H3 LED replacements you Love

[dannymontani]

Guys. I'm just questioning this as there are a million 'brands' of replacement bulbs for our driving lights and headlights. I am looking to replace the halogen bulbs in my 'KC Daylighter 4205's' with LEDs. I like these old school ones on my rig so want to stay with them for now. These are the mmmm 4in I'd say. Chrome beauties. For one the LEDs will use much less juice and also put out a huge amount more light. SO, which H3 bulbs would you guys recommend for these? Also which headlight LED round bulbs? These on an FJ60 1984.

 

[CruiserTrash]

Guys. I'm just questioning this as there are a million 'brands' of replacement bulbs for our driving lights and headlights. I am looking to replace the halogen bulbs in my 'KC Daylighter 4205's' with LEDs. I like these old school ones on my rig so want to stay with them for now. These are the mmmm 4in I'd say. Chrome beauties. For one the LEDs will use much less juice and also put out a huge amount more light. SO, which H3 bulbs would you guys recommend for these? Also which headlight LED round bulbs? These on an FJ60 1984.

I too have been searching for H3 LED replacements for some auxilliary lights that I have. They are 8" round PIAAs that use 85w halogen bulbs. I have run into two problems: most round offroad aux lights don't have a lot of room inside for the fancy high powered H3s. Thos high powered bulbs have huge fans and cooling fins on the rear that wont fit inside of my PIAA housings for example. Ok, so let's look at regular sized H# bulbs ... 99% of those are for fog lights and have 20-30% of the lumen output of my 85w halogen bulbs. So I'm stuck. I hate the way new LED housings look, the square pods and all those - they don't fit the look of a 60. IF you come up with anything please post it!

As for headlights, I don't like LEDs for those. I run the Toyota-made Koito headlight kit. To be very frank, I also sell that kit. But biased or not I think they're the best deal going in upgraded headlights for a 60. The cool white/bright white of LED headlights just never looks right on these trucks to me.

 

[CruiserTrash]

For what it's worth I did order these LED bulbs from Amazon recently. I haven't received them yet. 660 lumens per bulb is nowhere near the ~1500 lumens of my 85w halogen bulbs ... but I have four PIAAs, so hopefully 4x660=2640 lumens total will do the trick on the trail.

They were also the only LED H3s I could find in warm white to keep with the 1980s vibe of the truck.

 

[dannymontani]

I too have been searching for H3 LED replacements for some auxilliary lights that I have. They are 8" round PIAAs that use 85w halogen bulbs. I have run into two problems: most round offroad aux lights don't have a lot of room inside for the fancy high powered H3s. Thos high powered bulbs have huge fans and cooling fins on the rear that wont fit inside of my PIAA housings for example. Ok, so let's look at regular sized H# bulbs ... 99% of those are for fog lights and have 20-30% of the lumen output of my 85w halogen bulbs. So I'm stuck. I hate the way new LED housings look, the square pods and all those - they don't fit the look of a 60. IF you come up with anything please post it!

As for headlights, I don't like LEDs for those. I run the Toyota-made Koito headlight kit. To be very frank, I also sell that kit. But biased or not I think they're the best deal going in upgraded headlights for a 60. The cool white/bright white of LED headlights just never looks right on these trucks to me.

Thanks man for your quick reply's. Ya, I know the vibe of the whiter lights may be kind of off putting but I really need that bright light coming from them. I'm the only one on the roads where I'll be so it doesn't bother me. If....we....don't hear much, I'll probably just buy what I see but of course love recommendations from the forums here. And yes, I don't really want the square ones, sure there are also round ones but would like to use what I've got. God, been a long while since being back here. 72 now, built my rig up 15 yrs ago, starting to renew it a bit. I'll look into your headlights right now, see what you've got there.

 

[dannymontani]

CruiserTrash. I ended up with these. No put in as of yet, but tomorrow possibly. They are and inch and a quarter long which is good for me as the depth is one and seven eights. They are Ofiram X003SOT45D H3 Led fog light bulbs. Says HI/LO so they can be used for other applications....how I don't know as they only have one lead. Pack of two. I believe I paid $37 bucks for them. I'll post how I like them in a few days.

 

[CruiserTrash]

Keep me updated!!

 

[kenavt]

For what it's worth I did order these LED bulbs from Amazon recently. I haven't received them yet. 660 lumens per bulb is nowhere near the ~1500 lumens of my 85w halogen bulbs ... but I have four PIAAs, so hopefully 4x660=2640 lumens total will do the trick on the trail.

They were also the only LED H3s I could find in warm white to keep with the 1980s vibe of the truck.

Bringing this thread back up... @CruiserTrash did you give these a shot? How did they look? Thinking about these for my old BMW.

 

[CruiserTrash]

Bringing this thread back up... @CruiserTrash did you give these a shot? How did they look? Thinking about these for my old BMW.

Terrible. Maybe in decorative fog lights but they provide no vision on the road.

 

[kenavt]

Terrible. Maybe in decorative fog lights but they provide no vision on the road.

Gotcha. That's not what I'm going for on this car at all. What are you running for H3 fogs nowadays?

 

[CruiserTrash]

Gotcha. That's not what I'm going for on this car at all. What are you running for H3 fogs nowadays?

I went to Daniel Stern bulbs for my main headlights after running various Osrams for a while - the Sterns are made by Osram and have a slight edge over the Osram-branded bulbs. $50/pair so they’re kind of spendy, but I like them a lot. Koito glass housings for that of course.

I still have the four PIAA H3 housings out front, two with the original 85w Halogen PIAA bulbs which are fantastic. Lots of light, really nice ~3500K color temp. I’m currently experimenting with SuperBrightLEDs bulbs in the other pair of PIAA housings.

They’re just ok. The beam pattern is goofy. They put out a fair amount of light but have two hotspots that make aiming & using them a bit awkward. Like I said they’re fine but I’m not thrilled. On the upshot, I can now run the headlights and all four PIAAs at idle without the engine bogging. Before with all four PIAAs being 85w halogens I got a decent amount of bog, rpm dropped about 150. I did also install a bigger alternator recently so maybe I should try four halogen bulbs again and see if the alt helps alleviate the bog. With all 6 lights going - with halogen bulbs - the current draw is around 30 amps … it’s a lot.