LED headlight brightness

I just installed some NAO H11 headlights recently and it seems one bulb is brighter than the other. Anyone ever experience anything like this? Is there anything I can do to fix this? Would it be possible I need to clean the housing?

NAO H11 (H8/H9) Led Headlight Bulb,56w 7600Lm Ultra Bright Led Headlights,6500k White All in One Headlamp LED Conversion Replace HID & Halogen https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078NLFFSX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_atPkCbHJ5PW35

 

I don’t know the answer to your question, but I notice your sig says you live in MA. From what I understand LED’s aren’t the greatest for driving in snow etc because they put out such little heat compared to a halogen. I’m sure you researched this though, but just mentioning it because I’m sure you guys have snow and stuff where you are located and it may be a pain if you are driving when it’s snowing hard. Let us know if you get the brightness figured out though. Happy New Years!

 

Switch the bulbs and see if the brightness carries with it. That should point to where your issue is.

 

Appreciate the response! Happy new year!

 

Thanks Rob! Love the YouTube videos!

 

thanks for watching. let us know what happens.

 

Do you have both bulbs turned the same way? The set of leds need to face the 3 and 9 o'clock position.

 

Make sure you installed both new bulbs in the low beams. It looks like your bulbs can be installed in both the high (H9) and low (H11) beam positions.

 

This could be it! I have a feeling right now they are faced the same way. I will rotate and update if that did the trick. Thanks for the help.

 

Not to mention the LED isn't designed for use in our projectors...light is going to bounce around everywhere.

 

So would I need to get a whole new headlight setup in order to run LEDs. New to the lighting game

 

No, the cutoff with LEDs is fine in our projectors. Yes, they're not designed specifically for LEDs, but its not blinding if you have them adjusted properly.

 

Honestly the best thing is just to cut the tab out of H9 bulbs for use as low beams. It takes 30 seconds to do with a dremel. The filament is in the same place so the optical geometry will still be correct.

The stock H11 bulb gives you 1100-1400 lumens. The H9 gives 1760-2240.

The H11 bulb is designed for long life at the expense of flux. The H9 is designed for maximum flux at the expense of long life. Most LED bulbs do not produce as much light as an H9 bulb. The H9 bulb will be 20% of the price of the LED bulb.

 

Cutoff may still be there but the light will not project a hot spot like it should so you lose distance. It looks brighter because of all the light in closer to your vehicle.

 

Yes, to run them properly.

 

Give this thread a look. It contains a wealth of information on LED upgrades.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-led-and-hid-lighting-upgrades-discussion-poll.573318/

 

I guess I am just looking for the bright white look instead of having the yello/amber OEM look. Any recommendations on white lights I can run without changing out my entire housing? Thanks you

 

"Whiter" is not the same thing as "can see better."

Your projector headlight is designed for an H11 bulb which produces light radially around a small-radius filament. The whole thing is designed in CAD with ray tracing software, it is engineered as a total system.

An LED is a rectangular chip, the geometry is not the same. It sort of works, but there are hot spots and the throw is not as good as TRD493 said.

There is a lot of BS in the advertised specifications of LED bulbs. They take the claimed output in lumens from the chip manufacturer, and multiply it by the number of chips in the assembly. It is true that the bulb will produce that. For about 1 second until the chip heats up. And they don't take into account optical losses in the path out the front of the headlight lens. The true output is way less than what is claimed, and it depends very strongly on where you measure it because there are hotspots due to the geometry issues.

If you are in Massachusetts right now, you probably drive through snow and ice precipitation sometimes. An H11 or H9 bulb will melt that off. An LED bulb, not so much.

In terms of actual optical performance, by which I mean getting the best chance at seeing stuff as far ahead as you can, you are much better off by modifying an H9 bulb. Most of them will give you north of 2000 lumens in the real world, and that is about the best you can do without going crazy on retrofitting totally new headlights.

 

Thank you for your response. I really appreciate all of the feedback. I am learning more each day. Looks like I am going to put back in my stock bulbs for now until I can figure out the look I am going for.

 

Here's a good thread that goes into some detail about what @mrCanoehead is talking about. There are several threads on here that cover the pros and cons. @crashnburn80 seems to know his way around the subject.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/