LED Lights

[Ed Poore]

11 minutes ago, pat_pending said:

Interesting, I've not seen LEDs like that before.

What was the cost?

They look similar but not the same to the Classic Car LEDs I liked further up in this thread.

[Chicken Drumstick]

2 hours ago, pat_pending said:

Interesting, I've not seen LEDs like that before.

What was the cost?

I paid between £30 and £36 a set for them. I have 3 sets in H4 plus some in another fitment and know of 3 people with the H4's too. Sadly I've not seen them for sale for a while now though.

I'm considering buying the ones Ed Poore posted earlier as they can be had a in a warm white tint, rather than cool white. Which I think would be a big plus.

[=jon=]

If you search on amazon / ebay etc for 'Novsight' you get a whole load of results similar to the above.

 

[ThreePointFive]

I don't want to derail the discussion but as its quite clear where we sit legally, I'm wondering about halogens. as said, I have LED all around but standard headlights so it's going to look very odd. 

Are there any halogens with a similar colour temp to LED? I've seen blue tinted bulbs but they're unbranded so wouldn't trust them for interior lights let alone safety-critical.

[Bowie69]

I use Phillips +130 &-force bulbs, they are hardened further to vibration damage -something a lot of the cheaper ones do not suffer well with:

https://www.eurocarparts.com/p/philips-x-treme-vision-g-force-h4-130-extra-light-twin-pack-48177019A

Slightly whiter light, with a slight blue tinge, but. It so white/blue that it would be anything close to an LED or HID.

I'm very pleased with them.

 

[Chicken Drumstick]

21 minutes ago, =jon= said:

If you search on amazon / ebay etc for 'Novsight' you get a whole load of results similar to the above.

 

Just make sure they have some way of producing a dip beam. Amazingly some LED H4 bulbs do not, the hoods on the ones I have create the dip beam. The real plus point over halogen is on mainbeam both LEDs work on the bulb. Whereas on a halogen it will turn off the dip element. This can cause less light right in front of the vehicle.

[Chicken Drumstick]

13 minutes ago, ThreePointFive said:

I don't want to derail the discussion but as its quite clear where we sit legally, I'm wondering about halogens. as said, I have LED all around but standard headlights so it's going to look very odd. 

Are there any halogens with a similar colour temp to LED? I've seen blue tinted bulbs but they're unbranded so wouldn't trust them for interior lights let alone safety-critical.

Ultimately no, halogen will not give you the same colour temp as a cool white LED. Although neutral or warm colour temps would likely be better overall. There are some halogens that have a blue filter (blue paint on the lens of the bulb) to change the colour. Personally I've found such bulbs to be dreadful. They bleach all the colours out of green and brown things (verges etc) making everything look rather grey. I have also found such halogens make it hard to see the road surface when wet for similar reasons.

This was my biggest complaint with the Osram Night Breakers. Main beam uses a clear part of the glass and has a nice beam colour. On dip it uses a blue part of the lens and in my opinion the tint was not very nice at all giving poor colour rendition. So much so on my p38 I didn't go for the Night Breakers and went for their bulb down (called Silver or something) as it doesn't have the blue on the glass.

[Retroanaconda]

With the Landreizger relays and decent quality bulbs (not +whatever% ones that don’t last but just good quality standard H4s) in the standard lamp housings I’ve found the headlights more than up to the job.

They're as good as the LED lights on the new 110 in terms of light projection, though the latter have a slightly crisper cutoff on dipped beam and the dipped pattern stays lit when on main beam which is useful.

I have seen and been less than impressed with the 7” LED Chinese ebay specials that have almost certainly fraudulent e-markings. The proper and much more expensive branded offerings like Trucklite or Nolden do work well with good patterns but again not really any better than a well setup halogen system. And they fill with snow 

[mmgemini]

4 hours ago, Chicken Drumstick said:

Just make sure they have some way of producing a dip beam. Amazingly some LED H4 bulbs do not, the hoods on the ones I have create the dip beam. The real plus point over halogen is on mainbeam both LEDs work on the bulb. Whereas on a halogen it will turn off the dip element. This can cause less light right in front of the vehicle.

That's why I recomend ad wire up,

that the dip element is kept on all the time with an H4 halogen

[Bowie69]

Personally, if I am using main beam I find I am looking much further down the road than right in front of the car.

[Chicken Drumstick]

50 minutes ago, mmgemini said:

That's why I recomend ad wire up,

that the dip element is kept on all the time with an H4 halogen

This causes a lot more heat. You may get away with it with some bulbs and housings, but others it might cause issues or radically reduce bulb life.

[Chicken Drumstick]

25 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:

Personally, if I am using main beam I find I am looking much further down the road than right in front of the car.

Kind of depends really. But more light is rarely a bad thing when night driving. Rover 200's (bubble shape) are particularly bad on main beam leaving a huge shadow in front of you. Very poor night driving experience. Can't recall if they are H4's or not though. Just one I remember being a good example.

[Nonimouse]

I've done many thousands of night driving miles with my set up. Standard Maestro Lamps, relay feed and ozram nightbreakers. I added spots in the grill with bog standard 65 watt Halogens (OE fitment) to supplement the 'close up beam' ..

The 'white light' is excellent for all night driving types. Except snow. Snow is a PITA but not something we get often. 

I'm impressed by the reliability of the Ozram stuff and it's price.

A lot of my night driving is done between 00.00 and 06.00 in bad weather/storms in the winter. I'm usually on the lookout for fallen trees or random vehicles parked in hedges; as such I used to need a NS spotlight on the roof. I don't bother now. The spread of light afforded by the Ozrams is fine.

Apart form the illegality of upgrading my vehicle to LED headlights, the biggest issue with LED headlamps is  the abrubt cut off. Makes for a useless and potentially dangerous problem, especially when pushing on through corners, in the wet

 

[ThreePointFive]

3 hours ago, Retroanaconda said:

With the Landreizger relays and decent quality bulbs (not +whatever% ones that don’t last but just good quality standard H4s) in the standard lamp housings I’ve found the headlights more than up to the job.

They're as good as the LED lights on the new 110 in terms of light projection, though the latter have a slightly crisper cutoff on dipped beam and the dipped pattern stays lit when on main beam which is useful.

I have seen and been less than impressed with the 7” LED Chinese ebay specials that have almost certainly fraudulent e-markings. The proper and much more expensive branded offerings like Trucklite or Nolden do work well with good patterns but again not really any better than a well setup halogen system. And they fill with snow 

That's exactly the setup I'm going for, my Landreizger loom is due in any day now (hadn't even fitted the Boomslang when I read the bad experiences, ditched it immediately). I've never had a problem even just with a set of Wipac crystals so I'm more than happy with the light output, it's just the mismatch in colour I'll now have with my bright white sidelights that I was thinking about. Chicken Drumstick is right though, there's very little around that makes the same light colour as LED so I'll just have tolerate it.

 

Until I don't.

[Chicken Drumstick]

29 minutes ago, Nonimouse said:

the biggest issue with LED headlamps is  the abrubt cut off. Makes for a useless and potentially dangerous problem, especially when pushing on through corners, in the wet

 

The cut off is more a result of the housing and lens type. Projector lenses will give a sharp cutoff, even with halogen bulbs. And conversely you'll get a more gradual cut off with reflector lenses, even with LEDs.

[elbekko]

17 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

Personally, if I am using main beam I find I am looking much further down the road than right in front of the car.

I found recently, when driving through dark and frozen Sweden, that it was rather nice to have the high beam on for far-away viewing, and the flood lightbar for lighting up the road just in front of the car (and the trees next to the car). It was perfect for showing that little sparkle on the road that gives away the snow has turned to ice, long before you start feeling it. Couldn't see that that well with just the high-beam on.

[Bowie69]

18 minutes ago, elbekko said:

It was perfect for showing that little sparkle on the road that gives away the snow has turned to ice, long before you start feeling it. Couldn't see that that well with just the high-beam on.

Sounds utterly delightful, magical even, but a bit of a niche case in the UK

[geoffbeaumont]

2 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

Sounds utterly delightful, magical even, but a bit of a niche case in the UK

In Somerset yes - Northern Scotland not so much...

[Bowie69]

12 minutes ago, geoffbeaumont said:

In Somerset yes - Northern Scotland not so much...

Quite, apologies

[Nonimouse]

13 minutes ago, geoffbeaumont said:

In Somerset yes - Northern Scotland not so much...

Seee your point, but both Bowie and I live on the huge flat areas of Sedgemoor and The Avalon Vale. They are frost pockets. Our frost will be 3-4 degrees harsher than the rest of wessex. Back in 2010 we had minus 16 on three of four occasions. Although it douse warm up slightly quicker

[Nonimouse]

18 hours ago, Chicken Drumstick said:

The cut off is more a result of the housing and lens type. Projector lenses will give a sharp cutoff, even with halogen bulbs. And conversely you'll get a more gradual cut off with reflector lenses, even with LEDs.

I see what you are saying, but legally I can't fit Led designed headlight lamps; and practically I can't (or wouldn't) as it looks carp

[geoffbeaumont]

2 hours ago, Nonimouse said:

Seee your point, but both Bowie and I live on the huge flat areas of Sedgemoor and The Avalon Vale. They are frost pockets. Our frost will be 3-4 degrees harsher than the rest of wessex. Back in 2010 we had minus 16 on three of four occasions. Although it douse warm up slightly quicker

A little chillier than Taunton Deane where I was living at the time. Made it down to -3^oC which matched the local record and caused a lot of comment locally

[Bowie69]

To be honest, the main problem round here is fog, which of course main beam is no good for whatsoever...

Add in freezing to the fog, and it gets quite exciting trying to spot the patches of black ice round here

[Troll Hunter]

https://www.brit-car.co.uk/product.php/688070/0/grille_integration_kit_with_lazer_triple_r_750_led_spotlights?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defender 2020 Spotlights&utm_content=Defender 2020 Spotlights+CID_2b4f4d31d06720e880c91cb40b71c5f2&utm_source=Mailr&utm_term=ORDER YOURS NOW

Obviously an essential bling for the Chelsea Tractor driver to clearly see the parking lot curbs!  I don't know who else would be interested at that price.

Mike

[Glue]

I've just seen these advertised on the book of face...