Best LED headlight brand

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dmitche
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jadeng97 wrote:Yep for both of them! and they work great!
Im looking at the h7s. Did you have to modify the headlight cap or did the bulb fit with the metal clip? How did that all work?
jadeng97
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So theres a small piece you take off of the LED and that gets locked in with the metal clip. Then you put the bulb in and twist that locks it into the plastic piece. I did have to bed the metal clips a bit. But, they come out pretty easy and you don't have to bend it much.
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KuroNekko
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jadeng97 wrote:So theres a small piece you take off of the LED and that gets locked in with the metal clip. Then you put the bulb in and twist that locks it into the plastic piece. I did have to bed the metal clips a bit. But, they come out pretty easy and you don't have to bend it much.
The heat sink and fan apparatus doesn't come off the bulb stem with the emitters on it? Most do, I think. Both LED kits I have experience with did so and that's how you installed the H7 base of the LED bulb into the headlight. After that, you screw the heat sink with the fan on.

The Street Cat kit has a driver that looks small enough to fit into the headlight. Do the headlight caps fit over the fan?
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LPSISRL
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What would cause me to pause on the street cat kit is the fact that they brag about the fans. Sure the LED may burn for 50,000 hours but how long will the fans last? How long would the LED work without it? Also looking at it, does the dust cap fit back on after installing or do you have to leave it off? Seems like even if you could put it back on, the cooling fan doesn't do any good as there is no fresh air to circulate. I'm a bit confused as to how this kit would work. I'd hate to leave the dust cap off and get water in there. Am I missing something? :?:
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KuroNekko
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LPSISRL wrote:What would cause me to pause on the street cat kit is the fact that they brag about the fans. Sure the LED may burn for 50,000 hours but how long will the fans last? How long would the LED work without it? Also looking at it, does the dust cap fit back on after installing or do you have to leave it off? Seems like even if you could put it back on, the cooling fan doesn't do any good as there is no fresh air to circulate. I'm a bit confused as to how this kit would work. I'd hate to leave the dust cap off and get water in there. Am I missing something? :?:
In many cases, the cap will fit over the heat sink and fan. My old ones had a large heat sink with a fan on it and they still fit. The reason I drilled the cap was to run the driver's wiring out. As for the fresh air, I don't think it's too much of a concern. The Kizashi's headlight is actually quite big and there are cavities inside for the air to circulate within.
Also, the main reason why LED bulbs have fans is not to cool down the bulb for the housing. After all, LEDs generally consume less power and create less heat than comparable halogens and HID bulbs. The main reason why LEDs have fans is to cool down the emitter itself. LED emitters are more sensitive to heat than halogen filaments or HID halide salts so they can fail or have compromised lifespans if their temperatures are not regulated well.

You do bring up an excellent point on bulb longevity vs. fan life. The fan will likely not last as long as the emitter. After all, laptop fans used exclusively indoors get clogged with dust. Can you imagine an LED bulb's fan if not sealed in a headlight? Higher end LED bulbs advertise magnetic-levitation fans so there are no bearings to seize and fail, but that doesn't make them invincible from dust or water. Also, the claims about IP68 dust/waterproofing only applies to the emitters and driver housing and makes no sense for the fan unless the fan can work in complete dust and water immersion (1 meter or deeper) for a duration over an hour. I have my doubts.

Lastly, there are some options. It seems that some LED bulbs that have multiple small emitters per side instead of one big one per side generally don't require the use of a fan as much. The kit used in my DRL/high beams doesn't feature fans. It's just the bulb and an aluminum heat sink. It may be that using multiple small emitters keeps the emitter temps down therefore reduces the risk of failure from heat. However, this is just my speculation.
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LPSISRL
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Hmmm... thanks for all the good info. Knowing that LEDs give off very little heat, I always thought that the cooling was needed as LEDs only need .7 volts forward bias to work and the cooling was for the power supply to them whether it was converting 120 volts A/C to DC or reducing 12 volts DC to 5 volts. I didn't know that the emitters themselves needed cooling.

Also, wouldn't the enclosed head light assembly act like an oven since the only cooling effect would be convection? Seems like it would be OK when it was cool outside and you had plenty of cool air pulling the heat away. But what happens when it's 90 degrees and the under hood temp soars to 150?

EDIT: Found this article to be helpful for anyone who is interested in LED cooling, the why's and how's. I made a lot of assumptions of what I knew of LEDs but found there was a lot more to know. Like the heat given off is not infrared and the heat is at the junction.

http://www.ledsupply.com/blog/why-you-n ... heat-sink/
Last edited by LPSISRL on Thu Mar 30, 2017 1:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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jadeng97
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I put rubber dust caps in mine. They have a hole in the middle that allows some air flow and allows the wires to be run out. Although they did fit completely inside the headlight housing with the cap on. I just chose to use the rubber ones with the holes.
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KuroNekko
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LPSISRL wrote: Also, wouldn't the enclosed head light assembly act like an oven since the only cooling effect would be convection? Seems like it would be OK when it was cool outside and you had plenty of cool air pulling the heat away. But what happens when it's 90 degrees and the under hood temp soars to 150?
That's a good point but the variable would be the environmental temperatures that LEDs can tolerate. The heat sinks are for the LEDs to cool down and the fans assist with that. In a sealed headlight, it would be a convection and in higher ambient temperatures, it would have the LEDs working in higher temps, even with cooling. The variable would be whether the cooling components would be effective enough in higher ambient temperatures in cooling down the emitters. I believe they still would be, but obviously not as effective. After all, the LEDs run their fans whenever they are on, regardless of bulb temperature or ambient temperature.

I should also note that some LED systems have drivers and control components that "step-down" the output of the LED when things get too hot, are running constantly for a set amount of time, or there is a voltage surge. I can't speak for all LED kits in headlights, but it's actually a common feature in high quality LED flashlights. Many will have a "Turbo" mode with a maximum lumen rating. However, many of them can only run this maximum output for a short duration like several minutes before the flashlight's control circuit steps down the power to something less. It's my understanding that this is for the sake of the LED emitter to save it from the excessive heat that is generated. After all, not all flashlights incorporate a bulky design with heat sinks yet some small flashlights running single Li-ion 14500 (AA size) or 16340 (CR123 size) cells can currently output a maximum of 900 lumens from a single emitter.

However, these heat management concerns with LEDs further go to show why some people like to play it safe and get HIDs instead of LEDs. They are less complicated in the sense of thermal cooling and xenon bulbs are far less sensitive to heat than LED emitters.

That being said, I have a feeling that other components like the LED driver and fan are more likely to fail before the LEDs give out in terms of the life of an entire LED kit. LED emitters may be sensitive to heat, but I think they are less likely to fail than the electronics in the driver and the fan that is a moving component. This is even true of HID kits. Many will have failed ballasts before the bulb actually goes out. I've personally run HIDs in my cars for about a total of 6 years. I've had one ballast failure from a particular kit and one bulb failure from another.
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dmitche
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Found these LED lights on xenondepot.com and i like them due to their plug n play and non-fan bulbs...but one question: how would i plug these into the car's plugin?
BLyons
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You get the H7 type, and the plug on the end of that LED will plug into your connector inside the headlight. I don't think that driver would fit inside the headlight assembly though, so you'll probably have to drill a hole in the cap and mount it outside somewhere.
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