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Will these hyper flash and require a special relay or are they simply plug & play?
You have three options:
1. Install bulbs that consume over ~25W
2. Install lower-Wattage bulbs and add a resistor to being the total load up over ~25W
3. Turn off the front and rear bulb-out warnings in the BCM. This can be done by Ford with their Integrated Diagnostic System (IDS) software. I did this on my truck and have the system to do it myself. This is the solution I used on my truck. I'd be up for helping local (Portland, Oregon) members disable these settings - it takes 2-3 minutes to connect and make the change, but Ford usually charges a full hour.
If you have an older vehicle that has a separate flasher, installing a "LED flasher" (not a mechanical flasher) will also do the job.
Power Draw: 1.7W Tested, Unknown rated
Dims Below: Full output until below 9.0V
Comparison Photos:
Notes:
This is a good example where bulb design makes or breaks a product’s use in a specific application. This specific LED light bulb fails to work correctly in these tail light housings – the bulb aims too much light toward the small reflectors, and the light reflects back at the LED bulb.
The stock incandescent bulb does a good job at controlling the beam of light.
The size of the reverse lamp areas on 2009+ F-150s is small and doesn’t allow much room for LED heatsinking to fit a properly-cooled high power LED. Everyone would be better off with external accessory lighting, or custom fabrication to mount a LED’s heatsink outside of the tail light housing. Any LED bulb short enough to make some use of the stock reflectors won't have enough area to dissipate the LED's heat.
I will be sticking with incandescent bulbs. I do plan on installing some high power emitters in my backup lamps at a future date, but it will have externally- mounted heatsinks.
Power Draw 45.2W Tested, 35W bulb rated, no spec on ballast efficiency
Dims Below: Not tested
Product Tested: OPT7 LED Headlight Bulbs w/ Clear Arc-Beam Kit
Price: $100/pair
Product Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VNBEBCS
Power Draw: 19.2W/32.4W Tested, 80W rated
Dims Below: Full output until below 10.0V
Low-Beam Comparison Photos:
High-Beam Comparison Photos:
Notes:
This thread was started specifically due to headlight bulb discussions. Viewing the photos above, it is easy to see where the low-beam cutoff is on the factory bulbs. The halogen bulb has four sections of light - forward, wide distance band, wide near band, and close flood. The HID throws most of its light down the road, but with a little more width than incandescent.
The LED bulb has a very tall beam - it throws light both down the road, and a lot immediately in front of the vehicle. The LED bulb can be aimed downward to get the light down to usable territory, but we can also see a glow rising upward toward almost the edge of the photo - this light will show up as glare to oncoming drivers. Aimed downward, the LED will throw most of its light into the immediately vicinity in front of the vehicle, making the foreground very bright, in turn causing the driver's pupils to constrict, diminishing the ability to see objects in the distance.
In the next post, I will include some further-dimmed-down pictures so we can better review the beam shots of these three headlight options.
Continued on, here we have some lower-exposure pictures so we can take a look at beam quality.
Low-Beam Comparison Photos:
High-Beam Comparison Photos:
Notes:
We can see that the HID has the most amount of light in the center of the beam - it will illuminate the furthest down the road, and the lack of foreground light allows the driver's pupils to dilate, allowing more light to enter.
The HID and LED bulbs both have more total light output on low-beam than incandescent. When we get into high beam though, the HID's shield moves downward allowing a great deal more light to escape the projector. LED illumination increases slightly, but incandescent catches back up, throwing slightly more light down the road than the LED bulb.
An item to note in these pictures is that the high-beam with incandescent bulb has a shorter beam than that of the other two bulbs. Both the HID and LED will cause far more glare to other drivers than running the stock incandescent bulb on high-beams. The LED also will glare more on lowbeam than the incandescent bulb will with high beam.
Without digressing on the LED product, I am going to simply state that as long as the product continues to function and someone wants to pay its going price, the product can work reasonably well if the headlights are aimed downward. Distance vision will be greatly diminished by doing so, but the space immediately in front of the vehicle will be incredibly bright.
HID is the best of the three, and I would run incandescent on high-beams before using the LED product. The LED product should be purchased for looks only, and aimed downward until adjusted correctly.
Headlights can be adjusted by:
- Backing up until you have 25-feet between the vehicle and a wall or garage door
- Measure the ground to the low-beam bulb of your headlight
- Mark the wall (use masking tape) the same measurement as on the previous step, from the ground, but subtract 2 inches (over 25 feet, the beam should drop 2-inches)
- Adjust headlights so the top of the low-beam meets the marking on the wall
Basically, if the measurement between the ground to your low-beam bulb is 30 inches, then at 25-feet away, the beam should have gone down to a 28-inch height from the ground.
Power Draw: 66.2W Tested, 55W rated
Dims Below: Incandescent dims until 0V
Product Tested: Generic HID kit for H1
Price: Unknown
Product Link: No product URL
Power Draw: 48.0W Tested, 35W bulb rated, no spec on ballast efficiency
Dims Below: Not tested
Low-Beam Comparison Photos:
High-Beam Comparison Photos:
Notes:
The cheap blue H1 bulb not only blocks some light with its blue coating, but it also doesn't draw its rated Wattage. All lights have quite a bit of glare, more than any of the three bulbs tested in the previous two posts. High beam is useless as it only floods immediately forward, with no beamwidth.
Surprisingly, the HID bulb doesn't perform any worse than the incandescent - the beam quality is similar, but with more output. It does have a green-ish hue.
Just a few comparison shots for anyone curious about how the aftermarket projector headlights perform.
Power Draw: 134.1W Tested, 180W rated
Dims Below: Not Tested
Product Tested: eBay 32 inch curved 180w LED light bar
Price: $40-60
Product Link: No product URL
Power Draw: 140.7W Tested, 180W rated
Dims Below: Not tested
Comparison Photos:
Lower-Exposure Comparison Photos:
Notes:
I was surprised by the "18W" lights. Purchased the pair to use their housings for a custom LED project, but these units perform excellently. They don't appear to have any current limiting so their output level may cause problems for their longevity, if the LEDs were actually only rated to work up to 3W max each.
The light bars can be had for a low price, sometimes as low as $21 for a 32-inch light bar. They won't pull 180 Watts no matter what Voltage they are fed, but 130-140W at 13.8V isn't bad for the price. Output is obviously full-flood and a huge amount of light.
The curved bar I received has a lot more spill than throw, not because of the curve, but the LEDs have domes over the top of each one that is different than the flat bar. I've had four of these various light bars through here and they all perform similar, but there are build differences in each one.
Just put these here for a fun comparison to the headlight beamshots. Stock HID still throws further, but the flood is unmatched for $40.
However, your testing lacks any conclusive evidence to back up your conclusions. You would need to engage in far more detailed testing to fully support your statements about glare and illumination down the road. You will need to test in multiple headlight assemblies as well, they are not all the same. You will also need to do some real world driving tests for a realistic light usability analysis. You have not accommodated the fact that the light from HID and LED does a far better job of illuminating signs and reflective surfaces. You can not simply point a housing at a wall and take pictures to support a premise about how a particular product will illuminate in real world driving. The halogen may, as you claim, provide a better beam pattern in your test of a specific distance but that does not guarantee it is doing a better job at illuminating the objects in front of you. There are more dynamics involved than that.
I really find your demonstration of the various other bulbs far more useful.
However, your testing lacks any conclusive evidence to back up your conclusions. You would need to engage in far more detailed testing to fully support your statements about glare and illumination down the road. You will need to test in multiple headlight assemblies as well, they are not all the same. You will also need to do some real world driving tests for a realistic light usability analysis. You have not accommodated the fact that the light from HID and LED does a far better job of illuminating signs and reflective surfaces. You can not simply point a housing at a wall and take pictures to support a premise about how a particular product will illuminate in real world driving. The halogen may, as you claim, provide a better beam pattern in your test of a specific distance but that does not guarantee it is doing a better job at illuminating the objects in front of you. There are more dynamics involved than that.
I really find your demonstration of the various other bulbs far more useful.
When the rainstorms stop, I will perform some limited testing of illumination and color rendering. I wish I could continue testing as a day job to get far more useful results that cover all the bases, but I will be limited to showing beamshots, and some limited real-world scenes to help show exactly where the beams light up the scene. Wall beam shots DO directly translate, if the math all lines up. It should be possible to setup a Photoshop project that can apply a mask made up of beamshots, on top of a scene. Perfecting that to match real-world illumination may take anywhere from a couple hours, to a dozen, but with enough samples to draw a plan from, it shouldn't be too difficult. It would also be possible to synthesize this for glare, but getting realistic glare capture from a camera will take more time.
I have no plans to test in multiple headlight housings for other makes/models or generations - as stated in my original post, since I have the truck and parts, my plan is to perform some testing for 2009-2014 light assemblies. Certain products WILL work better in different housings, and also worse in others. This testing on the F-150 forum will be limited to the F150 trucks, and the truck generation I actually own.
If enough data is obtained that can translate beamshots to real-world scenes, anyone would be able to take a camera, set to manual exposure, and review their own lighting quality. That is my primary goal - get enough information where anyone can start making informed decisions on the products they are purchasing, rather than just throwing parts on a vehicle that may do nothing productive, but instead only decrease the balance in their bank account.
Of course, I will be limited by available-time and weather. I also don't plan on throwing thousands of dollars at this experiment - just enough to get across the points of usable beam, glare, and the improved contrast that can be seen with high-CRI lighting (rather than low CRI HID or LED).
1. The low beams on my 2015 also serve as my daytime running lights. Will this be a problem when running HIDs (shorten the life)? With the daytime running lights on, will the truck just make the HIDs dimmer and not full brightness like when having the headlights on at night?
2. I have the option between 35W and 55W. Best choice?
1. Tdhe low beams on my 2015 also serve as my daytime running lights. Will this be a problem when running HIDs (shorten the life)? With the daytime running lights on, will the truck just make the HIDs dimmer and not full brightness like when having the headlights on at night?
2. I have the option between 35W and 55W. Best choice?
I don't think HIDS will operate at a lower input power, as will be the case with DRLS. The Opt7 LEDS work perfectly with the DRLS though.
11-01-2015, 10:10 PM
