Need help choosing correct LEDs for truck

Yes, I know he does. But you have to look carefully at the videos and also understand who funded them. It's kind of like the videos each truck manufacturer has that show their truck is "clearly superior" to someone (or everyone) else with a few carefully selected and staged "tests." Oddly enough, they're always "right."

A number of years ago a friend (who drove a Ford at the time) stopped by in a brand new Chevy he was test driving. He told me about the video the Chevy salesman showed him that "proved" a Ford was junk and a Chevy was superior. I suggested he go to a Ford (and even a Dodge) dealer and ask to see their videos, and he actually did. He called me back and cussed me out for "seriously confusing his truck buying experience." Were they all right or were they all wrong? Truth be told, they were all both right and wrong. If there was truly one truck that was that much better than everyone else, why would anybody drive anything else?

And as for who sponsors the video - and I use that word cautiously - you need to know who has something to gain through the video. Our own @crashnburn80 has nothing to gain through his posts here. Nobody sponsors him and although a number of folks have tried to lobby him for either support or not to bad mouth a particular product, he's resisted all of that. I find that quite admirable.

Finally, you need to understand the science of lighting. The videos you're talking about don't look very scientific to me. (Spoiler Alert: I'm an Engineer.) It's fairly easy these days to use "schlock science" to prove or disprove just about anything. Lots of these videos use just that kind of "science." Don't fall for it.

 

I saw @crashnburn80 's light mod and it looks awesome... but I don't necessarily agree with what he said to @Ccrames2018 on page 2. I see bright light and a clean cutoff in that pic. I wouldn't categorize ALL led's as being incompatible with reflective housings. Some will be great, some will be meh, and a lot of them will be dog shit.

 

Am I missing something? What cut-off?

I guess you did not read the "geometry" explanations. Especially posts linked in this thread. I know that they require some comprehensive reading but it is really good stuff - for anyone who cares it better than any "youtube review".

 

A housing designed for a halogen bulb takes the vast majority of the light from the light source (the filament) and reflects it (off the reflector) and out to the roadway. Flutes and panels in the reflector determine exactly where the light goes. But - and this is key - the filament produces and orb of light. Think of it as a glowing ball with light coming off in all directions. The flutes and panels are designed to re-direct all of the light from this orb.

All of the current aftermarket LED replacement bulbs utilize variations of a "blade" that have diodes (illumination sources) attached to the sides of the blade. LEDs by definition are very directional because they are literally a chip whose top surface glows. So as @crashnburn80 has said so many times, you have a very different light source. Everybody claims to have solved the problem of utilizing directional light sources in a housing designed for an omni-directional light source. Unfortunately, they're all lying because the optics just don't work. Many of the flutes and panels don't get any light to re-direct. Others get way too much. The result is a garbage pattern.

The only LED headlights that work correctly are ones designed from the ground up to take advantage of the directional nature of the LEDs. Period, end of report, mike drop.

 

Besides Hipsi and crash this is the smartest thing I heard on TW

 

Alright, I went into some deeper reading. I'll be doing crashnburn's mod!

 

Yeah I'm going to do it too. I'm not sure when I'll get around to it since I just dropped $275 on a headache rack, but it definitely looks worth it.

 

No credible site would would recommend LEDs in a halogen housing. That should be a major red flag of either someone that does not understand lighting optics trying to sell you something they don't understand, or someone just not caring and wanting to sell you crap anyway. Neither are good possibilities.

Sites like that don't actually sell anything, they make their money by getting paid in kickbacks when you click through to the purchasing site. Meaning it is most advantageous to rate the company that will give you the highest kickbacks as best, because that is how you make the most money. All while looking legitimate and independent. Someone like Amazon is going to give a relatively standard rate, where as individual vendors may give more. How do I know this? I've explored the business model for my site, which I have yet to publish. The site also makes an incorrect correlation that the brightest LED means furthest projection. It doesn't at all because the way LEDs shift the beam pattern down as covered in the HID vs LED vs Halogen thread I posted earlier. The LED output measurement is also highly dependent on distance, since the focus does not carry it is very easy to make them look brighter, and measure them brighter and not technically be wrong so much as just not include the details if the tests are done at closer distance, but the loss of focus means that the intensity does not carry over distance. So extend the distance and the LED suffers far greater losses in output intensity compared to the halogen. Chances are the author of the site does not understand any of this.

And I know the sites data is inaccurate. I've tested their rated #1 and #3 LED, and the #3 is far better, because the #3 LED is quite a bit thinner which maintains focus and distance projection better, though it still gets its ass kicked by a halogen bulb. But when I shared the factual measured data on TW, company #1 was hyper aggressive, demanded I take down my posts, blew up my TW inbox, and emails me saying I shouldn't be making their product look bad. And when I refused to change my measurements or take down the posts they tried to discredit me and the data. They could have done the same aggressive tactics to that site and offered better incentives to promote their bulbs. Who knows. Even when I tried to explain why the other design performed better because it had a distinct design advantage if you understood optics, they still didn't get it. These LED companies that make drop in LED products and try to pass them off as legitimate are a complete joke. And people that promote these products through extensive youtube videos are a part of the problem, as people view them as some kind of expert or that they know what they are talking about since they are making youtube videos, but the only prerequisite to making a youtube video is that you are 13 years old.

All will be dog shit, some just larger piles than others. As @RysiuM and @Too Stroked point out well, this is a geometry problem, scientifically it does not work. You cannot move the light source and change it from omnidirectional to directional and not change the beam pattern. Moving the light source fractions of a millimeter changes the light angles off the housing, which may seem very small until you realize that is projected out 100+ ft. The result is massive glare in a reflector housing. Extremely basic math should tell you that very small angle changes in angle projected over great distance result in significant changes of the projected pattern. And the directional light completely changes the beam distribution, meaning you will no longer have a full saturated pattern designed for best distance vision. Instead the pattern shifts to more of a flood light with unintended dark and hot spots. The offset also lowers the hotspot from the top of the beam, so you loose distance projection as your hotspots start to aim more toward the ground, and the loss of focus further compounds the distance projection problem resulting in significant loss of distance illumination. And you cannot aim it up to "fix it" because you have a large margin of light above your hot spot, meaning you'd blind everyone on the road. Light shouldn't be above your hotspot as that is not at all how headlights are designed to work, but that is the result of using an LED in a halogen assembly. There is so much wrong with all this from an engineering lighting standpoint, that you have to seriously question anyone that tries to sell you these traits as a performance improvement.

Take a look at this thread, which covers many LEDs used in a halogen reflector, including many that are said "designed to work in a halogen housing and won't cause glare."
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/why-leds-should-not-be-run-in-halogen-reflectors.454371/

 

@crashnburn80 , I did read that thread and it's pretty much what made me see the light, no pun intended. Thanks for doing all this amigo you just saved me from getting burned by this guy. I almost fell for company #1 based on the "third party research". And the fact that they attacked you all hyper aggressive... They're just flinging their suck all over the internet ripping people left and right.

Couple questions:
I have a 1st gen. What is the best currently available bulb and harness to do your mod? Your original post goes back a few years. I'd prefer to have a more modern whiter look but I guess that doesn't really dictate how good a bulb is.

What is the best bulb available if I didn't want to modify?

Masterful performance!

 

You'll get poor performance from an LED bulb in a factory housing not to mention it will spread light all over the place in the reflector bowl and put light where it isnt supposed to go (high beams). My recommendation is at least find an aftermarket projector style headlight housing then put led bulbs in it.

 

Yep, verified. I can't wait until the day that we have them in stock for more than 5 days!!

PS - A very very similar thing happened with my X2 Power AGM battery I got through Batteries Plus!