Led headlights 2011 Subaru legacy

Hello I have been looking at a couple of head light kits for our subaru legacy low beams Washington state.

I am looking at the below kits. Any inputs?

I am not looking for a different color or anything the car eats bulbs. By my calculations somewhere between 1000 and 2000 hours they burn out. I have used factory bulbs, osrams, cheap Sylvania. While the cost is annoying the driver side takes about an hour and a half to change. Passenger side is about 15 min. Dealer charges 1 hour per light to change.

Power is in spec Sue to the number of complaints I suspect there is a design problem.

Thanks
[Vendors of unsafe lighting equipment deleted by moderator]

Hi, welcome to this board.

The answer to your question is a flat "Don't!". The modifications and products you're asking about are illegal and unsafe. "LED conversion kits" and "HID conversion kits", no matter what brand, no matter where they're bought, no matter what claims the manufacturer or seller makes, all ruin the safety performance and the legal compliance of the headlamp they're installed in, and can create other safety problems and electrical damage in the vehicle, too. Rule 11 of this board prohibits advocating illegal or dangerous activity, so we can't have a "no they're not/yes they are" type of argument about it. Simply: drop the idea of putting such a conversion kit in your headlamps. It's not safe.

I am not looking for a different color or anything the car eats bulbs. By my calculations somewhere between 1000 and 2000 hours they burn out.

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1000 hours is an excellent, long lifespan for the type of bulb your car takes. There is nothing worth complaining about here. If you made a mistake and meant to type 100 to 200 hours, that's a little short. One common reason for short bulb life on Subarus is that they allow you to leave the headlamp switch in the "on" position all the time and have the headlamps go on and off with the ignition. That's very, very hard on the bulbs; every time the engine is started or stopped with the switch on, the bulbs get hammered with a voltage spike. If you're using that vehicle feature and you stop, the bulbs will last longer. If you're not using that feature but the bulbs are still lasting an unreasonably short time, odds are the vehicle has a problem. It might be that the bulb retainers have loosened up, allowing the bulbs to rattle with road vibrations, subjecting them to early failure. It might be that the charging voltage is too high and/or "noisy" (spikes).

I have used factory bulbs, osrams, cheap Sylvania.

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If there turns out to be nothing wrong with the car and your main priority is long bulb life, buy these ultra-long-life bulbs.

You are correct I mistyped I have changed them about every 6 months since buying the car. Bit longer in the summer. Pity when the work the lights are great.

We do not use that feature.


Thank you for the tips. Sorry I broke your rules. Your board your rules I doubt it will happen again. Sorry.

If I had your car, I'd just live with the short life span. I'd rather see, so I don't use long life bulbs. I own a vehicle that uses H4s, and I run a high performance bulb in the headlights. I'm getting maybe 9 months out of them, but I just live with it. (They're also easy to replace...yours maybe harder.)

adrake64 said:

I have changed them about every 6 months since buying the car. Bit longer in the summer. Pity when the work the lights are great.

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Pick up a set of those ultra-long-life bulbs I linked. They have to be ordered in from overseas, with is a bit of a nuisance, but they should give you some relief from the bulb-burnout blues.

Sorry I broke your rules.

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No trouble; again, welcome to the board.

some relief from early burnout bulbs is avoid silverstar ultras and anything that is a filament bulb but claims 'so much brighter'

they are brighter yes but not that much to be meaningful...and they have a thinner filament and early demise

I had a 4runner go 70,000 miles on the original bulbs, replaced with silverstar ultras, both burned out in 8 months, a week apart.
went to dealer grabbed a toyota box with ordinary headlight bulbs in it, they are still there today (6 years after the silverstar debacle)

127.0.0.1 said:

I had a 4runner go 70,000 miles on the original bulbs, replaced with silverstar ultras, both burned out in 8 months, a week apart.
went to dealer grabbed a toyota box with ordinary headlight bulbs in it, they are still there today (6 years after the silverstar debacle)

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Unfortunately, a bulb that continues lighting up for that long is well past its useful life. This is because for an ordinary halogen bulb, the lumen maintenance is about 80% of original intensity, for a long life bulb, it's down to 70% of the original intensity. In either case, beam focus will have degraded due to the way the lost filament metal is redeposited in random places on the filament. For the high-performance bulb, it's closer to 90%-- sure, they die sooner, but they don't outlive their usefulness in the way the bulbs you describe are doing.

Do some research on the lights rallyists use. There are some good websites and forums.

Why this? The motor sport on a performance or amateur level requires skillful driving at night. Subarus are very popular in the sport. Also the sport puts equipment under hard use.

It has to work and work well more importantly than looking cool.

If it works for them, it'll work for you.

Those kit are really trashy. Tried them once, trashed them as soon as i could.
Issues:
1)After i put them. I went to a facility near where i live, that will test your car to see if it will pass the anual inspection. Those Kits won't pass the inspection, they use a machine made by Bosch for testing the headlight. So i guess that the results they gave me are 100% correct.
2)They seem to overheat quite easy even with the fans working as hard as they can. When they overheat they will flicker quite fast...
3)They lack range they won´t iluminate signs that at the same distance the standard H4 will....

That was a good waste of money on my side....