Hi guys has anyone here tried a led headlight kit like this?

http://www.horizonleds.co.uk/cree-leds/headlamp-cree-led/cree-led-headlight-kits-single-beam/h7-cree-led-headlight-kit

Wow, theyre expensive, doubt theyd even give a beam pattern?

Wow £97 for bulbs!!

Looking at the advert, I see mostly glare these will undoubtedly produce... the surface emitters have nothing like the beam shape of a H7 halogen filament, even a xenon retrofit would have 2x - 3x smaller light emitting area.

I can't see them working with the Octavia lights at all.

 

I can't see how the light would be focused enough onto the projector lens?

 

Phil

LED lamps are the current fav of the offroad/adventure riders. The general ruggedness and lower current consumption is considered a plus of off road racing.

Lots of piccies of lamps producing a lot of light. Apparently you need to compare lumens to equate the light output. Talk of 1000ft projection and very white. (halogen claimed to be 1/3rd of that).

Try ADV forum, vendors section,

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=976505

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=948701

these are the first two I came across. There are more. You may have to do a bit of wading to find the night shots.

Similarly, the 4x4 world seems to like them too. Lots in use, with no mention of reliability issues that I can recall.

Cree is a well thought of manufacturer, with many vendors claiming their product uses Cree.

The light source has its own reflector system, the Octavia one becomes irrelevant, so maybe they will work as described/hoped.

The side/marker replacement LED lamps have no reflector and look quite diffuse as is necessary in that application. These lamps are engineered differently, as a light source and reflector system.

They tend to be quite long behind the mounting flange because of the built in fan. You would need to check out any potential clearance issues in an Octavia headlamp shell.

They also tend to run quite hot, hence the need for a fan. Don't know what the running temp is in degrees C.

Prices are dropping, a few months ago, it was £60ish for one.

The H7 inserts posted did not have a viable reflector system, merely 2 collimators to narrow the beam falling onto car's headlamp reflector somewhat. The fact that LED sources have large area compared to filament will inevitably result in glare and uneven road lighting when using car's headlamp reflector that is designed for a linear source such as H7 filament. I'd be the first to buy LED retrofit if I could see the current designs having a tiniest chance of lighting the road well. My view is that HIDs in projectors are still the king of lighting, though probably no longer fashionable these days.

 

I agree if these LEDs had their own reflector actually shaping the beam, they would not produce glare. But then the reflector would have to be so tiny in order to insert them into the H7 housing from the back, that the resulting lamp would have a tiny range due to light scatter (generally the bigger the reflector, the longer the range is possible, though manufacturing precision also comes into that).

 

I guess the only way a H7 LED would work  as well as a H7 bulb, would be to have the LED emitter at the back with a collimator and a lens projecting the beam onto a small scattering mirror placed where H7 filament normally is. Doable, but I have not seen any that work in the manner described.

Edited 19 August, 201411 yr by dieselV6

Thanks for everyones input. May have to wait a while for a usable system