Considering LED head light upgrade
- Thread starter Obather
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
- Thread starter
- #3
Thank you. Electric is definitely not my forte. Any notable conversion kits worth trying? I just need more light as I have this car in rural mountain area. Thx
Do a few searches for headlight upgrades and you'll have all the info you could need. Lots of good bulbs available and if you're rural use those highbeams!
voodu3
SILVER Star
Check out these guys videos on led bulbs and headlight in general. They have a ton of good info.
- Thread starter
- #7
Thank you
- Thread starter
- #8
I have a second home in Catskills. No street lights up there.
I put some LEDs from Amazon in my 1997 - love it. It did require headlight aiming after install so I didnt blind oncoming drivers. YMMV, roast away.
Swbkrn2003
GOLD Star
JDM from Amazon. I did just low beam. Work awesome make sure you orient them I the socket properly. If the don't light spin plugs as they are polar sensitive. $65 for the pair
Mark W
Yep, I really don't really care that much I guess.
I've got LEDs in a several rigs. I have better illumination on low and high beam than I can achieve without very high amperage halogen bulbs, my headlights pulls much less power (which allows me to run powerful auxiliary lighting as well when needed) and I have ZERO complaints from oncoming drivers. I have ridden in front of my own rigs on the trails and roads and have approached them head on as well and I know for a fact that there is nothing notable about the impact on other drivers. I am picky about lighting and have researched and educated myself as a user about it over the years. I am very critical of people throwing poorly controlled light in my face as well and am not one of those guys who thinks that I am safe on the road if oncoming drivers are blinded by my lights. 
I actually talked with one idiot who insisted that he did not need to worry about it because he could not possible cause excessive glare for other drivers because his rice racer POS was too low to the ground for his headlight to shine in anyone else's eyes! Made me want to take a ball peen hammer to his headlights.
BTW, the guys in the Youtube vic posted above have their share of misinformation and incomplete information in some of their vids. I would not give them any more credibility than anyone else trying to sell you stuff.
I have never seen a HID setup in a reflector headlight that was not terrible for glare and cutoff on lowbeam. I won't say that it can not be done, but I have yet to see it. And if I do see a decent HID reflector setup I am sure it will not be a retrofit HID bulb into a housing designed for an incandescent bulb
LED *can* be as bad. But there are LED bulbs that work well as retrofits in reflector headlights. Especially in the older tech of an '80 headlight with has a pretty imprecise cutoff in the first place where it is not hard to match the precision of the original output.
Lumens/light output and color/temp are two different things and neither directly affects focus of the light. The color/temp does affect the perceived glare for other drivers but far and away the bulk of the glare for other drivers caused is people who do not understand or care that their headlights need to be adjusted properly, regardless of what sort of bulb they run.
Mark...
I actually talked with one idiot who insisted that he did not need to worry about it because he could not possible cause excessive glare for other drivers because his rice racer POS was too low to the ground for his headlight to shine in anyone else's eyes! Made me want to take a ball peen hammer to his headlights.
BTW, the guys in the Youtube vic posted above have their share of misinformation and incomplete information in some of their vids. I would not give them any more credibility than anyone else trying to sell you stuff.
I have never seen a HID setup in a reflector headlight that was not terrible for glare and cutoff on lowbeam. I won't say that it can not be done, but I have yet to see it. And if I do see a decent HID reflector setup I am sure it will not be a retrofit HID bulb into a housing designed for an incandescent bulb
LED *can* be as bad. But there are LED bulbs that work well as retrofits in reflector headlights. Especially in the older tech of an '80 headlight with has a pretty imprecise cutoff in the first place where it is not hard to match the precision of the original output.
Lumens/light output and color/temp are two different things and neither directly affects focus of the light. The color/temp does affect the perceived glare for other drivers but far and away the bulk of the glare for other drivers caused is people who do not understand or care that their headlights need to be adjusted properly, regardless of what sort of bulb they run.
Mark...
