cars, getting tickets, etc.

All the other LEDs I put into my cars, at least match and in most cases outperform the stock hotwire bulbs. Side-markers are as bright as I can get ’em (and still fit), turns/tails/backups are all brighter than the original bulbs.

Then again, they’re meant to scatter light in a wider swath, for maximum visibility. So just go for power. As I mentioned, I had great luck with the JDMs I’m using, and “standard” 194s in yellow and red can be had which are way brighter than (filtered) hotwire 194s.

My only complaint about “dual filament” LED bulbs (xx57 replacements) is that the difference between low and high is a paltry 3:1, so parking lights are wonderfully bright, but turn signals are only a smidge brighter, visually. I’d rather have them turn down the low setting to have maybe a 10:1 difference, so that the turn signals will stand out more.

The H9 is only 65W and belts out around 2100lm, and the filament is exactly in the same position as the H11.

My headlights have the built-in shields in front of the bulbs, so there’s no danger in doing the swap.

3100K, 2100lm, only 10W more than stock? I’ll take it!

Best of all, they look like stock bulbs at a quick glance. Nothing to attract unwanted attention…

I put leds headlights in my reflector based housings and got a huge increase in output (like 4x) along with the factory beam pattern. Here’s how:

Here is a similar conversion on my H4 bulbed bike.

https://vfr.bikersoracle.com/index.php?threads/led-headlight-bulb-upgrade.132095/

The key to getting a good pattern is this:

It’s been about a year since I converted my car and some of the LEDs are starting to fail (I drive a ton at night) so I switched back to Silverstar 9007s and they absolutely suck! I can’t tell they are on most of the time and they are so yellow. :confounded:

Now I am on the hunt for some 2017 model lights. I’ve ordered 3 kits so far. The first was supposed to use Philips Luxeon ZES chips, but they used something different. A quick lux measurement at 18” with my old led lights, Real Luxeon showed 2500 lumen lux, while the new ones showed 600 lumen (same visable brightness to my Silverstar as I drove around with one each in my car so I could compare them). Horrible. I sent them back. Hopefully the next 2 sets will be better.

I will try and answer many of the questions mentioned in above posts as soon as I get time.

bottom line is there is no pnp led that will outperform factory led’s or a proper hid projector retrofit. any led that is placed into a factory halogen housing may have a more desireable cosmetic appearance, but the performance will be poor. if you want performance, perform a proper retrofit with projectors. everyone claims huge increases but won’t provide wall shots other than ones from the person trying to sell the “kit”. also i’d like to see lux readings of the 4x increase

Keep in mind that some companies qoute way more output than delivered. You have to look in the description and it might say 160w kit, 80 watt per bulb. This would be super bright, btw, if it were accurate. That’s just exaggerated figures like a 3,000 lumen C8 for $12. Marketing crap.

20 to 25 actual watts is more than enough. It’s like 4 times brighter than a 55w bulb (roughly speaking). I tried a kit that was supposed to be 25w (rated at 80w per bulb, but I knew that was very exaggerated) against one I think was actually 25w and it had 1/4 the output. Closer to 6 watt and was about the same brightness as my halogen Silverstar bulbs. 6 actual watts would have no problem staying cool, but you won’t like that output.

I don’t like the idea of fans either, but “good” led bulbs are so much better and safer I’d be willing to buy a new set every year if I had to. I do NOT want to go back to incandescent.

I think output and beam pattern are higher priorities than fan cooling. Still, I’m trying out 3 different passive cooling bulbs and so far one failed as far as output (as well as the leds being a bit out of place moving the beam downward).

These are the ones I tried recently that failed. The close up shots of the light show Philips chips, but if you zoom in on this shot, they are something else. I was hoping for at least 20w per bulb and got 6 watt instead. Too good to be true. Had to return them. When asked why the leds were not correct the company said those were old pictures. Yeah right.

All this is always going to be the problem trying to “retrofit” LED headlights. It’s 20lbs of crap in a 5lb bag. All that light needs to be concentrated into a very small area for the beam to be worth a damn, and that means high heat concentrated in that area.

At least with marker lights, tails, even brake lights, you can have an array of a few dozen 5050s and it’ll still throw out a decent amount of light.

A headlight has to have more power than all that, concentrated into a teeny tiny area. The problem’s not really power, but power density.

You can put them on a nice thick Cu slab, but that thickness is going to shift the LEDs from their optimum (if not necessary) position.

Hey, I love LED lighting, but headlights (as far as retrofitting halogen bulbs) is one area where the tek is still way premature and inadequate.

If you can get factory led lights then more power to you, but this is irrelevant to the conversation.

I had a projector retrofit in my car for several years, but it was only a mild increase in performance. Yeah, the cutoff is sharper, but it depends on the projector size and bulb style used. I had to run a small diameter projector to fit in my headlight housing that took a very slim bulb. The output was not as good as a factory bulb would have produced. So in my case the projector retrofit was only a small improvement. Led bulbs in a stock housings were actually much better.

I did have to tweak the bulbs rotation and depth to get a factory beam pattern on low. Maybe this is not what you classify as pnp? If so, then you may be correct, but have you tested every option on the market? I don’t think so. So you have to keep looking. Maybe the new 2017 bulbs will be more pnp and need less adjusting.

So you shouldn’t make blanket statements.

This is another blanket statement and is untrue. You need to educate yourself, which I am trying to do. Just look at the beamshots from my bike install which uses a fluted reflector housing. Same exact pattern and cutoff. I had to adjust the bulbs rotation and depth to get it just right, then tightened down the setscrews. So far this seems the norm as opposed to just sticking the lights in and hoping for the best.

Is this in reference to my post were I used the 4x number?
I’m trying to help people here, not sell them a product. I already sent the lights back, but even if I still had them I would not bother to take pictures as its not important. I measured that. If you don’t believe me, it’s no big deal to me. On axis with one side of the bulbs. Each bulb using 4 tiny emitters. Same distance. One measured 250 lumen and one measured 60 lumen. Simple as that. I posted a picture of the kit so others can avoid it.

I will be testing more kits as well and will post my findings here. Hopefully I can find a good kit, if not you’ll know what to NOT to buy. Lol

Take a look at the Philips Luxeon ZES chips which I know are great. There is also the Seoul Y19 chip and Philips CSP flip chip, which I will be trying out soon. These 2 are new for this year.

You are right in that this led headlight technology is still in its infancy. It’s constantly improving though. Just like with flashlights, all cars will eventually transition from incandescent to LED. It’s just a matter of time.

Those are good chips, but notice that they are arranged in a square shape. This may effect your beam pattern depending on whether it is in a reflector housing or a projector housing. Projectors seem to better handle “non filament shaped” sources due to their design. In a reflector housing it may not give you a factory beam pattern.

There are led lights that use that same emitter, but lined up in a row to duplicate the size and shape of the filament. That’s what I would try and find if I had a reflector housing.

It’s trickier for me because my lights are 9007 and use dual filaments. The kits using the Luxeon chips in 2016 were not made in the 9007 pattern. They were still using the H4 pattern and I had to readjust my bulbs to match the low beam position. For 2017 I see a few kits that have a proper 9007 arrangement.

I’m jumping into the fray as well. Lol.

Those 100 watt kits are not real. Just marketing hype.

The copper braid does not attach to anything. It is just spread out and exposed to the surrounding air.

Cars that have the dust caps are kinda outta luck. Incandescent and hid bulbs can handle the heat build up no problem, but leds can not. They have to stay cooler.

One potential way to convert to led is to cut out the lower half of the dust shield. This way water would, hopefully, not drip down into the light and you could get some good air circulation.

If you have a single filament low beam you could probably convert to a HID bulb and keep it all sealed up. You just need to find a bulb that puts the light source of the hid in the same spot as the filament.

If you have dual filament bulbs, then things are harder. I’ve seen hid bulbs with incandescent high beam bulbs attached to give you both beams, but I’ve never tried those myself.

There are also hid that use a magnetic coil to pull the bulb backwards or tilt it downward to provide high beams. I haven’t tried those either.

Ah, here is a clue as to why your lights may be lasting so long. If they are no brighter than the halogens, then they are running the bulbs at a pretty low wattage. I had the same luxeon zes chips, 4 per side like you, but mine were way brighter than my Silverstars. They were as bright as factory Mercedes HID lights. Unfortunately mine are starting to fail after about a year. Some of the little chips are not turning on anymore. I’m pretty sure the heat finally caught up to them. Mine had screw on aluminum heatsinks which probably are not as good as the copper braid design.

Here is a model I will be trying out soon. http://www.ebay.com/itm/172455119187

It’s got the braided copper sinks and luxeon chips. It’s supposed to be 22w per bulb. I hope it is as that will blow away the stock bulbs in brightness. I will report my findings here.

Unfortunately, pretty much all the LED kits are going to be very cool white, 6500k levels.

There my be some actual nuetral white kits out there, but I have not seen them.

One kit I tried out had some blue and yellow tubes that slipped over the bulbs. They claimed them as 8000k and 5000k. I thought, cool, 5000k would look nice, but it was actually very yellow like fog lights. Totally unacceptable.

If you can find some “good” led kits the big advantage is being able to actually see things at night. Lol

Seriously, it’s a huge safety advantage. The increased ultraviolet, or is it infra red, light that you can’t see activates reflective surfaces from much further away. I can see stop signs from a long ways off compared to halogen bulbs. Cop cars, too. Lol

Even the white lines on the road at night in the rain are more clear. Plus you can see normal objects from further away. Increased range I guess you’d call it. You will also see more to the sides of the road. Low level stuff on the left and higher stuff on the right (when driving on right side of road) Countries that drive on the left side of the road it’s reversed. Anyway, you see people and animals off to the sides much better.

It’s a lot of the same advantages that HID give you except you have instant on, no warm up needed. Hid also draws way more amps than stock bulbs during its warm up phase. This can burn up headlight switches, but is easily avoided through the use of relays.

Led high beams are really nice when it come to flashing them. They come on instantly. So a quick flash is almost like a short strobe effect. It gets people attention.

I have tried these LEDs in both projector and reflector type headlights. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/High-Power-LED-Headlight-Bulbs-H7-H8-H9-H11-HB3-9005-HB4-9006-H1-H3-H4/32725468580.html

The beam pattern is exactly the same as factory in the projector lens and in the reflector it is very similar but has some darker lines you can see if you look carefully. The lines will depend on the design of the reflectors, in my case they are not noticeable while driving, I only notice it when parking and the light shines onto plain wall surface.

So far it has been half a year and the LEDs are still going strong. The ballast is made from cast aluminium and have been zip tied to the car’s frame in the engine bay so they don’t rattle around. Fanless heatsink design so there is no noise and no need to worry about a fan failing,

Brightness is slightly brighter than factory 55w halogens in the hot spot, but the LEDs are more evenly spread and the “spill” is much brighter compared to factory halogens. This is especially noticeable in the reflector type headlights. Also the white light gives the cars a more modern look, there is no blue hue at all.

Happy with these LEDs so far, hopefully they will last several years. Have them in my brother’s and mum’s cars, I’d like to put some in my car but it has bi-xenon lights and its hard to find good LEDs that fit and the xenon lights should last longer than halogens anyway.

Any great chip can still get cooked, though. That’s generally the problem, from what I keep hearing. Output failures likely the result of overheating. Maybe not enough to melt the solder and drop off the boards, but still enough to cause premature failure.

Those I do see, with the bug-eye lights, are already out there. First time I saw a Porsche come up behind me with the group of 4 LEDs per light, man, I thought I was seeing quadruple in my rv mirror. Unnerving. Then the ones with the rows of 6-8 straight across, etc. They’re already out there, and apparently working fine, because they’re custom-designed as LED lights, not retrofits for regular assemblies using the stock reflectors, lenses, etc.

So LED headlights can be great in new applications, just not for retrofitting… yet. Heat and beamspread are the 2 main (and probably insurmountable) problems with retrofits. You ain’t getting the right spread from the stock reflector unless the LEDs pretty much exactly occupy the same space where the filament(s) would be. And heat will also be a problem unless you can wick it away to the outside world quickly enough.

Sounds like you’re getting confused between colour temp and CRI.
Lower temps often have higher CRI, but if you compare equal CRI LEDs then the only difference should be colour, not how good quality the light is.

Obviously a light that outputs lower wavelengths will make colours in that wavelegth pop more.
A lower colour temperature would have more red wavelengths and make a stop sign pop more.
The point is that this does not apply to all colours. A higher colour temperature light would make blue and green colours pop more, because it has more blue and green wavelengths than a low colour temp.

The point of CRI is to evaluate all the colours equally.
You can’t just say you only look at yellow and red objects all night and therefore lower colour temp is better.

It sounds like this model may need to be slightly rotated or else moved further inward/outward in order to get rid of the dark spots.

You could probably confirm this by holding the led next to a stock bulb and checking the placement of the leds against the filament.

You say it’s in the upper part of the beam?

If you think it’s a safety issue and it has a set screw on it, you might try tweaking the depth or rotation to try and improve the pattern. Even a tiny adjustment can make a noticable change.

What size lights are in your car? I use 9007, so if I find a good set, I will report back and let you know about it.

Thanks JasonWW for all of your insight and helpful advice. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.