LED Headlight Upgrades (Topic merged with 9004 Headlight LED Conversion)

Installation was a bit of a pain, blood was drawn. The battery needed to be moved a bit to get in to the passenger side. The retaining ring threw me for a bit as it wouldn't fit over the fan/heat sink or the "flange" by where the LED socket is (it needs to be between these two). But after looking close, the "flange" twisted about an 1/8 turn and slid off over the LED allowing you to slide the retainer ring on. With there not being a lot of space, and the added size of the fan/heat sink, what I did was I took the removable flange off, positioned the new light down in the cavity behind the lens then re-assembled everything (put the retaining ring on, then the "flange"). With everything assembled outside of the cavity behind the light it was a FIGHT to get it back in place (without removing the light itself), so I went this route to hopefully not destroy anything. With all that being said, installing both lights took about 10 minutes. I looked at a few sets and compared the overall length dimension....they are all very close, but the ones I purchased were the shortest (of the ones I was looking at, there may be shorter, but these were not shipped from overseas).

Topic combined with "9004 Headlight LED Conversion" thread to get the information all in one place / ease searching.

- J

I've been doing some research on LED bulb upgrades and headlights in general. One of the comments I have read from many sources is that while the LED bulbs are brighter, the light does not seem to penetrate as far as when the original bulbs were fitted.

The headlight reflector and lens are engineered with the assumption that the filament will be in a specific location. All light originates at the filament and is radiated from there, the reflector and lens concentrates and points the light in the right direction ("right" being dictated in part by applicable motor vehicle standards limiting glare, etc.).  

If the filament is relocated by installing a different bulb type, the light will not be pointed in the same direction as intended. The light is often diffused. I look at these LED replacements and notice that many have large arrays, much larger than the 9004 filament, suggesting to me that much of their output has to be diffused rather than projected down the road.

The Light Centre Length (ie: the distance from the centre of the filament to the back of the reflector) of a 9004 halogen bulb is 44.5mm. To date I have only found one vendor of an LED replacement that specifies the LCL of their product, and it was 37.5mm. The P29t base of the 9004 has a diameter of 42mm. Using that as a guide to estimate the LCL from profile pictures of other brands of LED replacements, it appears that almost all position the LCL far too close to the base, a few position it too far from the base and none that I can find position it where it belongs.

Has anyone found a brand with a small point souce of light (ie single die or small cluster of LED per side) centered on 44.5mm from the base?

I finally had some time to put the car in a parking garage and aim the lights against a wall. Not sure I'm 100% liking the pattern. The cutoff is poor and each lamp makes two hot spots. I lined them up as best I could.

The high beam seems to fill in the area between the hot spots, it doesn't look like it throws light more horizontally to me.

I did LED headlight bulbs (9004) and back up bulbs (2057). Night and day difference and installation was a breeze. Didn't have to move the battery. Unhooked the air filter lid for the driver's side. Back up lamps were unplug, plug in. I can now actually see when I'm backing up!!

Looks great! So which ones exactly did you use and from where?

I used 80W 9004 Stark bulbs up front and Luyed 2x1440 lumen 2057 bulbs in the rear. Purchased from Amazon.

I spent some time over the last few weeks experimenting with the headlights, since I was disappointed with the pattern I got from the LED conversion bulbs.

On the car right now I've done a 9007 halogen bulb conversion with the power fed directly from the aux battery post through a pair of relays to avoid voltage drop issues with the factory headlight wiring. Also as plus I left the entire factory wiring setup intact so if I have to revert it to stock it'll be easy.

After experimenting with the headlight assemblies off the car my conclusion is that the bad pattern from the LEDs was due to improper installation and alignment. However for various reasons I'm going to try the 9007's for now and see how that goes, once I get around to taking the car somewhere I can align the assemblies.