Cree LED bulb headlight conversion write-up *pics*

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Don't mess with these "LED conversions" if you want you and your car to live. They are a scam/fraudulent product, not even remotely capable of producing even a minimally adequate, safe amount of light in an appropriate beam distribution. It does not matter whose name is used (fraudulently; "Cree", etc. -- Cree does not make these, nor does any other reputable maker) or the particulars of the (bogus) claims made. They do not (cannot) even come close to putting out enough light in the right pattern to light your way safely. If you install these (whether in cheap and nasty headlite-shaped toys from India or China or in good quality legit headlamps) please—I am being serious here—DO NOT DRIVE AT NIGHT. You may think they're nice, but we humans are lousy at accurately(!) judging how well we can really see; it's just the way we're built, so "Well, I like them and I think they're great" just isn't good enough. As far as safety performance goes, if it's a choice between cruddy old sealed beams and these "LED conversion" kits, the sealed beams win with both hands tied behind their backs and a big ol' wodge of duct tape across the lens.

There's a growing number of (real) LED 7" round headlamp assemblies available on the market. Quality and performance range from pathetic to excellent. If you have the money to spend $200 to $500 per headlamp, you can get really excellent nighttime seeing with life-of-an-A-body durability and lower current draw. [ame=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MHX979S/?tag=2402507-20]Peterson's 701C[/ame] (also sold by KC HiLites) and [ame=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007K8AA7I/?tag=2402507-20]Truck-Lite's[/ame] (also sold by GE) are two very good American-made LED 7" round headlamps. The king daddy of them all is the compound-projector [ame=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K8PG9F2/?tag=2402507-20]unit from J.W. Speaker[/ame], also made in America.

(Also, no, it ain't necessarily true that "DOT lighting laws suck". There's too much room in both the US and the international European regs for bad lights, but there's also plenty of room in both standards for excellent lights.)
 
I love my LED headlight conversions. They help ME see a lot more than I was seeing before which makes me a safer driver. I installed a set in my 2010 Honda Fit and they are just as amazing!
 
lol i'm not sure that DOT regulations apply to Canada

but Dan knows his stuff check his recommendations out
 
RustyRatRod said:
US DOT light regulations are bullcrap. They are 40 years behind the rest of the world.
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And we all know that the Chinese have top-of-the-line product quality standards.

I'll trust something that will pass obsolete U.S. regulations to anything made in China.
 
Dart_Vader said:
I love my LED headlight conversions. They help ME see a lot more than I was seeing before
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No, you just feel like they do. The actual, real, measurable fact is they don't. And that safer-than-you-really-are feeling puts you at a much higher risk of having a crash.
 
moparlover said:
lol i'm not sure that DOT regulations apply to Canada
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They do. The Canadian reg is almost identical to the US reg; the differences are that Canada permits European ("E-code") headlamps, and Canada requires daytime running lights on all '90 and newer cars (permitted but not required in the USA). Everything else, all the technical standards and specs, etc. are alike.
 
Hey Dart Vader..sincerely not trying to pick on you. But, I have to ask how you can say that these lights are "not annoying to other drivers" from observations behind your steering wheel.. How about have someone neutral on this topic and in your neightborhood drive towards you at night while you drive in the opposite direction and report what they really see? Sorry, you cannot possibly tell this from behind your steering wheel.


My racing sport is rally, and the HID's and such home-made conversions have been tried and discussed ad nuseum for a few years. The high dollar 'designed as HID lights' ones for rally driving lights work; the conversions that have been tried and extolled by their users have tended to be crappy in beam shape and reliability and great glare producers. Perhaps if you got the focal points just right, etc., you might have hit upon a working combo....but not at all likely based on what has transpired before. Sounds like the same book, next chapter here.....Until an objective, measured report could be made, I would not do this.
 
More power to you Vader. Just because many LED and HID conversions are crap does not mean they all are.

How about having a passenger take a picture of your driving perspective at night on a dark back road to show how well they work.

I suggest two pics on low beam and a couple on high beam. Give us some real world feedback from an Abody driver's perspective.
 
Rice Nuker said:
Just because many LED and HID conversions are crap does not mean they all are.
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Yeah, but it does. The problem is at the concept level -- it's not a matter of this brand being better than that brand. It's like square wheels. Doesn't matter what name is on them or how much they cost or how pretty they are, they don't work.

How about having a passenger take a picture of your driving perspective at night on a dark back road to show how well they work.
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No good. Photos of headlamps or the beam they throw are not "real world feedback" even if the photographer has the best of intent and keeps all the camera settings the same, are useless for evaluating headlamp performance. The dynamic range of a camera (film or digital, expensive or cheap, video or still) is much, much narrower than that of the human visual system.
 
nm9stheham said:
Until an objective, measured report could be made, I would not do this.
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That's exactly right. The performance specifications for all lighting functions are objective, not subjective. They do not depend on some guy going "Yup, that looks bright enough and red enough to be a brake light", or "Yup, the headlights are nice and bright and I can see", they depend on objective measurements because we humans -- all of us -- are just plain not equipped to make accurate judgements of how well we can see or be seen with our lights. Take a look here for more of the science, if you like.

Car lights are interactive safety devices -- their performance directly affects the safety of not only the owner of the car they're on, but all the other drivers on the road. "Yup, I like 'em, yup, I can see, yup, they're cool" just plain isn't good enough. Neither is "I think they're safe and that's what me and my family are going on!".

Whoever's interested in hacking his lights with "LED conversion kits" should first have a quick chat with his car insurance people. Ask whether you're covered if you modify the headlights (brake lights, etc.) on your car in a way that changes their safety performance from the original manufacturer's certification of compliance with Federal (or Canada) Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

(This is the last post I'll make in this thread. There will always be those who choose to believe Chinese ripoff artists' bulkwrap over science and fact. Best I can hope is not to share roadspace with them.)
 
put 14V into your old sealed beams and look in wonder at the light they throw. Measure your old harness volts to headlamp with a miltimeter, you are losing >30% of the light output by feeding these 11.5 V dash harness voltage. Install local relays powered by same crappy <12V harness light voltage that taps off 14V alternator voltage.

"....Lighting systems engineering data has it that if we drop the voltage delivered to a light by 10%, then illumination out-put is reduced by over 30%. Going from 14.0 volts down to 11.5 volts is a (voltage) loss of nearly 18%!... "
 
After cussing out all these NEW cars with "miss-aimed" headlights, I would not care if they were illegal or not. IF the officals will let those new cars go then they sure as heck won't bother with these led lights! When I was "young" they would pull you over for your headlights, but now it seems they have forgotten about that law.:banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
pishta said:
put 14V into your old sealed beams and look in wonder at the light they throw. Measure your old harness volts to headlamp with a miltimeter, you are losing >30% of the light output by feeding these 11.5 V dash harness voltage. Install local relays powered by same crappy <12V harness light voltage that taps off 14V alternator voltage.

"....Lighting systems engineering data has it that if we drop the voltage delivered to a light by 10%, then illumination out-put is reduced by over 30%. Going from 14.0 volts down to 11.5 volts is a (voltage) loss of nearly 18%!... "
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Cracked back's relay kit,does just this.
 
I'm not into this plastic lense lighting either. I prefer glass lense Hella h4 that are dot legal. It's about the lense not the bulb. I just installed some Oracle lamps and they were junk.
 
As I get older I am having problems driving at night because these bright lights blind me! Soooo....I am going to get me a set so I can fight back!!! Bahhh....ha haa..... :)
 
I would be curious to know if the source of light on the led sits in the same exact place inside the housing (in relationship to the reflector). That's why hid won't work the filament runs in the wrong direction. That's why most hid conversions are offensive to oncoming drivers. Vader why don't you get in 1 car you converted and have your wife get in tha other car you converted and go driving where you pass each other. I agree with you it is a lot safer to drive at night when you can see. But driving around with your brights on is illegal. What good is having bright light if they blind the oncoming driver and they crash into you? I'm not nocking. I also considered this conversion. If the lights aren't offensive to oncoming your fine. If you start having people flash their highs you might want to reconsider.
 
vynn3 said:
And we all know that the Chinese have top-of-the-line product quality standards.I'll trust something that will pass obsolete U.S. regulations to anything made in China.
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Who said a thing about China? I was loosely referring to the European code lighting. It's far superior to the DOT garbage we're limited to.
 
Lots of threats and insinuations about possibly getting in trouble and or dying Dan. Sounds a lot like the continual barrage that everyone gets by the gestapo EPA in this country. Spewing carcinogens out the tail pipe, running non-standard exhaust, no catalytic converters and modified high performance oriented combustion systems. Of course insurance doesn't cover the car.

Friggin headlights are just one of 500 ways to get sued in an accident when you drive a hot rod. Any angle a lawyer can use, it will, when suing you after some accident. Likely insurance companies will try their hardest not to cover any modified vehicle. High horse power engines, race tuned non-stock suspension, non factory brakes, non factory rims and tires, our final products are regarded by DOT and EPA, most courts and most attorneys as murder machines by the time we are done with them.

Why don't you chastise everyone on this forum that has aftermarket rims and willwood brakes? What about pro-street cars running down the freeway with 15" wide slicks and 3" wide fronts?

Why limit your assault to just people with non standard (not approved by Dan or the govt) lighting technology? Maybe we need a brake engineer on this site to tell us that every time we put aftermarket brakes on our cars that we are bound to be arrested, prosecuted and likely kill several people on our way to work in our modified Mopar. :D
 
Personally, I think Dan could care less whether you or anyone else gets arrested, fined, or prosecuted in any way for illegal lighting. I know I don't.

I/we just don't to share the road with an idiot with crappy and/or unsafe lighting. I don't want to get killed for something on your car that's subjectively "cool" or "better" to you.

The reason for the lighting laws (as pointless and ridiculous as some seem to think they are) is to have measurable guidelines for safety.

But then, who around here gives a rat's a$$ about safety?
 
I think a conscientiously thought out lighting plan that has been intelligently tested and aimed by a capable person is sufficient and reasonable when compared to majority of the horrifically implemented lights we see all over this country currently. Maybe someone buys a good set of lights and lenses and they have a good clean beam and they are aimed appropriately.

I don't see how that is outside the realm of possibility.
 
Just keeping stock headlight bulbs and putting them on relays where there is thicker gauge wire going to the bulbs will increase their output by up to 30%.

If that is not enough, try the Hella european halogens.

Then please re-angle your headlights so everybody is happy.....
 
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