Please do!!!! Thanks for the bulb write up. Much appreciated.
LED bulbs in Depo housings
- Thread starter lumbee1
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@lumbee1 A month in, what’s your feedback of actual use? I’ve had mine installed for about a month, but I have not driven it once at night on the road with other drivers. My extent has been around the area, which is CRAZY good, but no regard for others. Any issue with blinding others? What are your adjustment specs if no issues? (25 ft out, how high off the ground against a wall?)
lumbee1
Native American
- Thread starter
- #23
I work from home and haven't been driving much. I went on a trail workday Oct 21st and found out the air in my ABS pump was seriously degrading my brake performance so I proceeded to remove the pump and simplify the system. At about the same time, @crikeymike from Exit Offroad announced their Black Friday sale on Dobinson components so I had to buy new shocks and springs for the rear. Needless to say the truck has been sitting a bunch waiting on small parts and the brakes required 6 bleeds to get the brakes perfect.
Anyways, shake down ride tonight for the lights, suspension, and brakes. The LED lights on road are phenomenal. They do a great job of lighting the area right in front the truck without blinding oncoming drivers. The light is crisp, clean, and very bright. The lights were fully adjusted down and then adjusted up slightly for my safety seeing distance down the road. Some additional adjustment up needs to be done to get more distance without offending oncoming drivers. Both the color and throw of the LED's is far better than OEM. I replaced my OEM housings due to broken tabs and performance at night in the rain and the DEPO led combination easily beats expectations.
There are some drawbacks. The LEDs may be too bright. Again the hotspot is right in front of the truck and VERY bright to the point of begin blinding for the driver. In addition, there isn't much side spill like the OEM lights. This becomes very noticeable offroad and I had a little bit of tunnel vision and needed to enable my wide angle lightbar. I am hoping that adjusting both lights away from each other will help with the spread.
I've got some ideas for limiting spill after the beams hotspots have been moved further up. Testing should start soon. I'm also considering upgrading the corner lights to brighter amber LED's for more light.
Captured on a Samsung Note8. The Note8 did a good job of capturing what I was seeing otherwise I wouldn't have posted the images.
Paper at 31 feet, bucket at 62 feet. In all honesty, there is some spill above the hotspot not captured in the image. It isn't much but it's there for sure.
Bucket at 31 feet. In the previous photo I found the paper on the side of the road and backed the truck up to an additional 31 feet.
Anyways, shake down ride tonight for the lights, suspension, and brakes. The LED lights on road are phenomenal. They do a great job of lighting the area right in front the truck without blinding oncoming drivers. The light is crisp, clean, and very bright. The lights were fully adjusted down and then adjusted up slightly for my safety seeing distance down the road. Some additional adjustment up needs to be done to get more distance without offending oncoming drivers. Both the color and throw of the LED's is far better than OEM. I replaced my OEM housings due to broken tabs and performance at night in the rain and the DEPO led combination easily beats expectations.
There are some drawbacks. The LEDs may be too bright. Again the hotspot is right in front of the truck and VERY bright to the point of begin blinding for the driver. In addition, there isn't much side spill like the OEM lights. This becomes very noticeable offroad and I had a little bit of tunnel vision and needed to enable my wide angle lightbar. I am hoping that adjusting both lights away from each other will help with the spread.
I've got some ideas for limiting spill after the beams hotspots have been moved further up. Testing should start soon. I'm also considering upgrading the corner lights to brighter amber LED's for more light.
Captured on a Samsung Note8. The Note8 did a good job of capturing what I was seeing otherwise I wouldn't have posted the images.
Paper at 31 feet, bucket at 62 feet. In all honesty, there is some spill above the hotspot not captured in the image. It isn't much but it's there for sure.
Bucket at 31 feet. In the previous photo I found the paper on the side of the road and backed the truck up to an additional 31 feet.
This looks amazing! Thank you for this write up!
Cant wait for mine to arrive. Here in europe they can be really bitchy about led lights, but with this I think it can be "officially" in the car, overcoming one of the most annoying issues of my 80 while maintaining safety for the oncoming traffic.
Cant wait for mine to arrive. Here in europe they can be really bitchy about led lights, but with this I think it can be "officially" in the car, overcoming one of the most annoying issues of my 80 while maintaining safety for the oncoming traffic.
Of course I can't find the reference, but, if I remember correctly, aren't low beams supposed to throw ~160 ft to be "compliant?" While the light is incredible, do yours need to be adjusted higher? Or does this risk oncoming traffic?
Maybe Land Cruisers get to pull the exception card because we can't go fast enough to worry about reaction times?
Maybe Land Cruisers get to pull the exception card because we can't go fast enough to worry about reaction times?
Outsane
Supporting Vendor
Great stuff
I have been happy with diode dynamics sl1, I wonder how they compare.
I have been happy with diode dynamics sl1, I wonder how they compare.
lumbee1
Native American
- Thread starter
- #27
I don't know about compliance but my low beams do need to be adjusted out further. The OEM low beams certainly didn't throw 160 feet. With the Depos and LED's, the cutoff isn't very defined and there is some light spill that could possibly interfere with oncoming drivers.Of course I can't find the reference, but, if I remember correctly, aren't low beams supposed to throw ~160 ft to be "compliant?" While the light is incredible, do yours need to be adjusted higher? Or does this risk oncoming traffic?
Maybe Land Cruisers get to pull the exception card because we can't go fast enough to worry about reaction times?
lumbee1
Native American
- Thread starter
- #29
When I did the initial comparison, I was pretty shocked at how wildly different each bulb was in light output and focus. The LED chips themselves couldn't have been for or aft more than 1 or 2mm compared to a traditional halogen bulb yet had drastic focus issues.
I would love to see the Diode dynamics in a Depo housing. They were outside of the price range I was shooting for.
Luke111
Supporting Vendor
Running LED’s in a headlights designed to run halogens is not compliant either is retrofitting HIDs.. and I do understand the price difference $39.00 VS $300-$400 but based on your output shots you are getting $39.00 of output. If there was a deer in the road at 50 feet I doubt you’d see it. I rate the ability to see at night and not blinding on coming traffic extremely important. Here are a few output shots
The first shot is the GTR LED’s running them in OEM projectors of my 2011 Prius so the have a cutoff
Second is HID Mini H1 and D2S
I have an 80 that I’ve dumped a ton of money into.. and I installed the SLEE harness tried a ton of bulbs and finally I paid a mud member to retrofit a set of DEPO’s .. and the result are the first HID picture. All the pictures are low beam output. Spend the money ... you’ll never regret it.
The first shot is the GTR LED’s running them in OEM projectors of my 2011 Prius so the have a cutoff
Second is HID Mini H1 and D2S
I have an 80 that I’ve dumped a ton of money into.. and I installed the SLEE harness tried a ton of bulbs and finally I paid a mud member to retrofit a set of DEPO’s .. and the result are the first HID picture. All the pictures are low beam output. Spend the money ... you’ll never regret it.
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Thank you for the really informative post and excellent comparison - much appreciated.
Dumb question from my side is: do you run the same bulb for both low and high beam in the DEPO housings?
lumbee1
Native American
- Thread starter
- #34
I agree and the Depo housings with LED bulbs are no comparison to my VW GTI HID projectors or my wife's MDX jewel eye LED headlights. However, Depos and LED's are possible and significantly brighter than H4 halogens without blinding oncoming drivers. My experiment has never deviated away from the requirement that the lights must be safe for street use and not be an annoyance to others. That's the primary reason why I've adjusted the LED's throw down and still need to adjust them up.
The width of the light is another concern I have. I don't know if any amount of tweaking is going to get me the wide angle light that I'm looking for. Again, this is a $40 solution that's better than halogen but it's not perfect.
Comparing Depos and LED's bulbs to Depos with LED projector retrofits is not a fair comparison. Retrofitting an LED projector in the DEPO housing might be simple but my goal was to find a low cost solution with LED drop-in bulbs. In addition, the light output from projectors with HID's or LED's is far superior and so is the price. I've tried to collect as much data as possible and present an objective view. Due to limitations of the LED bulb in a reflector design, I don't think there will be samples that get much better than this.
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What did you do for the rubber boots around the headlight housing and bulbs? I was hoping the LEDs would split at the heat sink so I could slip the boot over, but short of potentially breaking it, I don’t see how?
EDIT: Disregard, I’m a klutz. Here I am trying to separate when they TWIST
Also, new Silverstars in driver’s and Auxito adjustable in passenger...
View attachment 2474647
That's a pretty stark difference. Are these the plug & play bulbs you bought?
Sorry, another dumb question, but if the Auxito H4 bulbs are plug & play, what is the benefit of the Depo housing?
Yeap
I had links to everything in the original post but the forum software doesn't like http or https in front of Amazon links. I couldn't get them to work and only figured it out later.
Thank you for the confirmation. I thought I was losing it b/c I went back to the org post and didn't see links.
Following up on my other dumb question, if the H4s are plug and play in the OEM housings, what's the benefit to the Depo housing?
lumbee1
Native American
- Thread starter
- #40
Not a dumb question. Both OEM and Depo are glass lens however (I could be completely wrong here) OEM has additional fresnal lens built into the glass that controls the light direction. The Depo lens is clear and allows for more projection. I'm not entirely sure what LED's would look like in the OEM housing and if the light would be usable. LED bulbs are designed to mimic halogen bulbs so it "might" work.
OEM uses 9005/9006 bulbs, Depo uses H4/H1 bulbs. I personally prefer the ease of fitment of the 9005/9006.
