I can't believe the engineers at car companies can't find a better way to secure headlight bulbs. I recently changed the bulbs on a 2020 Fit, and it was an awful job. First, you can't see the area without a mirror. The boot is attached more securely and anything else on the car. Then there's the "birdcage." Removing it isn't too bad, but snapping it back into place is hit or miss. A dozen misses and one hit. I'm not even detailing the damage to my hands. Even inserting the bulb if iffy. Sure, it fits into place, but keeping it there while you try to snap the birdcage into place is, again, hit or miss.

Watch some online videos showing how to do this, and most will give you an overly simplified version of the job. Nothing presents a problem. Not very realistic.

 

Cars are designed for ease of assembly on the production line. Sadly, no one cares about your problem in servicing the car after the fact and not the slightest design effort will be made to make things easier for you. I sometimes imagine the team of engineers gathered around the lunch table laughing themselves silly telling stories of how they've shaved 2 pennies off the manufacturing cost of the car but their design brilliance will now make it impossible for future car owners to replace a broken part and have to take it to the dealer..

 

I had the same concern about blinding cars going the other way. No such issue. My LED lights follow the same light pattern as the Halogen bulbs. The difference being the LED lights are alot brighter. Much better night visibility at my old age.

 

Which LEDs did you get?

 

These LED lights are non adjustable. They fit right into the three headlight tabs like the Halogen bulbs. So there's no adjusting needed.

 

Thanks! I have to write more to make this an official reply. I can't think of anything to write, though! 😳

EDITED: Are these the ones you got? They list quite a few, but most are listed as "Fog Lights."

 

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) has no standard that allows for LED retrofits in headlamps designed for halogen bulbs. The requirements for auxiliary lighting (driving lights, fog lights) are apparently less stringent, or at least confuse the issue enough to sidestep an outright ban.

 

Worth the upgrade 100%.

LED's are alot brighter. And the visibility beats out the Halogen bulbs out of the ballpark.

 

They can be, but that isn't always a good thing. The light needs to be put on the right parts of the road, which means the light emitter needs to be the exact same size and shape as the halogen filament (at least to make DOT happy). LED isn't really capable of that at present, at least not in a reliable way. The smaller you make the LED emitter assembly, the less room you have for a cooling solution. There's almost zero room for that while sticking to the halogen design. A laser-excited phosphor (LEP) solution might be possible, but the phosphors would need to handle much higher heat than an LED application.

I agree that LED lighting is superior in nearly all ways, but the automotive headlight "bulb" market is a wild west of outlaw products. It's possible to make products that are suitable for most applications, but because they can't be guaranteed to work exactly to OE specs for all applications, they will never be legal. Ironically, the best place to be headlight-wise is a vehicle equipped with the old round and rectangular sealed-beam units from the 80's and earlier. LED sealed-beam headlights are legal because the whole reflector, lens and light emitter can be tested as unit to conform to DOT specs.

 

The US DOT is a good example of a government agency which has been comatose for more than a decade and has largely ignored new lighting technologies and opportunities for improvement, including improved safety. Europe is far more advanced than the backward US.

 

Do European countries allow LED retrofit "bulbs"?

 

I hate seeing them coming toward me - day or night - and I don't want to do that to other drivers. Aren't they lit all the time the car is running - as DRL?

 

The great majority of them have a daylight-blue tint of white, but that's not a requirement of LED technology. Just like household light bulbs, they can be made with a warm white (2700K - 3500K), neutral white (3500K-5000K), cool/daylight white (5000K-6500K) or even "colder" versions of "white" that look blue or even purple tinted. The higher the color temperature (°K) the more blue-tinted the light will be. Blue light visually scatters more, making it harder to focus on, amplifying glare.
That said, most glare is a result of mis-aimed headlights and/or "frosted" headlight lenses. An alarming number of cars come from the factory with their headlights aimed too high - every car has an adjustment to fix that.
As a source of glare, "frosted" (oxidized) plastic headlight lenses don't get enough talking time. UV light, ozone and other nastiness in the daily environment gradually breaks down the surface layer of plastic headlight lenses. It takes remarkably little dirt on a headlight lens to reduce its light output - oxidation is like dirt that can't be washed off. The white finish scatters light (that should be projected at the road) in all directions - sideways, up, and into other drivers' eyes (glare). Plastic lenses can be stripped, polished and resealed in about hour by a competent DIYer with a $20 kit (3M, Sylvania, Cerakote are all good brands last I checked), a cordless drill and a garden hose.

If the car used the original halogen bulbs as Daytime Running Lightss, then yes they will be lit. That's a good point though: Many cars use their high beams as DRLs, with a dimming circuit that rapidly pulses power to the bulb (faster than the eye could perceive, even if a halogen bulb could react that quickly) to reduce its brightness. The electronics in an LED replacement don't always react well to that pulsing. Some flicker noticeably, some just soak it up and run at full power, some are designed to look for it and switch to a lower brightness mode when detected. Many cars also monitor how much current the DRL bulbs are drawing to check for failed bulbs. LEDs use anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8 the current of a Halogen bulb to get the same amount of light (all that extra energy goes into making waste heat and invisible IR light). The greatly reduced current draw can make the car think the bulb has failed, turning on a DRL dash warning light or message.

 

Yes - high beams 24/7. Even in the daytime, I'm blinded by those lights.

In NY, the annual inspection is supposed to check the headlight adjustment. I wonder how many places do that. Years ago, before emissions inspection, the local guy would charge me $5.00 instead of $3.00, but he wouldn't inspect it. He said he charged $2.00 more so if they checked on him, it would look like he corrected something that was wrong. He spent all of the inspection time just talking to me. Paying more not to get the work done. Too funny.

 

"The Philips Road-legal retrofit LED bulb range is approved for road traffic in the respective countries where national approval exists or is applicable, and for an extensive range of vehicle models and lighting functions."

"On vacation last weeks in France, one of the "Autoplus" magazines carried a short article on how French road regulations finally included some retrofit LED approval. (2022)"

"For the first time, LEDs can be safely installed in headlamps on used vehicles, allowing these retrofitted vehicles to be registered on German roads"

etc. Somewhat mixed, depending on country.

 

You LED light haters make us Halogen to LED light guys the bad guys on the road.
All I want is brighter lights to see better at night when I drive. My intent was never to blind other car drivers going in the opposite direction.


Halogen to LED light bulb conversions are here to stay. You'll have to deal with it for a "New York Minute" driving the opposite way.

 

 

Proper install and aiming solves a lot, I put Sylvania White Bulbs (Halogen) in my daughters fit she loved them, the LED's had a horrible washed out cutoff.
I'm sure they were cheap ones. My experience is its about 100 bucks to get a quality H4 LED that doesn't splash in the other drivers faces..

 

LED units with a single large emitter can do that (it needs to be one or two small rectangles), or some times the double-sided core of the unit needs to be rotated to get the best beam pattern. There's very few LED emitters with both the small size and light output of a halogen filament. The ones I've seen (Osram LEDs used on Morimoto units) have terrible color rendering - yellow signs and lane markers look safety-green.

 

I had a Subaru behind me yesterday in the daytime. The driver's side light was pointed up high, but the other headlight was pointed down at the road. I find myself switching my rearview mirror to nighttime very often. When even that is too bright, I move the mirror up a bit, so I see nothing behind me. Great way to drive. 😳