I converted to LED lighting!
 

I converted all the lights on my 2005 Civic to LED. LED lighting draws much less power than incandescent lighting, so my MPG should go up a little:) I didn’t do it strictly for MPG, I also did it to have brighter, longer lasting lights with a more crisp on/off quality too. I think that LED lighting should be added to the list of mods to improve efficiency. I do not know how much gas I am saving, but what I do know is that turning on the headlights no longer bogs down the engine at idle. Less load on the electrical system can only mean increased efficiency. For people running without an alternator, LED lighting will allow you to go farther between charges also. I am very pleased with this upgrade so far. The indicator lights turn on and off so quickly and cleanly, and the headlights are a beautiful white color instead of yellow. They are much brighter too. I will upload pictures of the lighting when I get home. However, I need to change my flasher relay now that I converted to LED turn signals because the LED bulbs draw so little power that the turn signal goes too fast because it thinks that the bulbs are burned out. Anyways, what do you think?

I like LED's, and I did all of them on my old Scion xA - including the headlights.

But, the only time you will notice anything is if you are doing EOC at night. The battery keeps the voltage up longer, with LED's.

It is part of a list of mods for all the reasons you mentioned.

I retrofit all bulbs in vehicles except for the blinkers. They are used so infrequently/intermittently that it's of minor concern, and it allows me to ignore the fast blink problem.

I wonder how the math has changed in almost four years: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...sis-25772.html

I got my LED headlights for under $40 for the set.

Nice upgrade! I've wanted to go LED on everything on pretty much every car I've had... I just never get to it.

Care to A - B - A test? Just kidding. ;)

Which LED headlights did you choose?

That is definitely a better deal. Please make a garage entry for your car. Do you have any instrumentation? There must be some way of pulling actual data to test current draw, engine RPMs with each headlight, something!

These are the ones I chose: https://www.amazon.com/Auxbeam-Headl...eadlight+bulbs

I have a Scanguage. I would measure idle RPM, but the RPM would be the same with both bulbs because the IACV would just bring the idle back up. However, according to the Amazon page, this set of bulbs draws 72 watts, compared to standard halogen 9006 bulbs that draw 110 watts for the pair. Also, the stock tail lights draw 70 watts for the pair of large and small bulbs, compared to 10 watts for the pair of LEDs. The front stock front parking lights draw 40 watts for the pair, compared to 6 for the LEDs. So the stock lighting system draws 220W, compared to 88W for the LEDs, a 132 watt savings over stock! If the alternator is 50% efficient, a total of 264W would be saved, about 1/3 of a horsepower! I know that this isn't the kind of data you were looking for, but it's what I got.

Scangauge should be able to show gallons per hour fuel consumption; that would definitely drop with this change.

4,000 lumens each?

Yes, 8,000 lumens for the set.

SI lumens or chinese lumens?

I don't know, but they're BRIGHT.

Question now is: will they STAY bright for a reasonable length of time before failing?

The standard Sylvania low beam is 910 lumens and the high beam is 1700.

Well, it saves energy while binding oncoming traffic.

Brilliant.

What lights did you convert from?

I'm not familiar with the HB4 element designation. I have H-4s.

Did you convert one light and then take a picture of the beam pattern on high- and low-beam against a wall?

I converted from halogens to LEDs in the Hella H-4 housing. The phenomenal low-beam cutoff went away. I had to apply a field expedient fix:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/member-fr...6-100-0918.jpg

Also the halogens had good high beams, I could light up reflectors on road signs a quarter mile down the road. The LEDs have good color temperature, but don't have that reach.

For another thread I was looking at beeping backup lights. They only seem to be available in halogen. Backup lights would be a good use case for LEDs.

The phosphor will degrade in a high power application like car headlights where things get quite hot, but it should be good for a few thousand hours before losing 30%-50% of its light output, dependent on specific circumstances like ambient temp, which bulb you buy, etc.. At which point, it would become only as bright as an OEM bulb.

I definitely noticed that the highway mpg would go down by a tiny bit when turning on the OEM lightbulbs, but I imagine the fuel savings won't really pay for the bulb. The more important thing is that you get a brighter bulb that doesn't hog electricity and doesn't burn out quickly and abruptly. JDM Astars have a good beam pattern that let you see out in the distance without blinding traffic and correctly advertised lumens rating, and you can get the same bulb from their OEM for I think 100 bucks on Ebay, that's the one to get.

An interesting benefit I noticed when I got my LED low beams is that the headlights do not dim when I restart the car with lights still on. :thumbup: Less draw=easier starting!

You definitely have less draw with led’s.

But the reason it doesnt dim, is that the circuit regulates the amps.

So it will draw more amps with the engine off (alternator off) vs alternaor on.

Basically it tries to draw constant power, if the voltage drops the amps go up.

Some years back I retrofitted 35w HIDs with projectors into my factory headlight housings. Probably not California legal, but the cutoff is very clean and I aimed the beams correctly. They were a tremendous upgrade over the stock halogens in reflectors.

https://i.imgur.com/8448KrJ.jpg


I like to tinker with things and try to fix what isn't broken, so on a whim I picked up some of the highest rated fanless LEDs on Amazon which would fit into my H1 projectors (which insure that whatever bulb I use, will not blind other drivers).

They advertise these as 40w per bulb, 4800LM per bulb. My understanding is that most 35w HIDs are somewhere around 3200-3400LM, and that 35w is before conversion losses from the ballasts, so on paper these should be better, right?

HID on the left, LED on the right:

https://i.imgur.com/VPIyAAK.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/XZkuYjA.jpg


No forward facing pictures. My car was not parked in a place where I could get a good comparison, and the difference was so stark I didn't even bother.

I was pretty disappointed. I expect you can't just make up numbers like I'm about to, but if the 35w HIDs I have are 3200 lumens, I expect the brightest LEDs on the market aren't more than 1500.