headlightrevolution.com is a good website for research. They have tests of the lights in different housings and also measure actual lumen output. I did see a test they did for 04-08 F150 headlights.

https://headlightrevolution.com/2004...adlight-bulbs/

 

The alternative to dropping LED bulbs into the factory fixture, which were not designed for the brightness of LEDs is to retrofit HID projectors into them:
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/index.php

I bought these https://www.theretrofitsource.com/bi...s-stage-3.html

 

Thanks for the info and link. Did you add an upgrade to the original reflectors our update the entire unit w/ a new projector housing? Do you know lumen output compared to LED? I see best LEDs at ~ 5k-6K/bulb (Cree) Watts mean only energy used not light output...

 

As far as performance, your options are going to be in this order.

HID retrofit: involves opening of the stock headlight, modifying reflector bowl and adding projector lenses. This will give you more light than your stock reflectors, will give a great cut off line and will project light where you need it to see.

Keeping your stock housings with incandescent halogen bulbs: The reflector was designed to work with a halogen bulb only. While you can throw other lights in there, you must understand the way they emit light is much different than an incandescent. If you just drop an HID or LED into a housing made for an incandescent bulb, you’ll say, wow, that looks brighter. That’s because the light is no longer being focused on the road and is now being thrown in every direction, including the eyes of oncoming traffic. You could say, who cares about them, at least my lights are brighter. Well, you should care because that light that’s be thrown in their eyes could help you see a lot better if it were focused on the road instead.

if you must use anything other than an incandescent bulb in your stock headlight, make sure it’s an LED that has a cutoff shied installed over the low beam led. You’re not going to have quite as nice of an output as the halogen, but at least it’ll keep the light where it needs to be.

Also, most of the lumen output numbers you read online are just made up and usually much higher than the actual output.

 

@2008__XL You don't remove the reflector bowl when modding for HID lights. You make the hole at the back bigger for the D2S projector assembly to stick through about an inch, and drill screw holes in the reflector to put screws from the projector to the reflector to stiffen the positioning of the projector inside the fixture so that it won't bounce around.

Here's a couple pictures when I did it back in Dec 2017:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Atzi4Il87D-qgtpcK3oDeZ2fRD-c9A

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Atzi4Il87D-qgtpfqmgKMWKv7WUzZg

Here's a how to on installing them, though involving the smaller H1's instead of D2S:

https://www.f150forum.com/f99/2004-2008-f150-mini-h1-projector-retrofit-how-333339/

 

I typed remove, but I meant modify. My mistake. Good catch.