H4 led head light kits..... Thoughts?

[sunburned]

The thing that would make me leary of these is the fan setup.

When I had a BMW, there were a bunch of companies making LED bulbs for the halo rings in the headlights, but even those needed huge heat sinks around the LED to keep them cool. They were designed by guys who probably knew what they were doing.

These LED headlight bulbs are probably putting out way more light with that tiny fan and tiny heat sink being the only way to keep them cool. You guys are worried about them not being hot enough to melt snow, but I'd bet it won't be long before they will melt your entire headlight housing.

If the H4, e-code lights with better bulbs and wiring aren't enough and you don't like projectors, your best bet is probably Trucklite or JW Speaker.


Oh, and last time we had a big snowstorm here, my upgraded H4 housings were collecting snow like crazy.

 

[zachandandy]

These appear to only have 2 leds. That would produce far less heat than the quantity of LEDs in a halo ring. I believe Olympus off road is selling a similar product with no fans?

 

[Talyn]

These appear to only have 2 leds. That would produce far less heat than the quantity of LEDs in a halo ring. I believe Olympus off road is selling a similar product with no fans?

Olympus is selling the same thing. They do have two leds, but one is for high beams, and one is for low beams. They won't/shouldn't be on at the same time. I'm doubting the lumen output stated though on some of the auctions. Cree only lists around 1710 lumens as the minimum maximum on their CXA1512 LED chips. And thats at 25* C. At 85* C it drops to 1590 lumens.

I went with H4 CIBIES for my DD XJ, and although they are not technically legal for DD, I think.., but, they do have a nice cut off for low beams for oncoming vehicle traffic, and very impressive with the high beams on the lonely straight-a-ways.

The Cibie cut off is excellent.

Totally dislike HID, and LED setups coming at me in the dark, or following to closely. (Seems a pre-cursor to road rage issues).

Its begining to trickle down here too. HIDs in stock halogen housings= glare like crazy. It appears to be worse up north (NJ, PA). The LEDs aren't as bright as HIDs though and maybe their focus is a bit better. Especially the 55w high kelvin garbage people like to throw in.

 

[5-90]

My question is that high-flux "white" LEDs have a bit of a reputation for not going through fog/snow/smoke/mist very well - which is why my 88 still had incandescent bulbs, and why my SureFire 6P may have an LED head, but my G2 light in my toolkit still has a P61 Xenon lamp.

Has this been addressed? I'm not thoroly against the idea of LED forward/rear lamps, but until they can come up with "white" LEDs that are effective in snow/rain/fog/mist/smoke, I'd be loath to try them as primary light sources. However, I'm willing to entertain the idea of using them as auxiliary lighting.

(I keep putting "white" in quotes WRT LEDs because an LED is a monochromatic emitter - and white light is polychromatic. In order to get white emission, the LED chip is usually a UV emitter, and the capsule is lined with phosphours that are excited by the UV light and emit white. This is similar to how fluorescent lamps work - and probably why high-flux LEDs didn't punch through "fouled air" very well... Not as "pure" a white light, perhaps?)

 

[yossarian19]

5-90, that's the first I've heard of it. I don't doubt your information but it doesn't seem to jibe with off road racers using LED light bars - surely the air on a dirt race course is fouled with dust? Perhaps, though, this is a different challenge than precipitation...

 

[XJLI]

5-90, that's the first I've heard of it. I don't doubt your information but it doesn't seem to jibe with off road racers using LED light bars - surely the air on a dirt race course is fouled with dust? Perhaps, though, this is a different challenge than precipitation...

most of those dudes have white and amber lights. 6500K is useless is rain/snow.

 

[Talyn]

My question is that high-flux "white" LEDs have a bit of a reputation for not going through fog/snow/smoke/mist very well - which is why my 88 still had incandescent bulbs, and why my SureFire 6P may have an LED head, but my G2 light in my toolkit still has a P61 Xenon lamp.

That is a concern I have as well. However Cree offers the 1512 chip in 6500, 5700, 5000, 4000, 3500, 3000, and 2700 kelvin as well. The problem is that the market doesn't want "yellow" light. They want the HID look. As well as the lower kelvin chips having less Lumen output.

 

[sunburned]

These appear to only have 2 leds. That would produce far less heat than the quantity of LEDs in a halo ring. I believe Olympus off road is selling a similar product with no fans?

I'm not talking the full ring setups. The stock rings use 1 or 2 LED's per ring and the ring itself transfers the light all the way around.

Snevey on Pirate is selling an LED setup like this and his have huge heat sinks, I guess in place of fans. Someone posted an output shot of the bulbs and it's absolutely terrible.

 

[Olympus Off Road]

This experiment shows that at least a fair amount of the time, LED bulbs will melt snow. Anecdotally, commenters on the thread I link to have said that sometimes, you are SOL with halogens, too.

I have read that thread and it holds a little bit of truth. A wet sticky snow will still stick to them where a real cold, powdery snow will just bounce off and never stick. My rig doesn't see much winter use, but being plug and play I'm debating running just regular ol' halogen h4 bulbs in the winter.

How so? All I see is a blob of light with no discernible cutoff. Plus we don't know what housing they are in.

I purchased a set last week to put in my ZJ's e-code housings. I've seen a set in some random housing (don't know the brand) and was not impressed. Maybe I'll throw them in my Cibies on the XJ just for comparison too.

Housings play a huge part. We have seen mixed results with stock headlight housings, some are absolutely great with a nice cutoff, others are just a blob of light that go everywhere. Most aftermarket housings have had great results though, especially projector housings.

These appear to only have 2 leds. That would produce far less heat than the quantity of LEDs in a halo ring. I believe Olympus off road is selling a similar product with no fans?

Actually it is the same product, and the one lighting product we carry that isn't made by us. To be honest can't even come close to competing with ebay prices. When we launched them a couple months ago they were nowhere to be found, that changed quickly lol.

 

[Talyn]

Housings play a huge part. We have seen mixed results with stock headlight housings, some are absolutely great with a nice cutoff, others are just a blob of light that go everywhere. Most aftermarket housings have had great results though, especially projector housings.

There aren't any drop in true projector housings for halogen bulbs for the XJ. Do you know what Cree chip your setup is using? CXA1512 or CXA1520?[/QUOTE]

 

[Olympus Off Road]

There aren't any drop in true projector housings for halogen bulbs for the XJ. Do you know what Cree chip your setup is using? CXA1512 or CXA1520?

The 1512's

 

[Talyn]

The 1512's

One more question. Which way does the fan blow?

 

[Talyn]

http://www.lifetimeledlights.com/H49003-LED-headlights-_p_59.html Those are interesting. The seller says they use the larger CXA1520 Chip which provides more lumens. Still 6000 Kelvin. Probably more like 5000 kelvin as Cree doesn't list a 6000 Kelvin 1520.

 

[DanMan2k06]

Got my kit in today. Everything was well packaged inside of the ching chong china box. Return address was a company in NJ though, so I guess I bought some USA stock. These things are BIG. There is a DIESEL heatsink built in. I may have to trim some of the header panel because they're really long with the fan mounted on the back. I'm planning on mounting these in a pair of Cibie's.

Someone asked earlier which way they fan blows - It blows away from the bulb (just like the rad. e-fan).

Right on the pamphlet it says CXA1512, lumens:1800lm. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but they are staggeringly bright. I used a 1500mA wall power source I had, and even under-powered (they're rated for 2.2A) they were blindingly bright.

With the low beam on, one chip is lit. With the high beams on, both chips are lit. I'm guessing this is the reason for the fan. One chip probably wouldn't get too hot, but with 2 of those things back-to-back with each other, I could see it getting smoldering inside the housing.

Photobucket has gone postal on my desktop mac for some reason, so in the next post I'll load some pics from my iphone.

 

[DanMan2k06]

 

[XJLI]

those are giant

 

[Tony_SS]

They look pretty good to me...

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Cree only lists around 1710 lumens as the minimum maximum on their CXA1512 LED chips. And thats at 25* C. At 85* C it drops to 1590 lumens.

You do realize that 85*C is 185*F, right?

Also, do you realize that the bulbs in question are using TWO led's per bulb?

And if you read the data sheet, you would see that those numbers are at .35amp. At ~40 volts they would be putting out 2200 lumens... each. Oh, and that number is at 85* C too. Making their advertised 15/1800 lumens pretty darn easy.

 

[Talyn]

You do realize that 85*C is 185*F, right?

Really? is that how that works?

Also, do you realize that the bulbs in question are using TWO led's per bulb?

You do realize only one led is on for low beams, right?

At ~40 volts they would be putting out 2200 lumens... each. Oh, and that number is at 85* C too. Making their advertised 15/1800 lumens pretty darn easy.

Where did you find the voltage rating for the ballasts they are using?

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Look, I realize you're super sensitive about this subject, considering how much time and money you've dumped into your projector set up, but don't go finding reasons to trash the idea when you don't know much about it.

First of all, like I said, one of those led's can put out 2200 lumens, easy. Meaning that the low beams could easily put out 1500 lumens. And I didn't say that the ballasts actually put out 40 volts, the point was that the led's output goes up dramatically from the meager 350mA current you quoted them at.