I heard too many horror stories of the wmm breaking and other problems. I also watched few youtube videos about LED kits and decided to try them out.
Yes, there are lots of horror stories about the WMM, but this comes from a lack of knowledge and information. Just think - for thousands of years people were helpless against smallpox and polio. Then we discovered that these horrible diseases are caused by microscopic viruses and, with a bit of vaccination and quarantine there have been completely eliminated. Scientific method FTW.
Although it's no where near as important as the polio vaccine, I hope my research into the P1 electrical system will make HIDs less scary.
BTW,
not everything you see on youtube is a good idea .
If you are interested in blinding people or just to have "cool looking" lights, LED is the way to go, but if you want an actual light output improvement - go HID/projector retrofit, check out theshadow27's skbowe website to learn more about WMM issue and counteracting it.
That website, by the way, is
https://www.skbowe.com
Maybe my HID kit (35w) wasn't the best quality one (bought from ebay), but from my experience the light output of my current LEDs are very similar, beam pattern is slightly wider though. I dont have any pictures of course to prove this and I cant take any at the moment, because it wont get dark enough here in Finland at summer
And it probably wasn't working correctly due to the PWM. Your eye is a very bad judge of the output and effectiveness of a headlight system, just as is it difficult to judge HP increases without a Dyno. Other than setting up a sequence of targets staggered at known distances away in total darkness and comparing photographs, the only reliable way to check is with a lux meter and calibrated screen.
I know some of this sounds silly, but the purpose of headlights is to see stuff down the road in time to stop and avoid it. If light is not focused correctly there will be a bright spot close to the car and less light going down the road. This causes two problems: (1) there is less light reflected from objects in the distance, and (2) the close bright light significantly reduces the effectiveness of your night vision, making it even harder to see the distant dimly illuminated object.
as for LEDs in high beam - because of its nature, you are welcome to experiment with it as you wont have issue with blinding anyone anyway. Have no clue if its sensible or not and how good.bad it may be. The light pattern on high beam is completely different and light allignment is somehing like this \ / . LED may provide more light output but will be surprised if light pattern is held at all.If you decide to try, please share experience.
I agree for the high beam the distribution is much less important, and it is a straight relay to the battery in the CEM so there are no electrical issues with the conversion (unlike low beam). Of course you still need to drill another hole and find a place for the power supply (or cram it inside and sacrifice life span).
Personally I use 9011/HIR1 bulbs that fit directly in the 9005 socket. These are good for around 3000 lumens and last about 150 hours. I haven't had to replace them since 2008 and use my high beams quite a bit. I will say with the extra heat they tend to kill cheap LED city lights very quickly. I don't really care what color my high beams are as long as they are as bright as possible and work when I need them, but to each their own!
ps - HID in long beams is not good either, I tried, cant recommend it at all unless you have super quick igniters and proper bulbs.
Right - that's why bi-xenon projectors have the crazy mechanical flapper rather than igniting a separate bulb. Now there are HID aircraft wing marker bulbs/ballasts that are rated for strobe, and they are typically in 150w / 20,000 lumen range
. Shame they are 28VDC or 400Hz AC.
Edit: Just to clarify, light output of these LEDs are far from good, but comparing to the appallingly bad stock halogen low beams, you can live with the light output of the LEDs.
That's what I mean by
aesthetic purposes only - when you can "live with it" rather than it being a significant functional improvement. I don't care what you do with your car, as long as it's clear that LEDs aren't the same (or close) to HIDs in terms of light output from the halogen projector.
Honestly though, with the winters in Finland you are probably better off getting a set of HID auxiliary ("rally style") lights on a separate switch and putting whatever you want in the low beams. There was a
factory accessory in the EUR markets that looks like this:
Also some folks here have done crazy things with LED light bars (which is the correct way to use LEDs - individual lens per emitter) that are VERY powerful.
