Led conversion

[Ordievet]

Has anyone had any luck converting their halogen head lights to LED? I have a ‘13 and I hate the lights but can’t seem to find anything worth working with to convert over to.

[Alexmed2002]

Has anyone had any luck converting their halogen head lights to LED? I have a ‘13 and I hate the lights but can’t seem to find anything worth working with to convert over to.

 

Honestly it's probably best to stick with halogens. Maybe find some lights that are very bright and more of a white color than the typical old hazy orange color.

[Humble Rumble]

VLEDs H7’s are plug and play, no ballasts, no errors, and the light output is INSANE. They’re a bit pricey but they’re easily the best on the market, and you get what you pay for.

[YeuEmMaiMai]

eh, HID Miromoto kit $190 and > anything else bar none. Get the type B bulbs 4500K

[DrD123]

VLEDs H7’s are plug and play, no ballasts, no errors, and the light output is INSANE. They’re a bit pricey but they’re easily the best on the market, and you get what you pay for.

Do you know how the 9005 handles the DRL?

[Humble Rumble]

There is no variable LED 9005 on the market that will function at a lower power as DRL. I have yellow LEDs in my hi-beams. They only function at full power.

 

eh, HID Miromoto kit $190 and > anything else bar none. Get the type B bulbs 4500K

 

Big nope. My VLED H7's were $135, literally just plugged in, no ballast, no dust cap cutting, no flicker, and the light output is on par with HIDs. For the ease of install and the price, there's no better option imo.

[DrD123]

There is no variable LED 9005 on the market that will function at a lower power as DRL.

That's a bummer. I thought there was a version out there that would run at reduced power. I am tempted to just forego the high beams and get a lower output 9005 bulb as a DRL. Either that or the foglights which have a DRL and foglight mode...

[Falcor]

VLEDs H7’s are plug and play, no ballasts, no errors, and the light output is INSANE. They’re a bit pricey but they’re easily the best on the market, and you get what you pay for.

 

Did you get the Evolution or the Extreme bulbs?

[Humble Rumble]

I have the first version of the Micro’s, prior to the Evolution and the Extreme. My version is 3000 LM output, the Evolution are 3500 LM and the Extreme are 4500 LM, so even brighter still. My Micro’s were $150 new, with the always active SUBARU10 coupon, I paid $135. The Evolution are brighter than mine and are a total steal at $125 ($112.5 after coupon). The Extreme would honestly be overkill in my opinion.

 

Here’s a video of the output from my Micro’s:

[MC_Legacy]

Get HID's

 

Morimoto H1 6500k installing on my 13 Legacy

 

Not plug and play, but I can help install.

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[nuawhofijdighasdfuhdsn]

eh, HID Miromoto kit $190 and > anything else bar none. Get the type B bulbs 4500K

You can get it for 135 after coupon code bright.

 

Sent from my SM-N950U1 using Tapatalk

[YeuEmMaiMai]

There is no variable LED 9005 on the market that will function at a lower power as DRL. I have yellow LEDs in my hi-beams. They only function at full power.

 

 

 

Big nope. My VLED H7's were $135, literally just plugged in, no ballast, no dust cap cutting, no flicker, and the light output is on par with HIDs. For the ease of install and the price, there's no better option imo.

 

 

big nope after market LED are all poo, they burn out easily and the longest I had any of them last about 2 years. also given the limited heat dissipation, they have the will go dim after prolonged use. compare the area of the heat sink on a OEM vs after marmet and yeah you will understand quickly. The Miromoto kit does not flicker at all even when using the stick wiring harness (I did not use the relay kit that came with it)

 

 

 

Given how much work is involved in changing the lights on this car, I only want to do it once... the Miromoto kit will most likely last the life of the car when properly installed.

Edited October 28, 2019 by YeuEmMaiMai

[Humble Rumble]

The only person who says nope to a VLEDs product is one who hasn't tried them. Mine are 2 years going strong, no dimming, no issues with heat-dissipation, honestly not a single issue at all of any sort. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with a quality HID kit, they're a mainstay and are excellent at what they do. But for someone like me who came into this Legacy with absolutely no car modding experience whatsoever and was honestly a bit scared off by the install process of an HID kit, the price point, performance, and ease of install of the VLEDs was 100% perfect for me, and anybody should heavily consider their products alongside HIDs.

 

It's totally fine to prefer HIDs, but VLEDs are such a world apart in quality and build from the majority of other LED brands, and to just write them off as "just another aftermarket LED" is simply foolish.

[YeuEmMaiMai]

compare

 

 

 

 

 

to the heat sink on this LED OEM bulb

 

 

 

 

 

uh, tell me again which one is going to last....

[Humble Rumble]

Not exactly sure what you're comparing here. That's a sealed LED foglight unit compared to an H7 bulb meant for a headlight low beam. Apples to oranges. Also, the selling point of the VLEDs micro is how small they are while keeping incredible cooling efficiency. They have 12000 rpm fans inside those little housings. You can't compare and predict the longevity of a bulb based purely on what its heatsink looks like.

 

 

 

 

If you're just going to irrationally dismiss one of the best LED products on the market without offering any actually helpful or relevant information, maybe just bow out of this discussion, especially since the original poster specifically asked for LEDs.

[Falcor]

I haven’t been on the forum for a day or so and this escalated quickly.

 

So it looks like 2 ways to achieve much better lighting on our cars.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited October 30, 2019 by Falcor

[Humble Rumble]

Yeah pretty much. HIDs are good and LEDs are good, as long as you buy quality, reputable products of either.

[dudemonster]

Humble - what are the specs for your yellow LEDs in the DRL spots?

[Humble Rumble]

Humble - what are the specs for your yellow LEDs in the DRL spots?

 

My DRL/hi-beams are 3000K color 8000LM CREE LED. They’re actually the only super cheap-o eBay LEDs I’ve tried, and they’ve impressed me so far. $20 on eBay, very bright and they’ve held up nicely and have a great color.

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Not exactly sure what you're comparing here. That's a sealed LED foglight unit compared to an H7 bulb meant for a headlight low beam. Apples to oranges. Also, the selling point of the VLEDs micro is how small they are while keeping incredible cooling efficiency. They have 12000 rpm fans inside those little housings. You can't compare and predict the longevity of a bulb based purely on what its heatsink looks like.

 

 

 

 

If you're just going to irrationally dismiss one of the best LED products on the market without offering any actually helpful or relevant information, maybe just bow out of this discussion, especially since the original poster specifically asked for LEDs.

 

 

comparing the size of the heat sinks and the cooling method involved. active cooling = it will fail. that fan as a finite life span. did you notice the size of that heat sink on that fog light particularly the surface area? That setup will easily last the life of the car... I do a lot of night driving and have compared LED to HID... LED looses even the best aftermarket LED cannot even touch a quality HID kit let a lone OEM LED in terms of light output, uniformity and brightness after being on for extended periods of time. routinely drive long distances at night and even after 10 hours in the winter time, HID are still just as bright as when i first started out.

 

 

So what if it takes 30 to 90 seconds to get full light output, the results are better... it is a bit of a PITA to install but the results are worth it.

[DrD123]

I do a lot of night driving and have compared LED to HID... LED looses even the best aftermarket LED cannot even touch a quality HID kit

where did you find the time and money to test all of the available LED kits? As a drop-in, the newer LED offerings use a narrower set of LEDs that more closely captures the shape/position of the filament in the bulbs they replace - I would think they'd be very good... certainly the reviews suggest they are.

[Yonas]

where did you find the time and money to test all of the available LED kits? As a drop-in, the newer LED offerings use a narrower set of LEDs that more closely captures the shape/position of the filament in the bulbs they replace - I would think they'd be very good... certainly the reviews suggest they are.

 

IMO they are good especially in a projector headlight like ours.

 

It used to be LED would overheat and burnout. That's not the case anymore.

[YeuEmMaiMai]

where did you find the time and money to test all of the available LED kits? As a drop-in, the newer LED offerings use a narrower set of LEDs that more closely captures the shape/position of the filament in the bulbs they replace - I would think they'd be very good... certainly the reviews suggest they are.

 

It's called youtube.com might want to use it.... ever wonder why oem do not use those solutions? Because they do not last... they use robust large heat sinks...so that light output is consistent no matter how long they are on...

[cww516]

OEMs also have the luxury of being able to design their lighting systems (and everything around them) from the ground up, which gives them the ability to package larger passive cooling solutions. Active cooling adds complexity, which adds cost, and if you have all the space in the world, you may as well go with the cheaper option.

 

Also, from the looks of it, the heat sinks on those particular retrofit LEDs may actually have more surface area than the passive heat sink on that fog light. Given that convective heat transfer is proportional to surface area, there's a decent chance that the heat sink on the solution Humble posted could perform better in a passive cooling application than the one on that fog light, and a fan will only improve that. That'd depend on how thick the fins are, and whether that fin thickness bottlenecks conductive heat transfer into the fins at all (which would reduce efficiency), but that sounds a lot more like math than I feel like thinking about on a Sunday afternoon.

 

Point being, there's a pretty good chance that not all retrofit LEDs suck equally as far as cooling is concerned.

[DrD123]

ever wonder why oem do not use those solutions?

because it's cheaper/easier to build an all-inclusive system that fits the design of your particular car? Once the basic light sources and method of employing them was hashed out, designers have a ton of flexibility. Hard to imaging that manufacturability has a role in modern production... I mean, that's just silly.

 

 

In terms of youtube videos, very few videos out there that quantitatively compare the different systems in a non-subjective manner - usually it's fans of one particular system showing why theirs is the best and only possible solution, and that anyone even contemplating something else is just dumb... it's almost like if another system performs comparably to what they consider to be "the best" or "only" way to do something right, it's a personal insult to them... it's really pretty fascinating.