Months ago I posted a thread about the hullabaloo about LED car headlamps and got several opinions and idea, suggestions.
Remember Doris Wisdom who invaded our forum touting her Suaoki car LED headlamps?
I was able to contact her and she sent me, gratis, this pair of H4 LED headlamps conversion kits.
Their Amazon description says 8,000 lumens, 6000K, but as we always say, the truth of the pudding is in the eating, so here it goes:
The box and manual:
The fan-cooled rear-end, claimed to be waterproof: —- finned for heat-sinking:
Installed; (note: the OEM rubber seal can no longer be used) — Just connect the original female connector (the fan is action)
The Toyota pick-up truck (original headlamp halogen bulbs: Osram H4 60/55w)
OEM Halogen H4 ———— LED lamps in their homes:
…and now, the most important portion:
Halogens at Low beams: ————- LEDs at Low beams: (notice the necessary sharp cut-off on the right side of the beam, with a nice, slight rise too)
At High beams:
For our US forums readers, headlight conversions like this are neither safe, effective, or legal in the US. You’ll dazzle oncoming traffic and cause a potentially whole host of other electronics issues due to poor EMF sheilding. These systems have been known to disrupt the safe operation of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems, and are a direct violation of the FMVSS 108. And you’ll bring your vehicle out of compliance with your auto insurance company leaving yourself liable for damages in the event of an accident.
I want to lead off by saying that I don't know about this particular retrofit kit.
That said, there are quite a few DOT-compliant retrofit kits available now. They're designed to use standard halogen reflectors. You can even see in the above poster's picture, the cutoff looks to be essentially the same. These are largely becoming mainstream and safe, as well as legal.
Yes, in the past, there were sketchy LED retrofits available that were either cheap chinesium kits with shoddy electronics, or just dangerous kits aimed at adding brightness without regard for other drivers' eyesight/night vision.
Some things which do violate federal and state laws about lighting, that you'll find much more commonly than issues with LED headlight retrofits: Retrofits of HIDs into halogen reflectors that don't have proper beam cutoffs, "smoked out" and other types of blacked-out headlights, turn signals, marker lights, and brake lights, and the worst: on-road use of light bars.
Legal lighting systems are FMVSS 108 Compliant or ECE compliant for the EU. No HID or LED kit inside a halogen designed assembly produces produces beam patterns that are objectively better. I want to say, it may have been Philips that produced an LED kit for developing countries with no headlight laws that provided passable, not good, performance in some headlight assemblies. Otherwise, these kits are totally unsafe. We can’t get an idea of how effective this kit is by photos as subjective seeing performance rates headlights that pool intense light immediately in front of the driver as being “better” when ,in fact, having intense light pool immediately in front of the driver has no-to-bad safety benefits. And to add
“Photographs, film or digital, cannot accurately represent the intensity of a light or lamp, because of the many significant differences in the perception of light by the human eye vs. the camera. By simply adjusting the exposure settings or white balance, virtually any bulb or lamp can be ”shown” to be superior to virtually any other.”
“This article primarily discusses the problems with ”HID kits”, but the concept and most of the issues apply equally to the “LED bulbs” now flooding the market. Like “HID kits”, they are not a legitimate, safe, effective, or legal product. No matter whose name is on them or what the vendor claims, they are a fraudulent scam. They are not capable of producing the right amount of light in the right distribution pattern for the lamp’s optics to work. The particular details of the incompatibility are different for LED vs. HID, but the principles and problems are the same overall. In one sentence: halogen headlamps must use halogen bulbs or they don’t—can’t—won’t work effectively, safely, or legally.”
“Far East”… where vehicular regulations aren’t necessarily as stringent or thorough as in the Far West.
@cetary, you make a good point, except that we don’t know exactly what kit was used here and if it has any formal government approval. In the USA, I wouldn’t buy any car LED headlamp conversion kit that is not DOT approved. If it’s by a well known brand, it’s usually DOT approved and you don’t have to verify the claim. If it’s some Chinese company who claims it, I’d either look into that approval to be sure it’s legitimate, or just avoid it.
Yes, this the concern I have with me when I first tested them, the Low beam sharp cut-offs that should be just like the factory halogens, otherwise, if the led bulbs (or any type or brand for that matter) doesn’t have this and will blind oncoming traffic, then it’s a definite no-go and dangerous, but this brand has a sharp cut-off.
You can twist this Led bulb’s housing left or right to fine-tune it in relation to your OEM headlamp housing.
The other thing someone has to consider if he can live with the cool, 6000k tint.
You are not allowed to say if any different light source is compatible with your vehicle light system until you disassemble it and know how it works.
In most cases, there are no ways to change light source without big modifications. Halogen bulbs are not perfect light source for modeling right light distribution, there are many tricks that need to be used (when optics design is ready but light distribution cant pass standart tests). Several reflection and refraction processes can be uses to pass tests. With different light source (different size and angle and etc.) this tricks may work good or bad, no matter if new source have legal licence or not.
Most of you understand why do you need custom centering ring if you swap xhp70 with xpl-hi. Why do you believe that you can change hot springed wire with white pcb and get proper light distribution from the box?
The subject of this thread, the Suaoki led bulb specifically for H4 halogen-bulbed housings, has the led’s installed in the kit follow the distance of the H4’s halogen ‘focal point’ distance.
In other words, if your vehicle’s OEM headlamp housing HAS an H4 bulb originally in it, this led conversion kit, which is designed for headlamp reflector housings with H4 halogen bulbs, will more or less duplicate the same projection of light as the originals, regardless in HIGH or LOW beam, as can been seen in the photos in the op.
…the only caveat is if you are not fond of a 6000k light temp as your headlamp’s tint, then this kit is not for you.
Focal point? Really?
You have changed optic source location. Optics source size. Optic source light distribution.
After this changes reflector will get more light in one areas and less in other areas. (It is easy to test, just take H4 lamp and measure lux amount at the top of lamp. Then repeat same test with led kit (locate is same way as it is located in your car, leds to sides).)
After this, secondary (actually 3rd but lets make it more easy) optics (I mean plastic lens that are outer part of your headlights) will get different (not stock) ratio of light in different sectors. Most interesting is those segment with ripples. In most cases, it will make light distribution worth with any non-stock light source (and modders usully polish this segments flat).
P.S. This example is not perfect because your 4runner doesnt look like most modern cars that have height limited headlights with small reflectors and much more “tricks” that are used in stock.
My car would electrocute me if I changed anything out of spec. Even my older 2006 would register it as a problem if it didn’t detect the right amperage.
My 2006 had horrible lighting. In 2012, I tried some LEDs and besides getting warnings, the pattern was downright blinding. I had to keep adjusting it down to the point that I could see my nose, but worthless as a headlight.
Maybe they work on simple reflectors like motorcycles, but on many cars with shaped reflectors, it’s a dangerous gamble. Particularly because insurance companies will see this as a perfectly good reason not to cover your accident.
BTW…anybody here old enough to remember the 7” OSCARS? I had them on my BMW and one was wide beam, one was a thrower. Crazy level of light….and would blind driver a mile out. That was really “with great lumens comes great danger”.
For those who have ’em, H11s can be converted to H9s with just a small file/dremel/whatever. 10W more (65W vs 55W) but almost double the lemons, same exact filament placement.
They’re driven harder, so lifetime will be that much less (about half), so keep spares, and know how to change ’em, especially on cars where you have to use trim-pullers to undo cosmetic crap just to get to the headlight assemblies.
