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Replacement High beam bulbs, LED's. Any suggestions


Walt294
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Does anyone have suggestions for brighter, replacement headlight bulbs.  LED, I guess.  Diode Dynamics  have a set of 2 for $150.  That seems high.  I tried looking around but don't know enough to make a choice.  It's sort of like reading a phone book with all the numbers.   Thanks

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If your vehicle was originally equipped with halogen bulbs your options are:

 

HIR bulbs

improved, independent wiring harness for the headlamps

HID or LED retrofit

 

DO NOT buy inexpensive HID or LED bulbs that have been re-based to fit a halogen lamp.  The lamp housings are not designed to reflect these bulbs properly and they will actually end up hurting your night vision, despite looking like an upgrade over the stock lamps (They're not an upgrade, PM me for details).

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Agreed with Carfreak here. I (stupidly) installed a set of LED conversion headlights in my 04' Baja. And while the looked super bright up close and near distance. Night vision was horrible.

And I spent 110$ of a set of bulbs. So not cheap.

 

The LED or HID retrofit is your only real option to drastically improve vision without adding more lights. 

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Looking into this, I found something curious.  The new XV headlights seem impossible to get to.  I have not found even 1 place that gives any information on installing or replacing the headlight bulbs.   The manual shows a different set up then mine and suggests they are difficult to replace and I should go to the dealers.  That is odd.  If you have a XV limited '18, take a look and let us know what you think.  So the manufacturer has turned a cheap replacement of a burned out bulb, into a very expensive dealer only repair. 

I was looking as another video that was supposed to be a '18 XV, but the set up was entirely different.   I have the limited, if that makes a difference.  I'll have to stop into the dealers and take a look.  Right now I'm thinking of removing the whole headlight assembly to get to the bulbs.

Edited by Walt294
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well OK guys, I'll stick with the OEM headlights. BUT, I was thinking of uping the Fog lights. But then, I wanted to be able to raise the beams up, for rural and out back driving. There are no articles on doing that. With a jeep, I'd just add some lights on the roof rack.

Edited by Walt294
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[OTD], NO NO NO NO NO!!  This is the sort of garbage I was talking about a few posts back.  Don't buy that crap, don't suggest it to other people.

 

Understand, those are garbage bulbs that DO NOT help with night vision.

I appreciate your comment.  But we had a discussion about these while we stood around and the guy who put them on his car loves them.   

post-129-0-18143000-1519866543_thumb.jpg

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Yeah, I could have told you he would love them.  Everyone does, but only because the human brain can be very easily tricked into believing that "brighter is better."  Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and unless this guy geeks out on automotive lighting and reading dry engineering white papers on the subject, there's a great chance this guy has no idea what he's talking about.

 

Based on the fact that those p'n'p LEDs can't possibly be the correct geometry for his halogen housings, lets start by saying the light they produce is not aimed correctly as it exits the lamp.  Some is hitting the road right in front of the bumper, some is shooting up into outer space and the rest is roughly distributed around the OEM hotspot.

 

The light in front of the bumper hits the road and reflects back into the driver's eye.  "Wow, I can see the road so well, these new bulbs are a great investment and really improved my forward lighting and night vision!"

 

Wrong.  He needs light further down the road, not right in front of the car, and not randomly distributed.  Because the road in front of the car (not in the distance, where it should be) is so bright, the driver's mind is tricked to believe that it can see more than it actually can.  The cooler color of the LEDs also more closely mimics mid-day light, further tricking our rather primitive brains into thinking the actual volume of light being output is more helpful than it really is.

 

It's not his fault, he just doesn't understand that the poor distribution of light, along with the change in color temperature of the light being output creates an optical illusion.  His brain fills in the gaps seamlessly and he is none the wiser, unfortunately.

 

I'd be happy to provide more information to anyone who is interested, but beware, it's pretty heavy on the geek info. 

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To go off of Carfreaks post. You can even look up 18 MY data from NHTSA and they do headlight analysis.

 

And comparing even 2018 Crosstrek Halogen verse LED (both at the oem level) and the halogen travel further down the road then the Leds.

 

LEDs have their advantage though. But only when designed around the bulb type.

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Yeah, I could have told you he would love them.  Everyone does, but only because the human brain can be very easily tricked into believing that "brighter is better."  Eye-witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and unless this guy geeks out on automotive lighting and reading dry engineering white papers on the subject, there's a great chance this guy has no idea what he's talking about.

 

Based on the fact that those p'n'p LEDs can't possibly be the correct geometry for his halogen housings, lets start by saying the light they produce is not aimed correctly as it exits the lamp.  Some is hitting the road right in front of the bumper, some is shooting up into outer space and the rest is roughly distributed around the OEM hotspot.

 

The light in front of the bumper hits the road and reflects back into the driver's eye.  "Wow, I can see the road so well, these new bulbs are a great investment and really improved my forward lighting and night vision!"

 

Wrong.  He needs light further down the road, not right in front of the car, and not randomly distributed.  Because the road in front of the car (not in the distance, where it should be) is so bright, the driver's mind is tricked to believe that it can see more than it actually can.  The cooler color of the LEDs also more closely mimics mid-day light, further tricking our rather primitive brains into thinking the actual volume of light being output is more helpful than it really is.

 

It's not his fault, he just doesn't understand that the poor distribution of light, along with the change in color temperature of the light being output creates an optical illusion.  His brain fills in the gaps seamlessly and he is none the wiser, unfortunately.

 

I'd be happy to provide more information to anyone who is interested, but beware, it's pretty heavy on the geek info. 

See, now those are good points and worth listening to.

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I can't argue about light on down the road.  But I have a set of cheapo LEDs on my Jeep.  They use 17 watts each or something,  They run off of the stock switch and wiring, rated for 55w.  When I go night wheeling, they are SOOOO much brighter than my halogen headlights on bright.  The night becomes like daylight.  But they are floods and not beams though.

 

I didn't take into account the reflection on the conversion.

post-129-0-01408500-1519966170_thumb.jpg

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  • 1 year later...

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