Inexpensive H4 / 9003 / HB2 LED headlights ($32) - trying on the Prius & motorcycle

[deejaaa]

a lot more blue than i thought for 6000K. pattern looks about the same, neither is sharp on cutoff. are they instant on or a delay? did you feel the heat generated? all in all i like it. first time i've seen real world experience.
i plan to relocate the battery to the trunk and then i might give these a try. no room on the DS with the battery location.

[freebeard]

I'd be happy with that low beam. The color temp charts at https://www.google.com/search?q=color+temperature don't seem to agree with each other, but on average 6K° is on the blue side of white.

[jeff88]

Originally Posted by Daox

I'm not sure why I'd need a ballast? These LEDs run straight 12V power coming off the battery. They shouldn't be seeing any voltage spikes.

My terminology was wrong, but deejaaa posted what I was thinking about, although I can't find the sources now that I got that thought from.

Sorry about doing my best to confuse things.

The color is definitely 6k+. I wish they would make a 5k-5500k bulb. It's one of the major reasons I haven't pulled the trigger yet. The cutoff doesn't look terrible, at least not compared to the stock headlight.

Post back your pre/post mod fuel mileage!!!

[freebeard]

My 6K LEDs are a lot whiter on the road. It may have something to do with the white balance of the camera (the black-blue/gold-white dress thing) or the calibration of my monitor.

Daox's halogen looks whiter than mine did. I didn't have a camera with me when it was one bulb each.

Maybe it's the color of the garage door?

[Daox]

I'll have to check if they're instant on or not. I didn't notice a difference when I drove it, but I wasn't really paying attention to that specifically. I don't normally drive the car so I'll have to get back to you on that.

It is a bit more blue than I'd hoped. However, on the road it really seems fine. The halogen in real life is a bit more yellow than portrayed by the pictures.

[Daox]

Still haven't had a chance to check any of this. I haven't driven the prius for a while as its the wife's car. Actually, shes still running with one LED and one halogen.

[serialk11r]

I'm ordering the "30W" H11 version of these next week. The heatsink on the H11 20W version is a lot smaller so I decided to go "30W" in case the power rating was overstated. Judging by the heatsink it's probably only 20W output, but that's okay because the stock lights are 55W halogens that barely do anything, and at 50 dollars there's not much to lose.

I also got a ton of the 2 dollar 7444 bulbs, I'm really hoping they'll be bright enough...

[freebeard]

I put some aluminum tape across the top of my reflectors, the low beam is now about half-way to the flat cut-off of the Halogens. Cheaper than eyebrows and less noticeable.

[bennelson]

I recently purchased an LED H4 bulb for my Vectrix electric motorcycle.

I believe it's the "other" bulb shown in Daox's first photo. It's like what he is using only it has a little pig-tail to an electronics box, and then to the regular three-prong headlight connector.

Overall, I like the color temperature. The cycle already has an LED front marker light. Originally, the halogen bulb looked weird to me, because it was the only NON-LED light on the cycle. With the LED headlamp, it matches closely, and looks much nicer.



It's always tough to get really accurate photos of lighting, but I thought these are fairly representative. I took these photos at dusk.

Here's the cycle with the low beam.


Here's the high-beam.


The brightness and color are both very good. However, my first true night ride (just around the neighborhood, for testing) showed that the bulb alignment was not good. The low-beam is very bright, but it is as though it is just aimed too low.

The high-beam really shows distant reflective street signs very well.

I haven't had a chance yet to simply try adjusting the aim of the headlight.

As for temperature. I parked the cycle, but left it on, so that the LED bulb could get warm. I checked it after about 30 minutes. The heatsink fins on the bulb felt warm. Too warm for me to want to touch for too long. My IR laser thermometer only said it was a little above 100 degrees F, but I don't think it was getting a proper reading, because it's shiny metal, and it was a difficult angle.

The small black "electronics box" was barely warm to the touch at all.

The only other thing I would really mention about this is that the installation information that came with it was pretty minimal. It was NOT OBVIOUS at all that there was a removable locking ring on this bulb. It looks just like a permanent part of the bulb, and without seeing some photos of somebody else installing this on their cycle, I would have missed it completely. Once you known about the ring, it wasn't all that hard to locate, but it still doesn't jump out at you!

[freebeard]

Based on the top of the low beam, it looks like there is a dark spot in the high beam right where the road hits the horizon. ??

Those look like the ones in my car. Did it come in a black cardboard box? If there is a cooling fan in the base, temperature shouldn't be a problem.