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can anyone recommend a GOOD set of LED headlights?


crawlinss

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well, its getting cold here again, which means my HID's will be acting up again. I'd like to switch to LED's, for obvious reasons, but was very underwhelmed with the set I bought last year. they were fairly cheap, so I wasn't too upset, but i'd like to get some serious wattage in this cottage. that, and I cant flash my high beams at people with HIDs. stupid warm up time.

 

any help appreciated!

links get extra credit.

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If you really want to swap to LED's you have several problems to overcome.

 

1. Bright enough

2. Fit your truck

3. Don't create a ridiculously bad light pattern

 

The Torchstar 2400 lumen LED's I got a while back are fairly bright; not as bright as HID's but as I've said before elsewhere, it's OK with me as I often find HID's obnoxiously bright. The LED's do seem brighter than halogens to me and the color is fairly close to 5000K~6000K so they're very white which is what I wanted.

 

Making them fit is a pain on most vehicles. These are the non-fan style so they have a huge heatsink. I didn't want the fan design as I see that as a point of failure. I've seen the others with the ribbon style heatsink; the overall size of the light itself might be easier to fit into tight spots - but if you check those they are some of the lowest lumen ratings of the bunch so I don't even consider them an option.

 

To make them fit a GMT400 (88-98 fullsize GM truck) I had to do some work. It took opening up the existing holes in the core support a little bit, just a few cuts and fold the steel back, and a little die grinder work on the headlight bracket itself. To make them fit my girl's Dodge Magnum, I had to do just some slight grinding on the core support.

 

Suburban with core support and headlight bracket opened up:

97burb_014s.jpg

 

Light output and pattern is decent, not awe-inspiring or anything; the distance to the metal fence is about 200'. The floodlights on the storage buildings kinda messes up the appearance of what hits the ground so I'll admit the picture isn't incredibly useful...but you can see starting at about 5 units down the white light from the LED's on the ground, and you can see it on the fence.

97burb_021s.jpg

 

I looked at making them fit the SS but didn't have a bunch of time to work out how it could be done, so in the meantime I just slapped some 35W DDM HID's in there.

 

Richard

Edited by someotherguy (see edit history)
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If they really are 3000 lumens then that's fairly bright.

 

I'd look into Morimoto's offerings as they're a pretty trusted name. Going to pay more, but likely to get something actually useful. It's probably where I'll go next instead of chancing some more whatever-brands.

 

Richard

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