3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

You may potentially be confusing the more recently released SSC1 / SSC2 models with the SS3 which has been out for some time:

https://hotshotoffroad.com/products/ss3-led-fog-light-kit?_pos=3&_sid=f92fe9d08&_ss=r

however, since this is the headlight thread, if you have further questions about fog lights, I'd recommend asking them in the fog light thread linked in crash's signature.

 

Here are the direct links to the products you mention, Diode Dynamics SS3s are the clear winner. Selective yellow is recommended for poor weather use. For further questions on these I'd post in that SAE fog thread and you'll get plenty of feedback.

Diode Dynamics SS3 Max, Diode Dynamics SS3, Baja Designs,

 

So can the stock wires handle 150 watts long term? Will they become brittle in a few years, rather than 15 years?

 

It is a non-issue. The stock Philips H9 bulbs in the high beams pull the legal max of 74.75w.

 

Sorry to ask the same question, but I just want to be 100% sure I don't fry my new truck

The Philips H9 will not over heat, pull to much current, melt the wire, blow up my truck. I know its not a stock replacement, and so there is always 1/1000000 chance of something happening. But, realistically I can use the H9 for the next 20 years as a low beam no problem?

And what is the life expectancy for them? I drive about an hour a day, and while the lights are on auto, they only come on in the dark, its just the DRL/amber turn thats on all the time I think.

 

Philips H9 is the spec for high beam. Which is fused the same and the harness has the same gauge wire for low and high. You’re effectively asking if you will destroy your truck if you drove with high beams on all the time.

 

It will not harm anything, the same bulb is used for the stock high beam.

The bulbs are rated at 400 hours. I use about 200 hours a year (pre-Covid) for some perspective, commuting on a typical 9-5.

 

Not a Lasfit fan at all with their blatant plagiarism practices. But this 1.5mm spec caught my eye. Currently the best in width to accurately replicate a halogen is Morimotos 2stroke 3.0 at 2.0mm. The design doesn’t look great otherwise with how much overhang is around the emitters and shiny aluminum finish reflects and scatters light, which is why others use matte dark colors. But looks interesting.

 

If you want to test something that is marketed as 1 mm thin you can try the DDM Tuning SaberLED 50W Accu/V2 Pro Series or the DeAutoLED deNX Gen TR 2.0 (or dawnknight p1 if you want the original directly from china). From what I saw it has quite a good light focus, not as good as a halogen but still better than most leds.

 

Have to be careful to not fall for clever marketing. That LED isn’t 1mm thin, their PCB board is 1mm thin, with the LEDs stacked on either side of the board. The distance between emitter faces could easily be 3mm wide. The focus on thinner designs is certainly the right direction but it doesn’t give much confidence when the width of a sub-component is advertised vs the critical width of the finished component. Also zero chance of that product meeting it’s specs of 50w and 5000 lumens per bulb. And facepalm, did they really use a mirror finish on the bulb? ‍

 

I also noticed that but is only for h4, so double the weirdness.
As for the whole package it looks quite slimmer compared to other products but the most important thing is that the producers realize that they need to work on the light focus, not only on the power.

Reading the reviews I saw that people measured about 42-43w after it gets hot.

 

Sealight, which is very popular on Amazon does the same thing. I ordered a set last year and measured the emitters at 3.1mm. To be fair though they explicitly state "led board" in their listing.

 

And you gotta love those hihg beams.

 

That’s better than expected if that is the accurate stable temp. It’s one thing to measure ‘hot’ it’s entirely different to measure ‘stable’ where the LED has stopped losing output. I’ve not measured a stable reading on a replacement LED anywhere close to 42w. One of the challenges with thin PCBs and minimal mass around the emitter is that high power results in high heat with little heat sink material to transfer the heat away due to thin designs, resulting in hotter LEDs which then causes reduced output leading to lower stable output. So you can’t practically have high power and a super thin design. Even with Morimotos unique fan cooled design blowing air directly over both sides of the PCB to aid in cooling, it was not close to that power output level.

 

Looks like GTR, aka Headlight Revolution, aka The Driven Lighting Group (same as Morimoto) is launching their own headlight line.



https://lightwerkz.net/products/toy...MIxqnV6KGU8wIVgRx9Ch3dtwSiEAQYASABEgKsFPD_BwE

Except they appear to be cheap Chinese Vland units sold at a big markup, like AlphaRex. They look similar to OEM, but OEM use 5 low beam emitters and 2 high beam, these use 3 and 1 respectively.



https://m.alibaba.com/product/16001...a2499298462eb04b6763307ad05aT.jpg_200x200.jpg

Edit: ^strange this link seems to change daily, almost as if it is designed not be be saved/shared.

These specific Vland units were already tried on this forum and performance was terrible. I’ll dig up the link.

 

= dirtbags

 

Here is the post from another member trying those Vland units.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQU00uPT-k&t=113&ab_channel=HeadlightRevolution
38% increase in low beam performance and they are just "what a wonderful product". Put a high performance halogen and that difference will dissapear. Also the light distribution doesn't look to good.