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LED headlamps


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I saw a Defender on saturday with LED headlights. They gave off a ton of light, but none of it was annoying when I drove in front of him (though, granted, not for very long...).

Don't go for the cheap China ones though, they have no pattern to speak of.

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I have Truck-lite LED headlights and love the light output, especially the spread on the road to the sides.

You can check them out here:

If you want I can upload comparison pictures of H4 lights vs LED.

Todd.

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Yes they are brighter and far less prone to damage due to being shaken about than traditional filament lamps but only you can decide if you want to make the investment.

I run Nolden's (bought before they started to drop to the almost reasonable price they are now) and they are ok, they have a 3-year warranty and LR now fit them as OE to some Defenders.

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I like those truck lite ones Todd very nice spread indeed I will have a look at pricing etc do the take the bouncing about i.e off road driving well?

I've had the headlights for approx 2 years, in that time I've done a lot of offroading. These headlights are holding up no differently than the standard headlamps. Plus with these is that they are 100% sealed so river crossing or any deep water does not affect them. The plastic lens have not yellowed but do have a few scratch makes on them which I'm sure that I could polish out if I tried. ;-)

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I have a set of Truck Lites too - Nakatanenga (sp?!) were selling them much cheaper than normal a few months or so back. They are a massive, massive improvement over the Wipac Crystal ones, which are much better than the standard ones...

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I have a set of Truck Lites too - Nakatanenga (sp?!) were selling them much cheaper than normal a few months or so back. They are a massive, massive improvement over the Wipac Crystal ones, which are much better than the standard ones...

They still are Jon. I contacted them on the back of this and have just paid for a set. My OEM light units need replacing (they are starting to get quite rusty inside) - along with a few other bits, surrounds etc, I was probably going to end up spending around £100 to replace them, so I decided to spend a little more on the Trucklites. If anyone wants any pics/comparisons etc let me know and when they arrive I can put up the info.

Mo - I couldn't decide if it is silly money or not. I guess i will know once i have fitted them. The Nakatanenga price is £250 for the pair of UK spec ones which has come down to 'nearly acceptable' I think (well for me anyway).

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While they are still a lot of money compared to conventional, I like the fact that they draw far less current which can only be good for the harnesses/light switch..

This is a good point Phil. As my present headlamps aren't currently relayed, this also adds more to what i would have spent re-vamping a conventional setup which makes the money spent on the LED set seem like better value too!

A question though - my spots run off of a relay so that they only come on with the full beam - i presume this can be left untouched?

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I've got relayed spots off the full beam, so that should work as it did previously..

One minor issue I've noticed is that if you slowly move the headlight stalk from high to low beam, you can actually make all of the lights go out - possibly this is an issue with my switch though. In normal use it doesn't cause any issues though...

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I think it's a switch issue - I think the standard H4 lights only light the element in use, so when you are on high beam, the low beam isn't powered. Possibly you could rewire it so that the low beam is on all the time when the headlight switch is on and it would stop it, as I think the Trucklites are wired internally to have hi/low on both at once...

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Mine arrived today. They look good. They are heavy (don't know why that was a surprise, but thought I'd mention it!)

Some pics

372E9D95-1BFE-4185-8292-E9A2D76E0D98_zps

5B14F049-5869-45C9-B26E-CB43A896922B_zps

DB72742C-1EDB-4E06-98B5-B814E7350FF3_zps

5B0FB760-B136-4886-A753-490AEC16EB86_zps

2F5E50AE-72A0-4A50-89A2-49D8581A2ED7_zps

The slightly weird thing is the wiring colours for the sidelight feed. The black wire is labelled power and the purple/white labelled ground. So I guess purple/white needs to go to earth?? Am I right in thinking that the live and earth wiring on an led is important unlike a normal bulb?

Slight aside - If anyone is thinking about ordering these, I bought the extra wiring harness to make the sidelight feed 'plug and play'. Looking at everything tonight, I won't use it as the connectors are for a later vehicle (post 1993) than mine, so let me know as I would like to sell this on to someone else who would use it.

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Oooh, just waiting on mine to arrive now! Out of interest what extra harness did you buy? Is it for the td5 era? I was just going to piggyback a loom onto my sidelight feed with a couple of econseal connectors. I do have the td5 looms on mine.

The LEDs are polarity dependant so won't illuminate if wired wrongly,

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You won't be disappointed Scott. They have a good quality feel! Am yet to fit and try them mind!

Re the cables, they called them Y cables. They plug into the connectors that feed the sidelights and split them to feed the original sidelight and the trucklite. Having had a read tonight, apparently will work with post 1993 onwards (not sure about the puma). They are similar to the pics here fourth from the bottom:

http://www.mudstuff.co.uk/trucklite-phase-7-led-headlamps.html

The ones nakatenenga sent me need the connectors (supplied) attaching to the truck lite wires instead of those unsealed white connectors in the mudstuff link, the ones that nakatenenga supplied to connect to the sidelight feed on the truck lite are sealed. £20 posted for all the bits if you are interested? PM me if any use, they aren't going to get used on mine.

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The LEDs are polarity dependant so won't illuminate if wired wrongly,

So, according to the labeling on the lamp (pics above) - i will connect the white/purple from the LED light to the black (earth) of the sidelight and the black wire from the LED light to the red (live feed) of the sidelight. This all assumes that LR haven't swapped the normal wire colours around as well?!?!

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