LED Headlights

[Bitsyncmaster]

That's a significantly lower amp draw. Cool. Speaking of cool, I wonder what the thermal (heat) difference is around/above the housings, i.e. would the LED version be more or less likely to cause heat deformation on the fascias?

Much cooler housings due to less current and a fan. Also the H4 housings have a metal back which would conduct more heat from the "bulb".

I wonder how much air moves in that closed headlight area.

[Bitsyncmaster]

It looks like my headlight buckets had a rubber bumper at the 4 mounting points where the headlight sits. But I only found one remaining but I saw the rest had glue remnants. So I can put some bumpers where those would be to take up the space needed for these new housings. I also see the drivers side connector is also wired the same in that the low beam uses the high power filament. So I guess the factory did this for a reason and did follow the standard connector wiring for those 4656 sealed beam headlights.

Also I see there is an adjustment for the aiming both height and left/right.

[Bitsyncmaster]

How do you remove the headlight brackets? I see one nut holding one side near the center which is accessible, is there a nut on the other side which I can't see?

[DMC-81]

It looks like my headlight buckets had a rubber bumper at the 4 mounting points where the headlight sits. But I only found one remaining but I saw the rest had glue remnants. So I can put some bumpers where those would be to take up the space needed for these new housings. I also see the drivers side connector is also wired the same in that the low beam uses the high power filament. So I guess the factory did this for a reason and did follow the standard connector wiring for those 4656 sealed beam headlights.

Also I see there is an adjustment for the aiming both height and left/right.

Yes, that's what I found too. some of the original ones were missing. I replaced all 4 (16 in total) when I refurbed the headlights with round felt bumpers

How do you remove the headlight brackets? I see one nut holding one side near the center which is accessible, is there a nut on the other side which I can't see?

There are two M6 (10mm socket) nuts on either side of the brackets.Here's a couple pictures of the area if they will help:

[Bitsyncmaster]

Thanks Dana for those photos. So I guess I can't get the brackets out with removing the front bumper.

By the way the drivers side connector connector has the black 28 strand wire (14 AWG according to Britishwiring.com). Each light pin has two wires crimped into the pin. One wire is 21 strand and other is 14 strand. Britishwiring.com says 14 strand is 18 AWG.

[Bitsyncmaster]

Looks like these felt pads will solve the shorter mounting on my housings.

[Bitsyncmaster]

Since I'm waiting on parts (LEDs, wire and connectors) I decided to pull the washer bottle so I could pull the front harness. Turns out the low beam has one pin with 16 AWG blue/red wire to feed the low beams and two pins each with a 16 AWG blue/white. One feeds the drivers side and the other feeds the passenger side.

I'm rewiring with 14 AWG red for the low beam and !4 AWG white for the high beam. I'm running each light with a separate 14 AWG wire to my frame ground. I had already put a ground buss bar before. The connector had two ground wires but I don't use those wired grounds on the front lights anymore. If you need to get power up front you now have those two ground wire running back to the relay compartment.

You really don't need to rewire since the LEDs use less current but I don't like to crimp two wires into one connector pin which was done in the stock harness.

[Bitsyncmaster]

Got the new LEDs today. Bench tested but can't put in the car yet since my harness is apart.

Note with these and the old LEDs current drops as it heats up so these currents are after running for 10 minuets.

High beam at 13.0 volts = 1.800 amps
High beam at 14.0 volts = 1.669 amps

Low beam at 13.0 volts = 1.120 amps
Low beam at 14.0 volts = 1.040 amps

So high beam is 23.4 watts and low beam is 14.6 watts. Now no spec sheet came with these bulbs but the advertisement was 20 watts and 40 watts. The old LEDs had a spec sheet which stated 25 watts and they tested at 20 watts. I wonder if all these power specs are a joke.

[Bitsyncmaster]

I forgot to mention that the 4 x 6 bulb housing did not heat up at all during my bench test. The rear fan cooled heat sink did heat up quite a bit but not as much as my first LED.

So I like the idea of LED units that have the driver electronics packaged in the wiring to the LED. That unit also had no heat produced in that unit so the electronics stays cool. I guess the current change is due to the LED chips heating up and their voltage changes which makes the power in current change.

[Maritime-elf]

By any chance did you take a picture of the wire splice? If you did I would be grateful to see it.

Here you go:

Glass casings (order 2 pairs): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hikari LED Headlights (order 2 pairs): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Wiring Harnesses (Nearly plug and play): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For the low beams, it is completely plug and play. Absolutely zero modifications needed. For the high beams, we took the wiring harness bought off of Amazon, took the wire responsible for turning on the low beams, spliced it with the wire responsible for activating the high beams, and then introduced the modified Amazon wiring harness to the car's wiring harness (ZERO modifications done to the car's original wiring harness). That way, when the high beams are activated, the LEDs that were unused in the glass casing for the high beams were activated as well! Why let the "low beam " LEDs within the high beam glass casing go to waste?