LED Headlights from Xenon Depot - has anyone here tried these?
 

LED Headlights from Xenon Depot - has anyone here tried these?

9006 LED Headlight Kit | 9006 LED Upgrade

$119.xx for the set, minus a 15% off coupon.

I'm looking for any comments on beam pattern (glare for other drivers?), ease of installation, early failures or any other issues.


I'm interested because:
Amps draw for these is only 20-40% of what the stock halogens draw. This will be a big help for me as my headlights run directly off deep cycle batteries, the alternator is intentionally disabled. I need to run headlights a lot in winter and even with two deep cycle batteries they don't stay bright as long as I wish they would. Barely OK for my daily commute (total 100 miles) but not OK for road trips.

Interesting heatsink.

I've no experience or opinion, but I did take a look. I see:

They don't show the beam, just the raw output of the bulb which exhibits chromatic aberration. I suspect it comes down to the reflector. I believe HID projectors use a physical moving shutter to effect low beams.

I wonder how they would work in a projector. I want to go alternator-less too but I have hids with projectors

I don't know that I'd want to buy electronics from a company that uses a "heat-sync" :-)

Maybe they use circuitry that balances the BTUs put out between the left and right.

Those won't be bright enough. You would need the 22 Watt LED's with the cooling fan instead of the heatsink. But then the cooling fan doesn't fit within the closing cap of many headlight housings. The area of the light source is also much greater than a halogen or HID so the beam pattern probably lacks focus.
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I always want more light on all my vehicles. Not less.

That is a 300 watt LED light bar.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1440026494

I am thinking about getting something like this for my suburban. Maybe not this particular one, but something like it.
Just something bright enough to generate multiple reports of close encounters of the second kind.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1440027363

If its not bright enough just add a second one.

Scott,
Thanks. I agree the beam pattern can't be right, as the two LED chips per "bulb" are each larger than the longitudinal (aka axial) filament in the 9006 standard bulb. But I think I can live with it as long as the pattern is better than the do-it-yourself cheapie HID conversions that glare in my eyes every day.

As for brightness - did you note there are two chips per bulb? One on each side of the stick. They claim 2500 lumens/bulb, vs 1000 per halogen bulb. Do you think they're stretching the truth a whole lot? I know that's been done in the past.

The LED's with the heatsink are usually rated at around 12 Watts. The small fan cooled emitters are 24 Watts on high and claim 2500 Lumins. The big fan cooled bulbs are 33 Watts and claim 3500 lumens. Tha same as the excellent DDM Tuning 35 Watt HID which will light up the road like day and have a perfect pattern in my Yamaha R3 with zero splash.
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https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...bb&oe=563A1FA3
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https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net...d0&oe=567E5356
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LED headlights motorcycle bulb head lights - BEST PRICES
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DDM Tuning: HID and LED Lighting
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read this thread for some good info. reflectors have a LOT to do with pattern.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ing-31942.html
those HID's in the eye are from morons putting them in a housing/reflector that wasn't designed for them.
here's a good place to get some, lower watt/lumen but also lower price than most i've seen. i have made multiple orders from them and have been more than satisfied.
don't know how much that one cost but here is one i have in my wish list that's sold out but a search will find more:
http://www.dx.com/p/52-300w-cree-xb-...9#.VdVRIZdtFwU
smaller lumen:
http://www.dx.com/p/guleek-40w-3000l...4#.VdVSZpdtFwU
http://www.dx.com/p/lml-1748-waterpr...8#.VdVREJdtFwU
http://www.dx.com/p/b-45f5-45w-3370l...6#.VdVRNZdtFwU
http://www.dx.com/p/7-7-36w-cree-xb-...3#.VdVROpdtFwU

I'm noticing the before and after exposures aren't the same. In the second photo, the sky and trees are brighter, suggesting the shutter or ISO sensitivity was increased to capture more light. Probably a fine light bar, but it annoys me when advertising uses shenanigans.

For $10 more, a little work, and the peace of mind of DOT approval, get these instead:

2015 Murano LED Projector System - Closeouts

OEM LED headlights (low- and high-beam) from the 2015 Nissan Murano. Each LED is 11w; I ordered a set today and am going to try retrofitting my stock headlights.

that IS a great price and the cut-off looks good. i would like to get a set for me to try but can't right now. maybe in a couple of weeks. i will buy a set of lights cheap off CL or JY so i won't be without them while i fit them in. thanks for the info.

I don't know how good of a light bar it is. At only $100 and 52'' long, its hard to say. But it doesn't come with any switches, wires or relays.
I would likely go with a curved, 100 watt bar and whatever it is, it has to be less than 48''.

Yeah I was looking at that after I posted this picture I noticed other light sources appeared brighter.
If a light bar manufacturer claims 30,000 lumens, even if its really only 20,000 lumen that still like adding 20 halogen head lights to the front of your car.

I use two 20 watt LED flood lights and it lights up my most of my 1/3 acre front yard. This is 7.5 times that wattage of my flood lights.

The beam pattern is so wide and tall you could never turn that thing on when on a road with other cars around.

I got on there the other day after one of these LED threads popped back up just to see what they had (they've had Prius LED assemblies for sale in the past, so I check occasionally). I was surprised to see these, and apparently they have hundreds of them. Looks like they'll be a lot easier to retrofit than the Prius LEDs to boot, and the fact that you get high beams too makes them a great deal for the price.

Here's a field expedient fix for the LED in an H-4 reflector. I held a piece of cardboard in the beam to judge placement. I though covering the bottom would do it; but it turned out to be the top.

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

can you get a night shot on a wall?

I'm sure they're ideal for the vehicles they are built for.
Mine is a '96 Accord.

Looks like LED replacements are now made for my 4x6 inch truck head lights.
Must be fairly new, tried searching for such an item about a year ago and could only find the larger 5x8 inch truck lights.
Says they have low beam and high beam. The ones I am finding for sale say they are made of 15 LEDs, 3watts each, 3200L high beam and 1500L low beam. Looks like they draw 3 amps on high beam and around 1.5 amps in low beam.
I will order a pair and test them to see if there is any possibility they can be used as a low beam. That way if not, I can install them into the high beam sockets and use them as high beams only.

I am pretty sure there are some of those on ebay right now.

sure are and a lot cheaper. only $133.00 compared to mine posted at over $300.00.

The beauty of a projector retrofit is that the light output, beam pattern, and cutoff are the same no matter what car you fit them in because the whole projector is swapped. The lights themselves don't care what car they're on. It's more work baking apart your headlights and epoxying the new projector, but should be worth it. I've had 18w drop-in bulbs in my halogen projectors for a year and a half now and have gotten tired of the poor light output, especially highway driving at night.

I thought I had, but apparently not. It's now on a list.

It wasn't good, just better.

Thanks all, for your input.

I ordered the kit.
I'll post back once it's installed, with photos of the beam pattern.

My primary aim here is to reduce amps draw on my alternator-deleted, battery-supported electrical system. At 3.2 amps vs. 8.x amps for halogens (totals for two bulbs), this will very nearly triple my available run time for headlights.

After a careful reading and rereading of the specs I expect a good improvement in brightness also. These are supposedly 2000 lumens per "bulb", vs 1000 for standard halogens. Improvement will be easy to verify or disprove, once it's installed.

I am adding this to the LED wiki.

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z...s70qfucnf.jpeg

As promised, here's a photo of the lighting from the LED "bulb" vs a standard halogen.

Bear in mind, this car takes two separate bulbs for high and low beams. Four bulbs all together. My point is, because the low beam bulb shown here is dedicated for low only, it's easier to deal with the optics when trying to get the beam pattern right. I would not expect nearly as good a beam pattern in an LED "bulb" that provides both high and low beam.

Each of these "bulbs" is rated 20W and 2500 lumens. That's' vs. 55W and 1000 lumens for standard halogens. The added brightness is due to the fact that LEDs are a much more efficient producer of light than halogens.

Looks like the pattern is pretty good.

looks REAL promising. pics of the road, distant signs?
the original housing was used, correct?
one more, is the braided heat-sink aluminum or stainless?

XenonDepot says the heat sink is tinned copper.
Yes, I used the original Accord headlight reflector housings. I polished them a couple months ago so the lenses are reasonably clear.

No other photos quite yet. I've been using Photobucket but it doesn't want to play nicely with my iPhone, even when using their updated app. So dealing with photos has become a PITA, sorry to say.

Was the engine running? That poor halogen looks mighty yellow.

I see.

Engine not running. Lights powered by a custom battery pack system running at about 13.3-13.5V. More detail on that below.

Yellow appearance is likely due to two factors:

1) Camera automatically adjusts color as best it can, based on what it sees. With the LED running rather brightly at 5700ºK it probalby selected that for color balance and the halogen is very yellow in comparison. If I shot with two halogens and no LEDs, I think it would have shifted the color balance to make the halogens look more "normal". The LEDs come with little power supply units so I presume they're being fed proper volts/amps as long as I provide the specified minimum of 12V to the power supplies.

2) My system runs at about 13.3-13.5V using a bank of deep cycle batteries, with alternator disconnected. So yes, with the [Corrected: halogen] getting less than the usual 14V, it would be a bit more yellow than when used in a typical car.

About the deep cycle pack I use:
Yes, lead acid deep cycles are nominally 12V and will run about 12V under halogen headlight load when fully charged. I achieve 13.x volts by running a "booster" pack of (8) 1.2V NiMH D cells wired in parallel. That 1.2V pack is in series with the 12V deep cycles, for a total of 13.x volts, depending on load and state of charge/discharge.

For electrical nerds here, the (8) D cells are rated 10 AH capacity each and can easily handle a discharge rate of 10A each, or 80A combined. So they're fully capable of handling the load of boosting the voltage fed to headlights + fans + wipers, which is their job.

Interesting. How many is a bank? X in parallel, in series with 8 in parallel?

Err. 8 cells in parallel is a battery, isn't it?

Does the lead/acid (or whatever) part charge in series with the D-cells or do the characteristics demand separate chargers?

Freebeard,

Good questions but we're getting a bit off the topic. I'll try to answer anyway. Here goes.

I charge the NiMH pack as a unit, separately from the lead acids. I use a dedicated smart charger for that. A modular plug rewires that pack in series for charging because that charger doesn't know what to do with a huge 1.2V pack. It knows exactly how to charge an 8-cell pack of 1.2V x 8 = 9.6V, regardless of how far I've discharged them. They get discharged together in use, which balances any difference in charge between the cells. A nice feature.

I charge the lead acids together (in parallel) on another "smart" charger that supposedly brings them both up to full charge. It just sees one huge 12V battery of about 160AH capacity. Now and then I'll charge the 2 lead acids individually but I haven't seen them behave differently regardless of how I charge them. Most days I use about 15-25% of the combined lead acid's capacity and the charger needs 1.5-3 hours to do its work.

Normally a "battery" is made up of matchng cells in series. Your basic 12 volt car "battery" is made up of six 2V cells wired in series, 2Vx6=12V. So I'm calling my 8-unit assembly of D cells wired in parallel, a "pack". It produces a nominal 1.2V, or 1.3V when fully charged. Yes, plenty battery "packs" are sold that have their cells in series. I don't have any other name to call it so its a pack for me.

Series Parallel Circuit
My complete setup would properly be called a 'series parallel circuit'. You can google that and find various articles, circuit diagrams etc. A series parallel circuit uses some items that are combined in parallell with each other, and some groups or units that are wired in series with each other. Various ways to group and regroup the components are all called series-parallel. There are formulas and rules for calculating the results of doing this. They work for battery assemblies and for other circuits that consume power.

My setup:

Two 12V lead-acids in parallel, for a nominal total capacity of about 160 amp hours (AH) at 12V. You add amp hours when you parallel the batteries, and if they have the same voltage, that's the voltage of the combination, too. (If you put them in series, you add the voltage and the amps stays the same.) One 12V battery is about 100AH, the other is about 60AH, but they have the same chemistry so I'm not afraid to parallel the two. But since they're lead acid, I can safely and responsibly use only about 40% of that regularly, because draining a lead acid cell lower than that shortens its lifespan. So the capacity I'm willing to use is about 48AH or so.

8 - 1.2V NiMH D-cells, in parallel. These are rated 10,000 mAh each, or 10AH. In parallel, that's good for 8x10=80AH capacity at 1.2V.

Combining them:

The lead acids are wred in series with the NiMH pack.

The positive terminals from the pair of lead acids (combined) feed into one 4 gauge cable. The lead acids' negative terminals go to chassis ground. The combined positive cable leads into the NiMH pack's negative side, and the NiMH pack's positive side then feeds (via another 4 ga cable) to specific terminals on the car's fuse panels. When I check the voltage anywhere after the NiMH pack, it's somewhere between 13-14V, depending on state of charge. 14V does not last very long if I have anything switched on. It drops slowly to 13.8V, then 13.7, 13.6, 13.5, etc.

The 4 gauge cable is more than enough for the job it does. If I wanted to run the starter motor off it, I'd want something like a 0 gauge cable instead.

Thanks for taking the time. Bold sub-heads and everything.

Freebeard, an old friend of mine used to call me "Professor Pick" - back when I did not have a degree. Now you know why.

Whenever I start a sentence with my or aerohead's name, I leave it lower case. Am I wrong? ;)

freebeard, I think you're doing it the right way.
brucepick said so!

I just bought the 9012 version for my volt. I'll send pics tonight after install.

Edit : terrible product for a projector housing. Only projects in 2 directions so no way it can work with a projector. Don't bother