3rd Gen HID vs LED vs Halogen H11 projector headlights

As a complete lighting and modding novice, what would it take to swap RX350's into a standard SR headlamp? I'm thinking of picking up a take-off set to build and swap into my truck.

I figure if any money is going to be spent on lighting modifications, it's best spent on lights I'm going to actually use daily, rather than once a month.

Thanks for any help!

 

I've been through there but mostly skimmed.

A lot of information becomes dizzying when they add in things I'm not interested in. Would likely stick to BHLM with RX350's and thats it.

Hadnt seen that theead yet, though, so thank you.

 

Difference between Hawaii and the PNW. PNW I wear boots most the time.

To compare the cross section of an a drop in LED to see if it is close to the correct dimensions for replicating a halogen, I need to accurately know the cross section of the halogen filament.

I haven’t seen a great simple ‘how to’ thread. If someone has one I’d be glad to link it in this thread. I’ve seen some great ones on how not to. For starters don’t use a towel in your oven for the headlight bake, things get awkward when explaining that to the fire dept.

 

I'm sure these will be better than stock. But will they be worth the cost better...

 

I’ll provide the data for how much better, worth the cost is up to you guys.

 

ETA on SL1 data?

 

Hope to be moving there in November. Going to have to get use to wearing boots and socks again lol. Haven’t worn them since my marine corps days

 

I've now got all the data. I had to get some new calipers with the prong extensions to test the emitter cross section of the DD LEDs since they were inset from the blade face. Somehow I forgot to take a photo of one of the distance comparisons which I have to setup and do very late at night this time of year. I was pretty annoyed with myself when I realized that. I'll see if I can get that done tonight and post the results in the next day or two. I'll collect the distance projection of the XB's at the same time.

Nice! Normally I tell people how great it is here, however I think I'd trade it for Hawaii. Shipping truck mods will be cheaper though. There is always the other kind of PNWer... the one that wears socks and Birkenstocks year round.

 

@El Duderino has his bike and Air Jesus’s ready!

(I’ll be visiting when he arrives)

 

Yea not a hippy at all so it will be okay lol. Hawaii is a wonderful place to visit but hard to live. Traffic is dreadful, we pay 20% more then average for all household goods and food. There’s only two seasons rainy and not rainy, but not rainy is also hurricane season wtf am I right. Other then the beach(losing surfing is going to be tough) and food, Hawaii isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be. The island I live on is so over populated it’s not even funny. Housing prices are absolutely insane(selling my house is going to be the toughest decision) like 800k gets you a falling apart house. The state it’s self is a very restrictive nanny state of civil liberties(even california ranks higher in that. Only NY is worst). I can name a lot more but there’s a reason why a lot of people for here are moving to the mainland.

 

No bike(to painful to ride), and Birkenstock’s are way to expensive I’m a under 20 bucks kind of slipper guy. And you better come visit just leave Abby’s Subaru at home she might lose it in a parking lot.

 

It won’t last that long.

 

If you are moving to the greater Seattle area, it sounds like you'll fit right it and it will remind you of home.

 

I can’t wait for him to move there. He’s moving closer to Portland iirc, but still the west coast version of gods country. By the time he’s there, I’ll have my bed rack and tent situation figured out and be taking an extended vacation

We can come by and make him jealous of our superior headlights

 

West linn or lake Oswego Oregon most likely.

 

Those are two of the nicest Portland suburbs we have ha I work just inside Lake O, but live in west Beaverton/Tigard area. Close to the farm land so it’s so so at least. Still not my cup of tea. It’s a bit cheaper out my way at least lol Unfortunately the Oregon housing market is still stupid hot, but coming from Hawaii you should be just fine.

 

Yea that’s where my wife wants to live( I don’t). I want to live in Damascus, Boring, or Sandy. But to get her out of Hawaii I needed to make some concessions also schools are very important that’s one of the main reasons we are leaving Hawaii.

 

My boss commutes from Sandy. He actually just bought a house even farther east of Sandy. His commute was 45min before with no traffic. It will now be closer to an hour ha And he drives an old lifted F250 most of the time. Lately he has been steeling his wife’s SUV though.

Well, hate to break it to you but Oregon schools rank m even worse than Hawaii. We are one of the worst states in the country actually. Lol For k-12 that I believe.

 

Yea I know but private school is much cheaper there lol. I live in the country side schools my daughter would have to attend are absolutely dreadful.

 

Diode Dynamics SL1 LED Headlight



Unlike most replacement LED companies, Diode Dynamics takes a more scientific approach to their products and how they market and sell them. Many companies talk output output in raw lumens and increases in output over the previous model, but what is far more important in a replacement LED product is focus. Rather than talking about increases in output the conversations should center around decreases in size, as that delivers higher focus which is far more effective in increasing output and projection than more lumens.

One of the things that caught my eye with Diode Dynamics was their video on focus:

https://youtu.be/WGmoDtdNqIk

The science of increasing optical focus for improved automotive lighting performance is nothing new. It has been around for decades. Increased focus is why the GE H11 halogen bulbs perform exceptionally well, despite being lower power draw that a stock halogen bulb.

SL1 Specs:
Stable lumens: 1630 per bulb (not raw)
Color temp: 5700k
Watts: 20.2
Cooling: Active fan
Heat sink material: Zinc

Measured:
Color temp: 5694k (spot on spec)
Watts: 20.2 (spot on spec)
CRI: 75

It should be obvious by now that LED emitters need the correct height and length to replicate a halogen filament. But they also need the correct width, which is where the focus conversation comes into play and what very few discuss. In a halogen based lighting assembly you increase focus by shrinking the light source, aka the filament. To project and perform better than stock, the light source needs to be smaller than stock, which begs the question, just how large is a stock filament? Being encapsulated in glass that is a bit difficult to accurately measure. The solution seemed pretty obvious.



The above is a low performance long life H11 Philips bulb. Halogen bulbs are pressurized, so they will explode outward if the glass is broken. Wearing the appropriate safety equipment and covering the bulb, I broke the glass with a C-clamp in a controlled fashion as to not damage the filament. Sounded like a small caliber gun shot due to the pressurization.

The stock halogen cross section for standard focus, 1.42mm.



How does that compare to the DD LED? Measuring Diode Dynamics LED cross section, 3.03mm.



If you paid careful attention, you'll notice my measurements differ from what was presented in the earlier video. The Diode Dynamics' LED uses recessed emitters, which can help make the LED cross section smaller providing better focus while maintaining more material for cooling. However, it also means that you cannot measure the distance between the chip faces with traditional digital calipers, as the body is in the way so you cannot get an accurate reading of the cross section. To work around the issue in the video, the measurement of the emitter mounting plate was presented without the emitters, while comparing to the measurements of the outer face of other competing LEDs emitters. There is always a right tool for the job, I purchased a new digital caliper specifically designed to work around this issue to get accurate data.

The Diode Dynamics LEDs are over 2x the size of a standard long life H11 halogen bulb. In halogens, gains are made with making the filaments fractions of a millimeter smaller. While better than many LEDs, being 2x the size is a significant focus and projection performance loss.

So enough with all this technical stuff, how do they perform?

Pattern testing at 18'
Stock Lux: 623 vs DD Lux: 752


Compared to the XD LEDs where the hotspot was dipped far down into the beam pattern, when it should be near the cut off, the DD LED does far better. The peak beam intensity is up near the cut off, where it should be. However, while the intensity location is better, the pattern does not have quite the same focus as the stock H11 halogen, while focus has improved the hotspot does not have the same level of definition. Hot spot concentration means everything for focus and distance projection.

Comparing to the stock wattage GE +130
GE +130 Lux: 1086 vs DD Lux: 752


Note how well illuminated the uplight is above the cut off.



Too many tests end here, with one measurement at a fixed point, typically 20-25ft from a wall. A single data point does not provide very much information, what we really want is distance projection trajectory, which we do not get from a single data point.

Lux testing at 42'
Stock Lux: 144 vs DD Lux: 128


At 42' stock H11 bulbs have higher lux output than the Diode Dynamics LEDs in a 3rd Gen Projector. Plotting the intensity over distance.



Plotting results is always illuminating to facilitate a better understanding of the data, a few different things stand out.
1) Halogen intensity slope of the stock H11 Osrams and the GE +130 is parallel and the intensity slope of the LEDs is parallel.
2) Halogens project more efficiently in the halogen housing, maintaining higher intensity over distance.
3) The GE +130s do not put out more lumens than the stock Osram H11s, in fact they may put out less due to consuming lower power. The performance difference between the two is focus, and the GEs provide superior focus.
4) The XD LEDs are actually higher in output than the DD LEDs (1750 vs 1630 stable lumens) but the DD LEDs outperform the XD LEDs for the same reason the GEs outperform the stock Osram bulbs, focus. This demonstrates how focus is more critical than lumen output.
5) What is not shown in the chart is that the XD LED info is taken from the hotspot, which is not in the correct location and dipped far further down in the beam pattern as covered in the original post. Meaning the DD LEDs are actually quiet a bit better than the XD LEDs than the chart implies.

What matters most in headlights is distance projection. Testing conducted in this review was at 42', which in the grand scheme is very small, which is about 2.25 Tacoma lengths. At speed you need to see objects far further away than 2.25 vehicle lengths.

The Raw data:


As LEDs get hot, they heat soak and output reduces/stabilizes at lower levels. After 40 minutes of runtime, lux output of the Diode Dynamics LEDs reduced to 704 lux measured at 18', representing a loss of ~6.3% from initial to stable output. All LEDs lose output as they get hot, active cooled (fan based) LEDs tend to lose less as the cooling is more effective. 6.3% is slightly better than average for actively cooled LEDs. It is also worth noting these LEDs are the first I've seen to use Zinc heat sinks rather than aluminum. Zinc thermal conductivity (cooling efficiency) is not as good as aluminum, meaning that aluminum cools better. So why would one use it instead? Honestly I did not know the answer to that one, it just seemed very strange. You do not need to be a materials expert to notice this as zinc is much heavier. So googling on the subject, it looks like Zinc provides superior shielding for EMI and RFI, which are important traits to suppress. It also costs a fair amount less than aluminum. I am unsure of DD's exact reasoning for using Zinc.

What I find most interesting about this data, is that despite Diode Dynamics having a much better design than XD LEDs, delivering better focus for higher output even while using a lower output light source, projection losses were parallel with those of the XD LED. Even though their LEDs are over 2x larger than a halogen, they are still a fair amount smaller than the XD LEDs, yet the projection efficiency over distance effectively remained unchanged. I'll have to think on this a bit, but it is quite interesting.

While the Diode Dynamics LEDs are effectively 18% better in intensity output projection than the XD LEDs, they do a far better job in locating the hot spot location near the pattern cut off where it should be, helping to reduce the shift to foreground light. However, projection losses remain an issue. Hopefully Diode Dynamics can work to further reduce the size of their LEDs and improve the distance projection in future versions of their lights.

Notes:
1) While GE +130s were used in this post for easy comparison to the original post, the GE Xenon +120 bulbs are a higher performing stock wattage bulb than the GE +130s.
2) A typical mistake in LED testing is using an incandescent grade meter which cannot accurately measure LEDs. All measurements in these tests were taken with a full spectrum NIST traceable digital spectrometer.
3) Tests were run at 13.8v, which is the measured voltage at the headlight connector with the truck running. Many comparisons online are run at artificially low voltage causing significant performance losses to halogens, but not the LEDs, giving an unrealistic output comparison.
4) The stock bulb used is an OEM H11 Osram standard bulb removed from a stock Tacoma.
5) While Diode Dynamics lists output as 'Street Legal', replacement LEDs are not yet legal, meaning they are federally illegal and will cause your vehicle to fail inspection in states that perform them.