You’re not going to change my mind that water cooling a headlight is not a ridiculous idea. I’m holding steady that it’s ridiculous to even contemplate.
It depends on how you define it is ridiculous.
Building an A2W setup for the headlights is silly, the cost and complexity means that simply using a fan would be a better option.
If compared to passive cooling as they are doing it now, tapping into the cars cooling loop would net you better temps at the LED in most cases thus netting you better performance with minimal drawbacks if it was done by an OEM.
I am not sure where the point of contention comes in on that? The cars cooling system clearly runs cooler then the LED with passive cooling under the hood.
Even at room temp I saw tests with LED’s getting to over 200f, or about 120f above ambient. Combined with underhood temps of 175f+, that is a final temp nearing 300f. How can there by any debate that the ~200f cooling loop is going to keep it cooler?
Besides, it was simply an interesting point for an OEM setup, not like I was saying someone should actually do it. There are no LED’s I know of that could even use a waterblock if you wanted right now anyways. It is exactly the type of thing an OEM would do though. In fact I seem to remember seeing a paper on just this topic some years back.
Fooey, don’t wanna requote all that…
I’ve had thermal flashers that acted exactly as I described. A burnt-out bulb would leave the (remaining) lights on solid. I recall once having a cop pull up behind me and “manually” bapping the lever every second or so to simulate a working flasher (the bulb was out in front).
Putting 40W bulbs in place of 32W bulbs does indeed increase the load, and makes it blink faster and “strobier”.
That being said, there are electronic flashers that simulate a thermal flasher. Ie, 2-pin or 3-pin donks. They’re drop-in replacements, have a regular relay, but use an electronic gizmo to sense the current (don’t need much resistance at all) and flick the relay on/off as appropriate. Much less variation in frequency and duty-cycle. But they do sense a “bulb out” condition, and flash at double-speed.
The third kind is the “LED-safe” kind of doodad, the same as the electronic doodad but doesn’t speed up the flash rate when it senses a too-low current.
I had the first kind (true thermal) in my old Cavalier.
I’ve got the second kind in my old-ish Regal.
I bought the third kind to replace the second kind, but kinda like the fast-nervous blinking, so it’s still sitting in the card unused.
Maybe there’s “another kind” of true-thermal flasher, but I ain’t familiar with it.
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Come to think of it, my sister’s old Grand Am had weird turn-signals. Press it down, and there was a delay before turning on. Mine always came on instantly and turned off intermittently.
What does yours do immediately after pressing the lever? Instant-on, or slight delay?
I finally got all of the exterior lamps on my vehicle switched to LEDs. I’m very pleased with all of them! 
I went with Luxeon ZES headlamps on eBay as JasonWW suggested, and JDM ASTAR tail lamps, reverse lamps, and turn signals from Amazon as Lightbringer suggested.
Here’s a quick ‘beamshot’ comparing LEDs on the left and incandescents on the right. The top bulbs are turn signals, the lower two are tail lamps.
The photo doesn’t do the new bulbs justice. The colors are great and they’re much brighter than the stock bulbs.
Some info about eliminating ’hyperflashing’ turn signals:
My Honda uses a three-pin flasher relay. I tried two different replacements and neither was satisfactory. The first replacement made two extra clicks after the signals were cancelled, and the second replacement made a looooooong first flash before acting normally.
Some Googling revealed two fixes that don’t involve load resistors at the bulbs:
- Shave down the shunt inside the stock flasher (to increase resistance) until the proper flashing rate returns.
- Replace the shunt with a 1 Watt 0.12 Ohm resistor.
I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of a small but awesome electronics supply store, so I fixed my relay with a $0.30 resistor!
Here’s a link to the thread on a Honda Ridgeline forum with info about replacing the relay’s shunt.
My LED turn signal bulbs draw 6.5 watts each (two bulbs on each side like the OP’s) so a 0.12 Ohm resistor works for my vehicle too.
Post #36 in the thread explains the math to calculate the resistor’s value for different wattage LED bulbs, which is also handy if you have extra turn signal bulbs in the fenders, mirrors, etc.
Thanks again JasonWW and Lightbringer for the suggestions! :+1:
Bah. Overkill…
0.12Ω and let’s say 1A of current is P = I² R, or (1²)(0.12) = 1/8W, tops. Using a dirt-cheap and small ¼W resistor is plenty.
Or, if you want, use 30ga wire-wrap wire. It has about 103Ω/1000ft, so for a ballpark 0.1Ω resistance, that’s ~1ft of wire coiled up. Or fold it in half to a 6in length and coil that to all but eliminate inductance.
You could always use a PC water cooling system to cool the lights? Stick it in between both headlights and it will have more then enough power to keep over 300 watts cool plus its a 12v loop. If they remade headlight for LEDs they could easily make a system to force air inside. when your parked make an auto switch to keep the lights on low mode? I think that would solve most issues unless your stuck in grid locked traffic.
If you build headlights like giant torches it would work very well instead of having the LED sit in the center of the lights have it right at the back like a torch you can then attach tunnel/ ram air. Even water or oil cool. I think could probably retrofit some reflector style headlights with leds and make them look stock by placing the LED at the back of the reflector on a heat sink?
It would work extremely well with both reflector and projector headlights. You can probably get most LEDs to out live the life of the car.
It comes down to money i guess it will cost the car maker more upfront but the consumer may possibly have to spend less in the long run. So the manufacturers loose cash!
I just had an interesting experience when installing the Zevo tail light LEDS in my car, a 97 Thunderbird.
The brake bulbs are also the turn signal bulbs and this caused the hyper flashing as I expected. I bought an electronic flasher and all seemed well. Then I noticed my cruise control wasn’t working nor was the remote start.
I tried the old flasher relay, but that wasn’t it. I looked for a wire I may have knocked loose, I checked all the fuses and found no solution.
Then I swapped one of the incandescent bulbs back in and everything was working again!
What the heck?
So I guess I’ll keep the electronic flasher instalked in case I want to put leds in the front turn signals.
If I want to use leds in the rear I think I’ll need load ballasts on either the running light circuit or the brake light circuit so the electronics will see that there are bulbs back there. I think I just need it on one side, not both, since one led and one incandescent is enough to make everything work.
Any suggestions on how to make or where to buy a ballast resistor the right size?
I think I should try a 3 watt and a 20 watt, but all I see is 50w units.
Here’s a hint: how do you disengage AT? Stepping on the brake! It’s often wired in that way in some cars (not mine, thankfully!), and senses a load-to-ground through the sense wire.
An LED circuit can appear as a weird nonlinear load (or even an open-circuit) with little-to-no voltage applied across it, whereas a filament is almost a jumper-to-ground no matter how much or how little voltage is applied.
Keeps AT from being engaged and applying gas when you’re stomping on the brake trying not to plow into the asshat that just pulled out in front of you.
Brake/high/bright. Who cares about taillights?
I went into this, not 100% sure if here or elsewhere, but I’m pretty sure here.
Find out how much current you need to nudge it over from sensing no-bulb to sensing a bulb.
Eg, on mine, it’d occasionally not throw an error in the morning on cold days. So I figured all I needed was a nudge of about a half-amp to get it to not throw errors, yet not waste so much current that you can pull the bulbs entirely and still have it show no error.
Look on Amazon, and you’ll see assloads of 6Ω high-wattage resistors, sucking down 2A or more. So that’s like 28W out of a 32W bulb. Wtf?!?
I got an assortment of 20Ω, 22Ω, 25Ω resistors, 5W-7W, just for s&g. Using 25Ω
Figure that’s about a half-amp, so 6W full tilt, but blinkers only run at a 50% duty-cycle, so it should never see more than 3W averaged.
These are for turn-signals only, so if you’re also using them for brake lights, maybe use 10W resistors. Still, aside from 1-2min at a long light, how much time will they spend on?
Are you saying AT is cruise control? IDK what AT means.
My cruise control has its own switch attached to the brake pedal so I’m not sure how the cruise control circuit and brake bulbs are connected.
I really don’t know if whatever circuit is sensing the rear bulbs is using the low beam or high beam circuit.
Keep in mind my car has no circuits that sense a rear bulb is out and tells me. So no error codes.
Where did you get your assortment of resistors from? Was it Amazon? I’m having trouble finding them.
Autothrottle. “Cruise control” just bugs me.
Hmm, interesting. Sometimes it’s used by sensing voltage to the brake lights.
The “hyperflashing”. Flasher relay does the sensing, lets you know if a bulb’s out. Mine actually senses (canbus crap) where the bulb-out is, and lets me know. Same principle, though, sensing current through the bulb.
Amazon. I used critters like these Amazon.com to do the dirty work.
I got individual values, not an assortment-pack, if that’s what you were thinking. Tried getting 30Ω, but was getting all sorts of weird wattages and sizes, so stuck with the ones I had.
Thanks for this idea, JasonWW! :+1:
I just converted another vehicle to exterior LEDs, including a set of 9007 / HB5 headlamps with the Luxeon emitters and ribbon heatsinks.
I performed your “taper mod” with a Dremel to move the bulb a few mm forward into the headlamp enclosure. They look great!
Until I get the pictures fixed in this thread, you can see all my 9007 headlight related pictures in this thread:
Thanks for the link.
I came back to this thread to check your photos because I couldn’t remember if you had aligned the low beam emitters with the original filaments or split the difference with all six emitters.
Your photos were broken, so I aligned the low beam emitters. Looks like you did too. I guessed correctly! :partying_face:
Yeah, low beam is by far the most important as you use it 99% of the time and you need good cutoff patterns. The high beam shape doesn’t matter much.
Hello everyone, anyone tried these lights? Any idea of real consumption? I already got them :person_facepalming: , greetings !!
Those don’t look like Philips flip chips. The fact it says lumiled on the pcb and they are clearly not is also a very bad sign. My guess is those leds are very cheap and weak. Probably no brighter than the stock incandescent bulbs. The Philips flip chips and Lumiled are usually 3 to 4 times brighter than incandescent.
Thank you Jason for your response, I imagine, when they arrive I will try, I know that it is probably a little money lost, but nothing serious, regards!
Jason check out these they look very interesting?
I need some HIIR2 globes and these come in that plug. I think we need people to start reviewing car globes.
That’s a square shaped emitter. The factory bulb is a rectangle shaped filament. The OEMs design the reflector shape based on the filament size and shape to provide a proper beam profile. A square shaped emitter is not going to work well.
Do you have a projector based headlight? That led might work pretty decent in that since it has a cutoff shield.
Why not try something like this?
PRELIGHT Car Lights ZES Chip S700S-9012(HIR2)
http://s.aliexpress.com/EjemqaEV
Or this?
NICECNC 9012 LED Bulb 8 Led Chips CSP 50W 6000K
http://s.aliexpress.com/emyUJJJN
None of these will say if the depth is just right or too far in/out. You have to see that for yourself.
Yea these headlights are projector headlamps.
I like the fact i they use XHP50s if they are real.
Plus they reckon you can dunk it under water just the bare globes maybe they are built okay.
I could also reflow a different tint XHP50 if needed.