3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

Gotta ask why you would think that something that is definitely not capable of drop-in replacing halogen would somehow be able to "upgrade" an already very good oem HID system?

 

The auto parts stores near me have a poor bulb selection. It's mostly the common bulb types from 20 years ago, and the cheap LED replacements. Had to stop by a few stores just to find 7443 bulbs.

 

Not saying it’s not very good, but since I’ve had them each component has failed, luckily the company I bought them from replaced everything at no charge. I don’t think I’d have these issues with led

 

What components have failed?

HID Burners suffer the same light output drop with age and use that halogens do, similar tonlong life bulbs, continuing to strike and light up long after they should be retired.

Old HID burners require higher striking voltage, and higher maintenance voltage. This puts additional strain on the ballasts.

Cheap ballasts are not generally made with high quality electronics. They're built to ansignificantly lower price point than an OEM one.

Other than that, the only component to fail would be the shutter system/solenoid of the bixenon lamp. A quality lamp, like a real rx350 projector should have minimal chance of that.

Similar to HID systems, LEDs require additional external electronics to light up. To regulate and control the current and voltage going to the chipset, and *hopefully* monitor theirntemperature and be capable of reducing power when they begin to overheat. A significant number of LED replacement bulbs use, with mixed results, small electric fans to try to keep them cool. So you've added an additional point of failure to the system over an HID.

One of the reasons LED retrofit bulbs Largely work very poorly or not significantly better than the long life halogen they are replacing is due to lack of focus. The other is due to lower intensity. Automotive HID burners have an even smaller arc than a typical halogen filament. No LED chipset is going to replicate the surface intensity of a high performance HID burner, and even if they did, they face the same issue that they do in halogen lamps (projector OR reflector), which is that they do not emit the light that they do produce in the same emission pattern as either halogen or HID lightsources. So while there will be light bouncing around in the projector bowl, and there will likely still be a sharp cut off to the beam, it is anyones guess as to where the light will end up being focused. Halogen projectors, like the ones crash has tested, both in the 4runners side entry low beam projector and the tacomas rear entry low beam projector have largely projected a fairly even wash of light (barring a few exceptions that are edging into the 'eh, it might eventually get there' region), which looks nice and bright when shined on a wall, but that is effectively knee-capping the drivers ability to see objects at long ranges.

If you have rx350 projectors, you should pay close attention to crash's testing of a few high performance burners, and if you are running aftermarket burners and ballasts, you may want to rip those out and replace them with new OEM.

 

I bought everything from the retrofit source, I believe the brand is moritomoto. Their customer service is absolutely incredible. Each time I had an issue they had me troubleshoot and sent me the faulty component. First was a bulb, then a computer then an igniter.

 

Morimoto is just relabelled asian product. The fact that you have had every component in your HID system already fail in a truck that is a 2017 (only 4 years old at most) should tell you all you need to know. You are buying sub-par low quality product. Great that TRS makes it right by replacing product, but what is better is not having products fail in the first place, leaving you without a critical safety system. You keep hearing me preach OEM grade for a reason, an OEM grade HID system should last 10+ years without needing to replace any components. Your complaint has nothing to do with the technology, and everything to do with the quality of product you are buying. As pointed out above, if you buy low quality LEDs you'll have similar types of failures. Plenty of people have had their LEDs prematurely fail. But I haven't seen a single issue with the OEM LEDs, because they are built to a grade far higher than you will find in any aftermarket.

 

I thought we had originally found listings of the AlphaRex projector lights on alibaba under Vlands brand in this thread a while back. Unfortunately alibaba has a way of making URLs change constantly, such that a link I post today won't work tomorrow. But it turns out at least for AlphaRex's projector lights, they are manufactured by Zhejiang out of China.
http://www.zjlingyi.com/en/pr.jsp?_jcp=3_57#_pp=129_0

 

well Said
I’ve just learned a lot between you and toy_runner. I won’t lie, your comparison is extremely thorough, I’ll have to dedicate some serious time to read it

how will I know if components are similar quality to that of OEM. I really love hid and a more reliable system would be awesome

 

Some color output shots of the tungsram platinum h11 lows and fogs; my wife’s Ford edge has LED headlights and side markers just the markers are on.

 

To be a bit more clear, Morimoto is a U.S. based marketing company with a Japanese sounding name, to impart the notion of quality, offering mostly poor to mediocre quality Chinese parts for the gullible, often using testing facilities they own to give them the approvals they want to tout in their marketing. There's a rhythm there, isn't there, sort of a downward spiral.

 

Great example of why most comparative photos don't really compare much. If you had exposure with detail in all the lights in the image, then you'd have one type of comparable reference but when all the "whites" in the image are blown out to 255Red, 255Green and 255Blue, they all appear to be the same color - specular white. Speculars are generally small areas of totally clipped, blown out details that would have had color and tonality if they hadn't been clipped. Next time shoot raw files using manual exposure with the exposure set to maintain detail - shoot for around a 245R, 245G and 245B for a neutral white with detail and let everything else fall where it may. And yes, there are inexpensive apps like Halide and Manual Camera to let you do that with any smart phone. Also let you manually focus as well if you want or need to.

 

Aftermarket will not be similar quality. You want OEM brands such as Hella, Osram, Denso etc. TRS does sell OEM ballasts that have the plugs converted for use in retros.

To even further clarify, Morimoto is a US based brand (not company) owned by TRS, which is then marketed as a 3rd party company by TRS which makes promoting the products not appear as self serving. And TRS acquired Headlight Revolution and Xenon Depot and placed them all under a new parent company of The Driven Lighting Group. And GTR is HRs brand (not company) just like Morimoto. So it seems all these different companies are promoting these products, when it is actually the same one, the one that owns them.

 

Like crash has stated, Morimoto is pretty much MEH. It'll get you started but long term reliability is hit and miss with electrical components, except their HID bulbs. I haven't had a Morimoto bulb failure, but there are better bulbs of course. I did a retrofit on our 2012 Ford Fusion (retrofit done in 2012) using Morimoto EVOX-R projectors (bolt in for that application), Morimoto 4500k bulbs, Morimoto moto-control harness and Hella Gen 3 ballasts from an early 2000's Audi A4/A6 from the junk yard. The only issue I had at any point was a bad moto-control unit, they replaced it with an updated model and all was good. We sold the car last year and it's still going strong with the new owners, which is my wife's coworkers. I try to use those Hella Ballasts on every build since they are insanely reliable, one of the quickest warm-ups and completely water proof. I've tried using them with H1 bulbs, but they are picky with bulb selection and even then it's iffy. If you are down to do some hunting at the junkyard they are very cheap! My local yard doesn't have a classification and I have gotten them for $7-$12 dollars each. Can't beat that for a ballast that is considered the industry standard by which all ballasts are compared to.

@crashnburn80 sorry for the delay on my end for not getting those fog lights shipped yet. Hopefully I get time tomorrow to send them out. I'll include a Hella Ballast in the box for testing purposes as well, I think I still have 2 or 3 extra pairs. haha Also, I am very happy to see you test the RX350 projectors!!! I really like the ones I did with the same clear lens but no paint anywhere, it is very time consuming to shim the lens to get the desired output, sharpness and color flicker. IMO it doesn't look like the projector you tested is shimmed properly, but not too far off, however that can be caused by bulb alignment which is not always consistent with Morimoto. I am using the Osram NB Unlimited bulb and Hella ballasts on my setup. Sometimes I do want a little whiter bulb, but I know the benefits to a warmer color temp and that's what counts. In the picture below this wall is about 100ft away and taken on an iphone X, not the best picture quality but you guys get the idea. Like you mentioned refereeing to the hotspot intensity being pretty one of, if not the best out there, that is not the whole story. The RX350 projectors are possibly the best overall beam pattern out there. The output is spread very evenly across the whole width of the cutoff and fades almost perfectly to reduce fore ground light intensity. Between having this retrofit and the stock fog lights being as good as they are, I have not felt the need to add SS3's yet. Although 2 of our cars have SS3 Pro Fog's in yellow and my bike has SSC2 pro fog with the clear lens.

 

Fantastic on the Hella ballast! They would definitely be one on the top of my recommendation list. As to the shimming, that is more on my end than the retro, I had better pictures with it more level but felt the one I posted was a more accurate representation of the beam pattern/light distribution than the ones that were more leveled. My bad in this instance. But we'll do some more with the high performance Osram and Philips bulbs which should be very interesting.

 

I also stopped by the Oriley's auto parts store by my office today. Their bulb selection was even worse. It seems like the Oriley's models has been to stop restocking halogen bulbs, and instead stock the Sylvania LEDs. Just when you think Sylvania couldn't make things worse with their monopoly, they do.

 

When I was referring to shimming, I was referring to the lens. When swapping the OEM fresnel lens the clear lens on an OEM projector you usually have to shim the lens aft in extremely small amounts (think about it like a camera lens to help people out) to get the focus just right. Some people go for more color flicker while others tune for a sharper cutoff with less flicker. The majority strive for the best focus which is usually right in the middle of color flicker and sharpness. The general consensus with clear lens swaps is roughly 15% increased output iirc. Obviously there are far too many variables in the projector used and the OEM lens to make that a definitive statement though.

Like you are mentioning with bulb alignment and shimming, that is another thing many do not consider but very important to proper focus and hotspot placement. Generally speaking an OEM projector has a tighter tolerances in the bulb socket/seat and OEM bulbs (for people who don't know the lingo we are referring to OEM brands such as Osram and Philips) will generally require little to no bulb adjustments/shimming since they're tolerances are vastly tighter than aftermarket bulbs. I was using Morimoto D2S bulbs in my RX350's originally since $200 bulbs weren't in the budget at the time and they fit quite loosely. It took some finagling to get it seated correctly. In fact one of the Morimoto bulbs capsule was slightly bent and I had to straighten it out which took a lot of time to get right.

Not trying to "school you" Crash, just some info for others knowledge that observe this thread. Also, I didn't have a spare Hella Ballast..... BUT I will be sending out a pair of Denso ballasts, some say it is better performance than the Hella ballasts, but they are NOT sealed at all so they must be either installed in the headlight or be potted to waterproof the circuitry.

 

Just received my

Tungsram H11-55NHP/BP2 Nighthawk Platinum Automotive Bulb, 2-pack

Tungsram Nighthawk Platinum H11's. Quite tempted to try them out in the minivan tonight. Just don't have anywhere I need to go is all.

Looks like price-wise they are now at $23.40, up from the $7.71 I paid per set. Even more interesting, I received only one of two pair ordered at the same time. Fascinating how it all works.

 

Maybe I’ll test them out in your minivan lights first.

 

Totally, completely, utterly OT (and side nod to @TacoFergie for your excellent recent content which was fantastic learning for me) but I can't help but mention that as I type this, Uncle Paddy the horse hauler is en-route to buy a waterski boat. So, I might be splashing around up there when we return from our haul, 10/9-10/11, depending on how it looks schedule-wise.

I *think* this upcoming haul will be my first extended trip in the dodge after doing the headlight bulbs. I'm curious to see them at night on the open freeway. I might bring the Tungsrams as spares, but I am not sure I want to spend the time swapping bulbs on that thing until I need to, it's such a process. If I were a better bro in law I'd buy him brand new OEM headlights but I think in general those things are just sort of disappointing, similar to the halogen Tacoma headlights. You'd think with how big they are they would totally kick butt.

 

Same here. Exact same. I ordered two pair together at the same time, same price as you. I received one pair today, the other pair is scheduled for tomorrow. They shipped from different origin points.