A Reason Not To Run LED Headlights

350 mile trip In heavy snow yesterday. When I got to a rest area, my headlights, along with everything else, were iced over with dirty interstate snow. I had little holes in the ice on my headlights where the heat from the bulb had kept them reasonably clear from the ice. LEDS would not have produced enough heat to keep the ice from covering them. A pic of the truck at the hotel last night:

 

I just tapped into the coolant lines running to my throttle body and coiled copper tubing outside of the headlight housings. Keep my headlights toasty that way.

 

Pics please...

 

Winter sucks...

 

This is the unit i fabbed up before installing into the housing..

 

LED icing is a real issue in cold weather climate areas. If you look at legitimate LED headlamp conversions used in the trucking industry (there are no legit conversions for a Tacoma), they have built in auto detecting defrost heaters in the lens to prevent this from happening.

Here is a picture of my old Toyota pickup after driving through a snow storm over the pass. These are hot 85w headlights. LEDs would have easily frozen over.

Curious to see pics on how you installed this. Is it around the edge of the lens on the inside?

 

My truck is a good example of this. Recently did a 3500 mile trip and had my headlights snow over. It took a few hundred miles for them to get to this point, and to be honest I didn’t realize it was happening because the transition was so slow. Drive safe!

 

Looks like someone made some stove top shine. Don’t blow the kitchen up.

 

Moderator..... Please rename this thread to

"A Reason Not To Live Up North"

 

God damn winter!

 

If I had to guess, you made homebrew at some point in time...

 

Damn!

 

Title correction: reason #7928 to not run LED bulbs.

 

I keep a spray bottle of 50% methanol/ 50% water in my truck to spray on the headlights when you pull-over at a rest stop.

 

RainX De-Icer spray works pretty well too. Available at most gas stations around here.

 

I appreciate all the warnings, it's great to a see a community that wants to try and keep one another safe. But I am still going to run LEDs, because them not melting snow just proves how cool they really are.

Maybe I'll find myself in a position of immense regret at some point but this issue to me seems more like a small problem resultant of LED headlights rather than a major concern. I mean unless I find myself in very extreme snowy weather conditions, this is a be aware and clean off your headlights/do something to try and prevent it from happening sort of problem. If my LEDs rapidly and unexpectedly turned off while driving in the rain, now that would be a major concern, to give an idea of how I rank my concerns. However, if I lived in a very snow-ridden place and frequently drove at night my opinion would probably be different.

 

Wouldnt it be more practical to just not use LED lights?

 

/thread.

 

For my Rubicon I got a set of heated Trucklites. Worked flawlessly this winter in PA. I’m searching for something that will work on my Tacoma (I pick it up Friday).

 

Coolant lines to your throttle body? Yeah no.