Off Road Toad Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 These puppies look very cool, but jeez look at the price! Anyone want to sponsor me? Steve http://www.mobilecentre.co.uk/led-land-rover-defender-puma-series-headlamp-upgrade-12-24-volt-par-56-x-2-rhd-right-hand-drive-headlight-h6024-p-450.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retroanaconda Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 So double the output of an H4 halogen...but a bit more than double the price! I'll stick with my second pair of driving lights, that doubles the output too but only cost £50. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CwazyWabbit Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 Even if I could afford them I'd worry about them getting nicked..... not exactly difficult to remove ..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 It's something I've mentioned before - but although LED lights seem like a great idea, there is a reason no vehicles are fitted with OE headlights (yet). The reason is that LEDs gain much of their efficiency gain by limiting the spectrum of the light they produce to tight red green & blue bands, which your eyes average together to White light. Not having to generate the frequencies in-between saves a lot of power. The trouble is your eyes / brain use some of the frequencies of light in-between for detail & depth perception. If you want a demonstration, take your watch apart in daylight and try to reassemble it with an LED torch! To re-gain the detail & depth, you have to increase the brightness to a point that it hurts your eyes! I imported a big, wide LED roof light from Auz with a few thousand LEDs. The truck looked like a flying saucer - but it was impossible to drive off road with. It hurt my eyes AND I couldn't make out the terrain! It went to live on eBay. They will get there, but I don't think they have yet. Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 Another issue with LED's is that at high outputs they're drawing as much power and needing to dissipate as heat as an HID bulb, and H4 HID kits are £30 from eBay china. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickeyw Posted September 20, 2011 Share Posted September 20, 2011 Saw those at Billing on IRB's 90. Not sure about the looks, but definitely sure that I won't ever spend half the value of my truck of a set of feckin headlights that will likely attract trees or worse in a way that my H4s never have. And that'll likely happen before any burger gets a chance to nick them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan110 Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 I'd be interested to know a little more about the 'depth perception/ LED' thing. If that's true, I find it strange that LED lights have become ubiquitous in the night-time mountain biking world over the past few years - a sport where depth perception at speed is vital. Also the fact that bike lights like this: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=24167 put out a similar lumin count for a quarter of the price and in an extremely well built package manufactured in the uk makes me think that the 4x4 guys are taking us for a ride. Oh, and does 'a ball bearing dropped from 1m' sound like a rigorous military test to anyone else? If it was a snooker ball i'd be impressed... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CwazyWabbit Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 ...... Oh, and does 'a ball bearing dropped from 1m' sound like a rigorous military test to anyone else? If it was a snooker ball i'd be impressed... Depends how big your balls are..... (Bearings obviously) I suspect phrases like 'tested to military standards' carry about as much true meaning as 'aircraft grade aluminium'. Just marketing phrases unless they specify which standards, for example there are many grades of aluminium used in aircraft production, some of which are just bog standard stuff.... but the phrase looks good in adverts. I'd say 'tested to military standards' is the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superpants Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 http://www.jwspeaker.com/products/headlights/model-8700-7-round.pdf The manufacturer has a fair bit of data on their site. From the quality of some of their othe products I've seen these aren't cheap chinese tat.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickwilliams Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Oh, and does 'a ball bearing dropped from 1m' sound like a rigorous military test to anyone else? If it was a snooker ball i'd be impressed... A one inch dia. ball bearing dropped from about 600mm has an impact energy of 0.5J which is the standard impact test for domestic electrical appliances. A 2in ball dropped from about 1m has an impact energy of over 6J and this is the more stringent test which tends to be applied to industrial products. Nick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbs Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Instead of spending mega money on something that could be removed at short notice(thieving pikey persons) why don't you just do that Headlight wiring loom upgrade ala someone on here, you'll get at least 50% more light out of your headlights-I know i do and at a lot less cost-It's a really great Modification to do and looks as normal as they do but with a lot more power going to the bulbs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mo Murphy Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 But looking as normal is not the point of these, John, they are super bling. The high price tag being far more important than their actual performance "Because oi am considerably richer than yow" Mo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I'd be interested to know a little more about the 'depth perception/ LED' thing. If that's true, I find it strange that LED lights have become ubiquitous in the night-time mountain biking world over the past few years - a sport where depth perception at speed is vital. I use LED bike lights too - but the requirements for a bike light are different. You don't have an engine with tens of kilowatts of power to spare so a good quality light with long life is worth more than the reduced depth perception. I've had halogen bike lights where the battery would last 40 mins on full power - from that point of view, LED are much better. I'd rather have LED light than no light! White LED lights come in two types. The most efficient are effectively a red, green & blue light in the same housing which mix to give White. These give the highest brightness per watt but the worst depth perception. Next are an Ultraviolet LED covered in phosphor which emits White light (they work in the same way as a strip light). They are much less efficient, but still better than incandescent and about the same as HID. The better the depth perception, the worse the efficiency and you find that when it's as good as incandescent, the efficiency is not much better than. HID give the best compromise - and there are plenty of high end HID bike lights - but they are expensive. If you have an alternator and an engine - but not the money, then Halogen are about the best. Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBMUD Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I assume that it is still illegal to retrofit HID headlamps without automatic self levelling and cleaning? Are the LED lamps 'e' marked and legal for road use? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smego Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 I love my LED Maglites as so much brighter than halogen BUT another flaw is after about 40 mins of continues use the heat sink heats up and then the light output drops by up to 70% ok on a torch that is never left on but does this happen to high output car lights? I love LEDs in sidelights but would not swap out my headlights. PS if you can produce clean pure Red, Green and Blue light it would be a perfect white light, which would not effect your distance perception at all. Distance perception cones from the rods around the centre of your eye and these cannot "see" colour at all! The cones in the centre of your eye perceive the "colour". (I was a colour specialist and trainer and used to use RGB colour light emitters to train sales and technical staff by adjusting the 3 light components you can trick the eye into losing depth perception) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 PS if you can produce clean pure Red, Green and Blue light it would be a perfect white light, which would not effect your distance perception at all. Distance perception cones from the rods around the centre of your eye and these cannot "see" colour at all! The cones in the centre of your eye perceive the "colour". (I was a colour specialist and trainer and used to use RGB colour light emitters to train sales and technical staff by adjusting the 3 light components you can trick the eye into losing depth perception) Very True! The issue is that the colour spectrum produced by coloured LED's does not match the sensitivity spectrum of the Cones perfectly - so to produce an apparently White light, the red green & blue LED's are not the same brightness. The rod cells are most sensitive to light at 500nm - which is at the blue end of green light. The cones have peak sensitivities at 440nm (S type cell, blue), 540nm (M type cell, green-ish) and 570nm (L type cell, greeney-orange). RGB LED's have peaks at 490nm, 570nm & 640nm - but almost nothing at 500nm, the brightness of the Blue, 490nm centred peak at 500nm is about 30% of the mean intensity - so the depth perception you get with one of these is equivalent to an incandescent light 30% as bright. Phosphor based white LED's have a blue peak at 460nm and a fairly broad peak covering 500 to 700nm, peaking at 530nm. The intensity at 500nm, where you get the depth perception is about 50% of the mean intensity - so you get better depth perception than RGB LED's but only half as good as Incandescent. So, why don't light manufacturers include a 500nm LED? I suspect the answer is cost. you can get 502nm and 505nm, but they are about 100x the cost of regular R, G or B LEDs. When people look at an LED torch, its only the immediate brightness of it that is obvious - so without using it for something requiring detail or depth perception, a consumer is unlikely to see the benefit of the more expensive torch. I think it would be a hard sell! Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan110 Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 @simonr - thanks for the extra info! More detail than my tiny mind can cope with, but interesting stuff, cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonr Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 Looking at the bike lights you linked to - makes me think I could do better design wise! Time for some 3D printing! Si Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Landy-Novice Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 so lets get this straight! if you won 4.2 million pounds, you would buy a pair of light??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Off Road Toad Posted September 24, 2011 Author Share Posted September 24, 2011 My needs in life are simple Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbs Posted September 24, 2011 Share Posted September 24, 2011 But looking as normal is not the point of these, John, they are super bling. The high price tag being far more important than their actual performance "Because oi am considerably richer than yow" Mo Thing is though Mo we all know defender's are shiny enough to thieves as it is, why make them even more attractive to them with lights like that? and would you put them onto your truck if you could afford to do so? so lets get this straight! if you won 4.2 million pounds, you would buy a pair of light??? In a word errr No Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mo Murphy Posted September 24, 2011 Share Posted September 24, 2011 Thing is though Mo we all know defender's are shiny enough to thieves as it is, why make them even more attractive to them with lights like that? and would you put them onto your truck if you could afford to do so? Indeed John, indeed alas. If I get a few million I'll let you know Mo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Off Road Toad Posted September 24, 2011 Author Share Posted September 24, 2011 I actually quite like the look of them, regardless of what they offer in terms of improved lighting. You have a choice you know! They aren't going to make my truck any more stealable than it already is. Maybe the lights themselves would be at risk, but no more than facelift D2 headlights which evidently are prone to going 'walkabout' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inaine Posted September 24, 2011 Share Posted September 24, 2011 id buy a helicopter and foxtrot oscar clean out of the uk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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