When someone is retro-fitting LEDs to an older car, what can be done to keep down the blinding glare aspect for oncoming cars? On the not a project Sentra I am thinking about a band of stick on vinyl across the top of the lamp housing. Maybe if I am clever, I can give the car an evil Jeep headlamp effect. Any one else have a better idea?
I gutted the oem headlight assemblies on the G35 and installed Hella fixtures for the low and high beams. It took a while to figure out but the car had outstanding lighting afterwards.
It looked stock when I finished.
Nice sharp cut off on low.
And all the light on high.
I'm about to do the same to the Hummer.
Edit to say I used halogen instead of LED because I prefer the color. They make LED fixtures as well.
In reply to Noddaz :
Spray paint. 
The problem is the focal point is usually all wrong, so the already-poor lighting geometry is sabotaged. This isn't a brightness problem as much as it is an optics design incompatibility problem, although the brightness makes it worse.
Not that headlights made for them are always much better. When there is a Subaru Outback behind me, I slow down so they can pass.
Build it correctly with a lens and reflector designed for the LEDs. Trying to get a capsule that replaces a halogen bulb but keeps the factory reflector is like trying to make a cheap 3D printer into a CNC mill by just having the hotend fan motor drive a half inch end mill.
I have Hella H4 lenses, and I bought LEDs that are supposed to match an H4 lens.....they seem to work perfectly. Good cut off and good high beam performance. Definitely a step up for my old tired eyes.
Trying to get a capsule that replaces a halogen bulb but keeps the factory reflector is like trying to make a cheap 3D printer into a CNC mill by just having the hotend fan motor drive a half inch end mill.
Quoted for eternal & transcendent truth.
MiniDave said:I have Hella H4 lenses, and I bought LEDs that are supposed to match an H4 lens.....they seem to work perfectly. Good cut off and good high beam performance. Definitely a step up for my old tired eyes.
Could you post a source for these?
If you are old school 7" round or whatever inch rectangle there are aftermarket new ones:
I am not worried about blinding oncomers as my car is very small and low to the ground. So much so I will be putting a 3rd brake light up by the roof.
I'm with Toyman on this. Projector retrofit is the way to do it. You'll usually end up with a better beam pattern than the factory optics provided and you don't have to worry about the different light source in a reflector causing a bunch of glare and not putting light where it helps you see.
And the answer is some of the above.
This is the headlamp in question (I should have mentioned that.) on my not a project 1998 Sentra GXE with new lamps to replace the smashed old ones. Is there a direct replacement LED bulb that gives the proper beam pattern to replace a 9004 bulb? That would be the easy button.
Would a band of paint across the top of the lamp reduce the glare to oncoming cars?
I may get some vinyl film and try this. I will report back. Maybe. Because this is not a project. *sigh*
BTW, nice lamps on the G35.
The other source I've seen for the projector assemblies is Morimoto (sp?).
A while back I bought new globes for my Tacoma and ran LED H4s:
Old:
LED with new globes:
I reverted back because I did not like the blocky pattern of the light and one side went to the purple color that many LEDs go to. Additionally, the LEDs did not generate enough in housing heat so in a slushy cold storm the headlights would freeze over.
Now I run normal bulbs in the headlights and yellow or white 2x2 LEDs when conditions warrant.
Noddaz said:And the answer is some of the above.
This is the headlamp in question (I should have mentioned that.) on my not a project 1998 Sentra GXE with new lamps to replace the smashed old ones. Is there a direct replacement LED bulb that gives the proper beam pattern to replace a 9004 bulb? That would be the easy button.
Short answer: No. Don't.
Medium answer: Using LED capsules in 9004 lamps is going to be like looking at the sun through a pair of Dollar Tree cheaters. Don't.
Nerd answer: Halogen bulbs eminate light from a wire filament of very specific, very precisely controlled size, location, and orientation.
LED capsules eminate light from a diode that can be located in the same place as that filament, but cannot really replicate the shape and orientation. They only approximate the light distribution of the halogen bulb they replace. The light they create bounces off the reflector and through the lens outside the boundaries of the lamp's design, and the result is glare to incoming traffic.
This is an especially terrible approach with 9004 lamps, which have deliberately imprecise light control to begin with. The design intent was apparently to throw a soft blob of light with no sharp cutoff so that some light would always be directed upward to catch road signs and so on.
Don't.
Empathetic answer: I'm really sorry. We've had several cars with 9004 headlamps, and they are easily the worst part of 80s/90s car ownership. They are worse than motorized seat belts. The fix for us was either changing to Euro-market H4 lamp assemblies or adding now obsolete Hella XL auxiliary low beam lamps.
Keeping-it-real answer: You put those LEDs in, I'll come over and kick your headlights out myself.
Please do not put LEDs in these lamps.
Good luck.
preach said:I am not worried about blinding oncomers as my car is very small and low to the ground. So much so I will be putting a 3rd brake light up by the roof.
This is not true. Car stance has little to no effect on blinding on comming traffic. Most cars with improper lighting are small cars that have led bulbs put in to normal factory lights. The modded Japanese car crowd. Then there is the jeep crowd and there fresh from eBay/amazon headlights. Lastly are the incredibly poorly designed Ford F series truck lights they had for a couple years. The ones that blind everyone.
I'm not worried about blinding oncoming cars as none of them seem worried about blinding me. It amazes me how many new vehicles leave the dealership with lights pointed up in the air, very obvious on my early morning commute anytime there's rain/fog which really highlights where the lights are pointed as you pass/are being passed on the highway.
Having said all that I used to run amazon LED's in my Subaru stock projectors, I had them aimed well and the light was decent. One finally had the coating fail and turned purple, when I went to replace them it seems like everything available now is 6-6500k which is way too blue in my opinion. Ended up with Philips racingvision gt200 halogen bulbs which are 90% of the LED light at a better spectrum and I know aren't throwing a bad pattern. If you want to spend money on bulbs I'd recommend those.
In my old E28, I do run some 5000k LED's in the old Hella housings, the pattern is really good on low beam and the light when everything is on full blast highbeams puts the bi-xenon's to shame in my E90. I don't drive that car a lot at night though and frankly I want to be seen in that car and not hit.
dean1484 said:preach said:I am not worried about blinding oncomers as my car is very small and low to the ground. So much so I will be putting a 3rd brake light up by the roof.
This is not true. Car stance has little to no effect on blinding on comming traffic. Most cars with improper lighting are small cars that have led bulbs put in to normal factory lights. The modded Japanese car crowd. Then there is the jeep crowd and there fresh from eBay/amazon headlights. Lastly are the incredibly poorly designed Ford F series truck lights they had for a couple years. The ones that blind everyone.
I think it's more than that now, Ford, GM, RAM trucks, they all have bad apples out there. If I can see my shadow in my headliner when you're following me your lights need to be aimed properly.
Up here at least I'd say there's as many vehicles with bulbs (headlights, tailights, brake lights, signals) out as there are poorly aimed ones, and it's a lot.
Noddaz said:
You will find that the beam cutoff area you are trying to address is actually in the middle strip of the headlight, not at the top. Remember, a reflector inverts the light beam. They are upside down of what you think. The low beam uses the upper half of the reflector and the high beam the lower
See the flute that dangles down to the left in this old Cibie? that is the kickup to illuminate road signs.
and this is what people in the UK have to put on their headlights to be able to drive in mainland Europe to stop blinding oncoming drivers where that kickup should be
Also of note. Modern vehicles with absolutely blinding headlights seem to be a uniquely North American issue. I jsut spent a week driving around most of England and WAS NOT BLINDED ONCE. The vehicles on the road were pretty much the same mid sized SUVs we have here but the glare was a non issue. It was kind of amazing and a terrible indictment of our outdated headlight standards here.
Thank you everyone for your input on this. It has given me plenty to think about.
And while looking for Euro spec headlamps. No, just no.
Meanwhile for the last few years I've been mulling over replacing the headlights in my E85. They're just terrible Xenon that apparently all the cool kids wanted 20 years ago and cannot be retrofitted with the poor man's halogens. Happily the flash to pass were halogen so I could put some bright LEDs in there, at least.
For stock headlights, it also doesn't help that US headlight laws still require some amount of light thrown up above the cutoff to light overhead street signs. It's very noticeable when you drive a car that has modern stock projector lights vs aftermarket projectors that lack that feature. Personally, I'm not a fan of the extra light up there, as I've never found it necessary and it's just that much more light that ends up in other drivers' faces.
As far as setups like P3PPY's E85 go, some factory setups like that seem to use bi-xenon projectors and the halogen light is truly just for flash to pass. In those cases, it's worthwhile to get the flash to pass active as a high beam. That's what I ended up with in the E38 when I swapped the factory low beam projectors for bi-xenons. Flash to pass during the day is just the halogen high beams, at night it's those plus the projectors switching to high beam. And the high beams are the halogens plus the projectors switched to high, which gives a ton of light down the road. It's also often possible to swap out the factory projectors for better ones if the OE ones don't have a good enough beam pattern (or if they're tired and the reflector bowls are shot, reducing light output).
In reply to Trent :
E-code headlights are designed by engineers, DOT headlights are designed by the accounting department.
The only DOT lights I've ever been happy with were sealed beams, because they WERE engineered.
20 years ago when HID were the thing you could get kits to replace standard bulbs with HID projectors. I did a set for my wife in her CRV.
https://www.theretrofitsource.com
They had a ton of vehicle specific stuff, it where I got it ages ago.
I've used LED replacements for my wife's 98 Explorer and my 97 k1500. Cheapy Amazon ones too
The difference is astonishing on my side and I adjusted them a little down and so far no one has complained about being blinded by my lights.
Both aren't super old though either
Trent said:Noddaz said:
You will find that the beam cutoff area you are trying to address is actually in the middle strip of the headlight, not at the top. Remember, a reflector inverts the light beam. They are upside down of what you think. The low beam uses the upper half of the reflector and the high beam the lower
See the flute that dangles down to the left in this old Cibie? that is the kickup to illuminate road signs.
and this is what people in the UK have to put on their headlights to be able to drive in mainland Europe to stop blinding oncoming drivers where that kickup should be
Also of note. Modern vehicles with absolutely blinding headlights seem to be a uniquely North American issue. I jsut spent a week driving around most of England and WAS NOT BLINDED ONCE. The vehicles on the road were pretty much the same mid sized SUVs we have here but the glare was a non issue. It was kind of amazing and a terrible indictment of our outdated headlight standards here.
I put ECode lights on my Disc. I was not expecting much, but I found myself amazed that a non-projector housing could put out a projector like light pattern. US code lights suck because they have to illuminate signs above the road, not-so-much in europe.
Instead of trying to over engineer something for a subpar quality part, just buy a quality projector assembly that has a nice cutoff and mount it and aim it so it doesn't blind people.
A lot of these you can pop the lens off, feed the projector through the bulb hole, and thread it in place.
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/projector-retrofitting/kits/hid-led
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