Converting to LED headlights

[Knoxie89]

I hope to find out some good first-hand information, and see if anyone that has simply changed to an LED bulb found better performance.

I said this earlier but I'll reiterate. Changing just the bulbs will increase the brightness of the area you already have lit. Without changing the headlight housing, you will not see a large increase in visible area/distance. IF you want better distance you will need to add lights, or change the headlight housing.

[ronnie_g]

I didn't 'see' anyone suggesting you buy something that is DOT approved.
When I was looking to do LED on my motorcycle 99% of the lamps were not DOT approved. That could come back to bite you down the road.
Unhappy police officer or accident with modifications not approved could be a problem???

[followingsea]

Originally Posted by DryCreek

Or, possibly - RV headlights are crappy?

...I know what sucky headlights look like. ...

Me too! You must have been behind me with your aftermarket headlights or maybe you do not know what the dimmer switch is for.

Since I have never had headlights that did not get the job done I have to wonder how you define 'sucky'?

Since first reading this post I have driven the MH from Shreveport to Lost Wages. Because of the heat, I started at 4am each leg. This included some two lane Texas roads and I-40 WB.

While MH lights do not appear as bright, I did not have a problem driving 65 MPH based on flicking my high beams on and off to judge the distance that objects were being reflected. I even turned on the fog lights on the road out of one campground. Brighter yes, see farther done the road no.

After being discharge from the navy on the east coast, I was driving to the west coast. On a beautiful stretch of US-50 because it had just been repaved with new paint and reflectors, I was driving 90 mph. No oncoming traffic to blind me and disturb my excellent night vision of a young person. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the reflectors move. Mule deer!

Worst night driving was driving against traffic coming from the Pendleton Roundup. One pickup towing a horse trailer after another with headlights pointing at the stars.

Lots of things make it hard to drive at night.

[ronnie_g]

Originally Posted by followingsea

Since I have never had headlights that did not get the job done I have to wonder how you define 'sucky'?

Headlights on my 2006 IMO qualify as "sucky" we drove all night I ended up following my SO and using her headlights to see down the road.
Ended up I had to buff out the RV plastic lenses, they had hazed / crazed over. plus they were out of alignment hitting the ground about 30 ft in front of me. Jeep have HID and light up the road about 5x further than RV B-4 they were cleaned & adjusted.
Another trip we drove a rental truck +- non stop FL to AZ. I drove with the high beams on all the time, and not one car or truck flashed their lights back at me. The high beam were hitting the ground about 40 or so feet in front of the truck. IMO the truck was not safe to drive, but it was a rental, and we had only a few days to do the trip. I did dim the lights when I was following +- 30 car length behind another vehicle. Not sure they could tell?

[DryCreek]

Originally Posted by ronnie_g

Headlights on my 2006 IMO qualify as "sucky" we drove all night I ended up following my SO and using her headlights to see down the road.
Ended up I had to buff out the RV plastic lenses, they had hazed / crazed over. plus they were out of alignment hitting the ground about 30 ft in front of me. Jeep have HID and light up the road about 5x further than RV B-4 they were cleaned & adjusted.
Another trip we drove a rental truck +- non stop FL to AZ. I drove with the high beams on all the time, and not one car or truck flashed their lights back at me. The high beam were hitting the ground about 40 or so feet in front of the truck. IMO the truck was not safe to drive, but it was a rental, and we had only a few days to do the trip. I did dim the lights when I was following +- 30 car length behind another vehicle. Not sure they could tell?

According the person who replied to my post - that just can't be true at all. Have you tried driving 90 at night with them? Maybe you just need extra speed in order to "thrust" the light out in front of you.

I don't know when the last time was when I read such silliness. And yes, I know what a dimmer switch is for. I guess that the rest of us are just too stupid to be driving at night, and we should leave the roads open for those like folowingsea above who are expert night drivers, and can safely exceed the speed limit.

[Mr_D]

Originally Posted by TowDawg

Just make sure you find a new, truly dedicated housing that's got the correct projector beam set-up. Do not just put LED bulbs in a housing not designed for them, or you'll end up with a pretty color light, but absolutely no improvement in visibility. (Possibly even worse than what you started with.)

Paid a high price for LED's for my rig. Had a great spread of light out about 50' then nothing.
Took them out and got some of the new high wattage Halogen ones. Much better.

[Rossi6998]

[Rkesselus]

I took some time investigating why RV headlights are viewed as poor. I found one interesting point. . Most RV manufacturers use headlight fixtures from different automobile manufactures First point I arrived at was that the auto headlights out of cars are most often designed to be mounted much closer to the ground than what happens when fitted into a motor home front end, much higher, so the aiming becomes a problem and most definitely affects the beam distance lower vs. higher. Next time in a Truck Stop take a look at how the big rig tractors have their headlights mounted. To prove the point to my self I took a good flashlight mounted it 16 inches off the ground in my dark barn. I leveled the flashlight and observed the results. from the front of the lens to the first well lit distance was 5 feet. The lighting increased out to 20 feet and then stayed about the same all the way to the back wall 60 feet away. I moved the flashlight up to 30 inches and repeated the experiment There was no well lit area until i got out to 30 feet and it stayed about the same to the back wall.
Now I changed the angle of the flashlight. At 16 inches pointing the beam low on the wall and I improved the lighting all the way from the front of the lens to the wall but when I did the same thing with the flashing at 30 inches at the same angle the results were terrible loss of well lit area all the way to the back wall. I know this is not very scientific but I'm not to scientific myself but I do have a lot of good common sense. My lights are 1998 Ford Mustang lights I know that on that car the lights are very good but on my 2000 Tiffin Allegro Bus they are awful. So I took one out and rigged up a box to positioned the fixture at 16 inches and what do you know the light pattern was pretty damn good. versus the light that was still in the motor home. So now I am not sure what I will do but I am going to study this based on the finding of my experiment. Richard

[DryCreek]

Originally Posted by Rkesselus

My lights are 1998 Ford Mustang lights I know that on that car the lights are very good but on my 2000 Tiffin Allegro Bus they are awful.

The headlights for our 2006 Winnebago Sightseer are also used on the 1999 - 2003 Chevy and GMC full-size pickups. They are very narrow and use a separate high beam/low beam bulb (9004/9005). Winnebago wires them differently that GM did - the daytime running lights - DRLs) use the low beam (at full power) instead of the high beams at 2/3 power. This constant usage causes degradation over time and will lead to a dimmer appearance. The OEM bulb can be easily upgraded to a Halogen style such as Sylvania Brightstar or Silverstar. Either work well, but they will also suffer from always being on - and will need to be replaced at about three year periods. Going to HID is very expensive and requires replacing the entire housing, but the results are superior to upgrading the OEM bulbs. Since the housing and reflector on the earlier GM style headlight housings are short and wide, they do not adapt to the use of LED replacement bulbs as well as a rounder and deeper reflector would. You will get a much brighter white (higher Kelvin temp) and that does help to a limited degree.


I have tried re-aiming our lights, but since they are mounted slightly higher than even a lifted 4WD pickup, they would tend to shine directly into the rear window of a vehicle in front of me. I set the main "pool of light" at the height recommended in my general service manuals. And, as you pointed out, that tends to direct the light too close to the front of the vehicle.

I am looking at LED replacement/aftermarket kits designed for the earlier model GM pickups. Most of what I have came across are projector style units - not what I wanted.....

[Dav L]

"I am looking at LED replacement/aftermarket kits designed for the earlier model GM pickups. Most of what I have came across are projector style units - not what I wanted....."
Curious - if you have the option, and the price isn't the issue, why not projector upgrade? They are "definitely" the best headlight design. Sharp horizontal cutoff, utilizes all the light the bulb can put out, wide light footprint, consistent light across the width, minimized hotspot. You can use Halogen, HID, LED, Xenon etc bulbs in a projector. Of course not all projectors are created equal.

It is also likely you can use HID in a conventional housing. You just have to get the right bulb that fits that housing. HID is bright but not as reliable, and not cost effective though. But, best light.

[HamboneTHW]

I'm not going scientific, but I bought an affordable HID kit. Took a lot of experimenting to get them to work right (driver side uses the harness, passenger side uses a capacitor pigtail). As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are two pictures. Just took a trip in June driving quite a bit at night. They're definitely better than stock and I didn't have to replace the housing.

[ronnie_g]

I have a 2006 Itasca Meridian 36G and it took me the better part of a afternoon to replace one bulb that burned out on the headlight.

I may have missed a trade secret, but IMO the MFG installed the bulbs B-4 mounting the headlight. And their is not 1/32" to spare in getting a bulb back into the lamp.
I think that's why my lights were so far out of alignment, some one pushed and pulled on the mounting to get replacement bulbs installed.
IMO their is no way I could install a LED or HID kit unless it was smaller than the factory bulb.
Has anyone else had a problem getting access to change a headlight bulb?

[DryCreek]

Originally Posted by Dav L

"I am looking at LED replacement/aftermarket kits designed for the earlier model GM pickups. Most of what I have came across are projector style units - not what I wanted....."
Curious - if you have the option, and the price isn't the issue, why not projector upgrade? They are "definitely" the best headlight design. Sharp horizontal cutoff, utilizes all the light the bulb can put out, wide light footprint, consistent light across the width, minimized hotspot. You can use Halogen, HID, LED, Xenon etc bulbs in a projector. Of course not all projectors are created equal.

It is also likely you can use HID in a conventional housing. You just have to get the right bulb that fits that housing. HID is bright but not as reliable, and not cost effective though. But, best light.

I like the idea, but I was told by coworkers with lifted GM pickups that the light will sit too high and tend to blind oncoming traffic. I know that I have been dazzled by many an HID headlight as it focused in on my retina while coming over a hill. The first clue is the color shift from bluish to bright and clear white. I definitely don't want to be "that guy".

[TriMoot]

Originally Posted by Knoxie89

Replacing older bulbs with LED will make the light brighter or a different color, but they wont increase distance/projection. To get better lighting all the way around you have to replace the whole headlight for something designed to have LED lights. Throwing in LED bulbs will help with increasing brightness for sure but not necessarily how far you can see.

I couldn't find a replacement unit for my headlights, so I went with the 'add more' option.

------- post from forest river forum -------------

I don't know about anyone else, but my wife and I tend to do a lot of overnight driving. We do FL->NY pretty often and do it in 1.5 days of driving to maximize time with family/friends.

Anyone who has driven a 2016+ Fr3 with the little 3.5" lights will probably agree with me that the lights are absolutely terrible. SO, I added some thin spot LED lights and they are 200% better now.

https://imgur.com/a/1PHZ3Kt

Lights: http://a.co/fhEFv8O
Wiring: http://a.co/5PQl7JS

I'm going to switch to a toggle switch and permanently mount the switch in the dash, but for now i ran the supplied round switch to the steering wheel and have it sitting in one the gaps.

Knoxie90 - I think you solved my issue...these are inexpensive, easy to install (at least I think they will be) and already are in my Amazon cart!

There's another thread like this over here:
http://www.irv2.com/forums/f103/weak...ne-402895.html

There's some good info, but you'll need to skip over the some of the silly flaming one poster starts.

On that thread you'll see where I was/am a newbie when it comes to LED/HID lights and someone posted a good link to learning about them. But the more I researched the more I found a lot of folks were having issues with just buying bulbs and getting them to last. Some were having them die after just a few months, even though they say many LEDs have a 30K hour lifespan.

I happened to remove the bulb from my 1997 RexAir which uses lights from a 95 Lincoln Town Car, and looked at the date...it was from August of 1996!!

Here's what I wrote: "Life span of LEDs bulbs...30,000 hours. Hmm, how long is that actually? Well, if you used your lights 24 hours a day, that comes out to 3.42 YEARS. The halogen bulb I just took out of my rig...192,720 hours...or 22 YEARS!!!!!"

So yeah, I'm thinking the 'easy' fix for me is what you posted. If I'm out at night and having issues seeing, I'll just flip these on to help out!

Thanks for posting that info!