DEMON44
Low-Tech Redneck
The 5x7s in our F550 service trucks never ice up.
CK5
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LED headlights: worth the cost?
- Thread starter CGT80
- Start date
The bigger (20+W) LED's put out a surprising amount of heat. I would think that if heating was factored into the design, it would be enough to keep ice at bay.
Apparently the snow is different here in Colorado. Like I stated in my other post, I have had halogens ice almost over. That is why I talked to the Truck- lite rep when he came into my shop.
Not saying lights won't ice up, I can just see the heat generated being used to help prevent it, if that heat got to the lens.
The larger LED's require dedicated heat sinks or they will burn out, those heat sinks are hot enough to prevent ice from forming at any ambient temp. I'd be curious to see how they are all put together.
The larger LED's require dedicated heat sinks or they will burn out, those heat sinks are hot enough to prevent ice from forming at any ambient temp. I'd be curious to see how they are all put together.
Kain
3/4 ton status
lmc has some a hole lot cheaper than 350 and they work well ask frank (digitalepiphany)
i helped to put them on his 84 blazer
i helped to put them on his 84 blazer
http://www.lmctruck.com/icatalog/csb/full.aspx?Page=80
$250 per doesn't seem cheaper than ~$170 per.
Anyway, I ordered a set of the Amazon ones ...
Me: Uh, my name's Dr Emu, and I have a lighting problem.
Group: Hi, Dr Emu!
I'll post up in a coupla days with the results.
-- A
DEMON44
Low-Tech Redneck
Hard to get a good pic with them on. But these Speaker 5x7s never ever ice up.
Kain
3/4 ton status
CGT80
1/2 ton status
I just test drove my truck, after getting the Hella conversions and relay mod put in. Two headlights is definitely better than one.
The conversions do seem brighter and I was surprised how small the wire was in the original harness, but I was also surprised at how much current primary wire is supposed to handle at 12 volts. 18 gauge is listed at 180 watts, and that is what the factory wire looked like. These new lamps would be 120 watts for the pair on high beams.
I had 10 gauge and 18 gauge wire. My dad had some 16 gauge wire, so I used that for the 3' from the relays to the driver side headlight, and to power the relays. I had installed new sockets and grounds last year, so I left the wire to the passenger's side as the connections are good, and it only powers one lamp. I was tempted to use the 10 gauge, but I think it is overkill. 14 would have been fine, if I had some.
I found room in my under-hood electrical box to add the additional two relays, so the install looks clean, and the relays are out of the weather. I crimped the connectors for the relay sockets, then soldered them, and used dielectric grease on them. I hate dealing with crappy electrical.
This is how it looked last summer before pulling the engine out:
I washed the engine bay, but didn't wipe it down, so it looks like crap. The paint is base coat, clear coat satin that I sprayed while the engine was out, after building my electrical box.
All of the add-ons for the truck are here, rather than under the dash or in the engine bay. Shift indicator for the lokar dash indicator, th400 downshift switch that is tied to the carb by cable, back fuse block is for the autometer gauges, middle is tied to a relay for key on, front left is batt 1 and front right is batt 2 (they are isolated), relays for stereo, backup lights, air bags, electric fan, ignition, etc. I had the ground bolt just left of the kickdown switch (aluminum chunk on right), but I moved it and put two relays there, which now power the headlights.
The conversions do seem brighter and I was surprised how small the wire was in the original harness, but I was also surprised at how much current primary wire is supposed to handle at 12 volts. 18 gauge is listed at 180 watts, and that is what the factory wire looked like. These new lamps would be 120 watts for the pair on high beams.
I had 10 gauge and 18 gauge wire. My dad had some 16 gauge wire, so I used that for the 3' from the relays to the driver side headlight, and to power the relays. I had installed new sockets and grounds last year, so I left the wire to the passenger's side as the connections are good, and it only powers one lamp. I was tempted to use the 10 gauge, but I think it is overkill. 14 would have been fine, if I had some.
I found room in my under-hood electrical box to add the additional two relays, so the install looks clean, and the relays are out of the weather. I crimped the connectors for the relay sockets, then soldered them, and used dielectric grease on them. I hate dealing with crappy electrical.
This is how it looked last summer before pulling the engine out:
I washed the engine bay, but didn't wipe it down, so it looks like crap. The paint is base coat, clear coat satin that I sprayed while the engine was out, after building my electrical box.
All of the add-ons for the truck are here, rather than under the dash or in the engine bay. Shift indicator for the lokar dash indicator, th400 downshift switch that is tied to the carb by cable, back fuse block is for the autometer gauges, middle is tied to a relay for key on, front left is batt 1 and front right is batt 2 (they are isolated), relays for stereo, backup lights, air bags, electric fan, ignition, etc. I had the ground bolt just left of the kickdown switch (aluminum chunk on right), but I moved it and put two relays there, which now power the headlights.
Today Brown Santa brought a set of the GE Nighthawk 7" LED's. So I busted out the Thomas Dolby and did some SCIENCE! (For the non-nerdy, this is a quantitative comparison between the previous halogen and the new LED headlights.)
Before installing I did some detailed measurements with a bench power supply which I'll go over later.
First, however, the all-important visual results:
Here's one halogen bulb (passenger side) illuminating my side yard. That's a t-shirt hung over the motion sensor to keep the yard lights off and not a scarecrow or fetish. It's not one of those fancy white(ish) halogens, just the basic type (Sylvania, I think) which is why it has the yellow tinge.
And then the driver's side is the LED:
In general there's greater visibility IMO, between the whiter color and the wider dispersion -- hell, the driver's side LED goes farther to the passenger side than the passenger side halogen. There's wider vertical dispersion too, so the metal garbage can off to the left is actually identifiable as such with the LED, which means you could identify wildlife or bicyclists and the like and brake accordingly. (Unless they were hippies driving a Prius, in which case you'd accelerate. Kidding. Sort of.)
Finally, here's a shot from this afternoon when I put it together. Halogen on left (passenger side), and LED on right (driver's.) Notice that on low beams, only the top half of the LED is on, which looks funny but seems to work. In high beam the bottom half goes on too (see below.)
(see next post for more detail)
-- A
Before installing I did some detailed measurements with a bench power supply which I'll go over later.
First, however, the all-important visual results:
Here's one halogen bulb (passenger side) illuminating my side yard. That's a t-shirt hung over the motion sensor to keep the yard lights off and not a scarecrow or fetish. It's not one of those fancy white(ish) halogens, just the basic type (Sylvania, I think) which is why it has the yellow tinge.
And then the driver's side is the LED:
In general there's greater visibility IMO, between the whiter color and the wider dispersion -- hell, the driver's side LED goes farther to the passenger side than the passenger side halogen. There's wider vertical dispersion too, so the metal garbage can off to the left is actually identifiable as such with the LED, which means you could identify wildlife or bicyclists and the like and brake accordingly. (Unless they were hippies driving a Prius, in which case you'd accelerate. Kidding. Sort of.)
Finally, here's a shot from this afternoon when I put it together. Halogen on left (passenger side), and LED on right (driver's.) Notice that on low beams, only the top half of the LED is on, which looks funny but seems to work. In high beam the bottom half goes on too (see below.)
(see next post for more detail)
-- A
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Now, for the science bits and then my opinions.
This truck has had the relay upgrade done as the original wiring was old and corroded. However, I don't know that for LED it would be necessary as long as the connectors were mostly okay.
On my bench supply at 12.0 volts, the LED takes 1.6A on low and 3.2A on high. Interestingly, the high side kicks both high and low circuits simultaneously. The halogens don't do this, i.e. the two sides are separate so the high side comes on solo, presumably as it would overheat. Some folks do their relays such that the lows come on with the highs, and there are kits for the later trucks to do this (though I think that's for the quad-bulb trucks.) Anyway, the LED then uses 19 watts for the low and 38 for the high.
The halogen, on the other hand, takes 2.6A for the low side, 4.0A for the high, making 6.6A for the both if you have the relays done that way. That's 31, 48 and 79 watts respectively.
Now, with the engine running at idle I was actually getting about 14.3V versus the 12.7 with the engine off, so the power usages would be correspondingly higher on the truck. The LED takes less power no matter how you slice it.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that, as others have posted, you don't really need #10 wires for your headlights. Heck, you could use #16 or #18 and be fine, especially if you were using LED's. They take half the power and put out what seems to my eye like more light.
So, to do an Inigo Montoya and sum up, I'm pleased so far. The advantages include, as seen above, whiter light, wider dispersion, and lower power consumption (not like I care if my truck is green really, but maybe it saves wear & tear on the alternator
)
Of more interest is the lifetime of the LED vs a bulb. I'm tired of replacing halogens every coupla years. Sure, they're cheap, but it's a pain. You could do the Hella conversion to the H4 bulbs, might be easier to change bulbs and gets you some better performance, but it's an additional cost.
Also, to get the light output of the LED, you'd hafta go with the higher-output bulbs, and their lifetime goes down VERY quickly as the power goes up. The 75W and 85W ones have shorter lives, and the ~100W ones have expected use times of something insane like 100 hours... less, I betcha, when subjected to the shaking of an old truck and/or off-road use.
I'll admit the LED's are stupid expensive initially right now, but that should drop in time. And if I add up the H4 conversion and however many sets of bulbs over the same number of years, it's not that much less. (Who knows, maybe the LED's will crap out at some point, so we'll have to see how they fared in a year or three.)
If you can get the H4's in a decent white with a reasonable lifetime, that's prolly the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade, though you'd likely want to do the relay thing unless your wires were in really good shape. But if you want to throw money at something, these LED ones are pretty damn good so far.
-- A
This truck has had the relay upgrade done as the original wiring was old and corroded. However, I don't know that for LED it would be necessary as long as the connectors were mostly okay.
On my bench supply at 12.0 volts, the LED takes 1.6A on low and 3.2A on high. Interestingly, the high side kicks both high and low circuits simultaneously. The halogens don't do this, i.e. the two sides are separate so the high side comes on solo, presumably as it would overheat. Some folks do their relays such that the lows come on with the highs, and there are kits for the later trucks to do this (though I think that's for the quad-bulb trucks.) Anyway, the LED then uses 19 watts for the low and 38 for the high.
The halogen, on the other hand, takes 2.6A for the low side, 4.0A for the high, making 6.6A for the both if you have the relays done that way. That's 31, 48 and 79 watts respectively.
Now, with the engine running at idle I was actually getting about 14.3V versus the 12.7 with the engine off, so the power usages would be correspondingly higher on the truck. The LED takes less power no matter how you slice it.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that, as others have posted, you don't really need #10 wires for your headlights. Heck, you could use #16 or #18 and be fine, especially if you were using LED's. They take half the power and put out what seems to my eye like more light.
So, to do an Inigo Montoya and sum up, I'm pleased so far. The advantages include, as seen above, whiter light, wider dispersion, and lower power consumption (not like I care if my truck is green really, but maybe it saves wear & tear on the alternator
)Of more interest is the lifetime of the LED vs a bulb. I'm tired of replacing halogens every coupla years. Sure, they're cheap, but it's a pain. You could do the Hella conversion to the H4 bulbs, might be easier to change bulbs and gets you some better performance, but it's an additional cost.
Also, to get the light output of the LED, you'd hafta go with the higher-output bulbs, and their lifetime goes down VERY quickly as the power goes up. The 75W and 85W ones have shorter lives, and the ~100W ones have expected use times of something insane like 100 hours... less, I betcha, when subjected to the shaking of an old truck and/or off-road use.
I'll admit the LED's are stupid expensive initially right now, but that should drop in time. And if I add up the H4 conversion and however many sets of bulbs over the same number of years, it's not that much less. (Who knows, maybe the LED's will crap out at some point, so we'll have to see how they fared in a year or three.)
If you can get the H4's in a decent white with a reasonable lifetime, that's prolly the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade, though you'd likely want to do the relay thing unless your wires were in really good shape. But if you want to throw money at something, these LED ones are pretty damn good so far.
-- A
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What size our the headlights on the 89-91 Chevy blazer front ends? the quad setup.
Found these when lookin' around online.
http://www.carid.com/spyder/spyder-led-projector-headlights-14859982.html
Found these when lookin' around online.
http://www.carid.com/spyder/spyder-led-projector-headlights-14859982.html
If you mean the one with two lights up top, and the marker below, like ... umm, center column on this page:
http://www.lmctruck.com/icatalog/csb/full.aspx?Page=79
LMC calls them 150mm
Sylvania cross is 4701 or 4703 for high and low respectively, if that helps you match.-- A
The 4x6's will work on my '87 low and high beams. 89-91, not sure on the single headlights...definitely not the dual side by side with marker light/blinker underneath.
Tempting at that price. I wonder what the pattern is (low top 1/2, hi full grid or one side low, full hi etc..)
(BTW, hope you don't mind me hijacking your thread somewhat. I just get excited about lighting
)Can I just say, jeebus. That's a metric ass-ton of electrical crap! My poor little five-spot fuse panel and relay row is looking all feeble and lonely
When you say airbags, you talking about helper springs? Why do they need electrical, a valve or something?
-- A
Why not do the LMC upgrades and replace the "new bulb" with an led upgrade (keep the lens)?
looks like a 9007 http://http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=C5WbfT9GHVLjDM47opAOw0YGwDIOEi5wFo6f-_6ABq8CLr64CCAkQAiDezc8eKBNgybbHiZCk6A-gAfWl1tADyAEHqgQmT9CnT0cSL82HzaqAOkjh3gMjaNEQEABidJmTrhWtYo_bVaYzMeDABQWgBiaAB_PZqS-QBwOoB6a-G-AS9IHProK0t7nxAQ&sig=AOD64_2PypJ2MN6uOpSCyBYjXB2WWpRUvw&ctype=5&rct=j&q=&ved=0CG8Q2CkwAQ&adurl=http://www.gearbest.com/car-lights/pp_71335.html%3Fcurrency%3DUSD picked a random store
I haven't tried it, so take this with a grain of salt, but I suspect the results would be less than stellar since the the reflector assembly isn't designed from the gitgo for LED.
LED's are much more directional than bulbs, which shine basically 360*, so the bulb-style reflector assemblies are made to reflect the light off the back of the bulb (where LED's don't generally have much/any output) and in many cases seem to have a block right at the center where the LED is brightest.
But, again, I've not tried it. (Though for that kind of money, somebody should...)
-- A
