DIY LED headlight?

[coolwaters]

is it legal? since its not DOT approved...


i was planning to use 2 or 3 Cree Q5s with a Pentium 4 CPU heatsink. with a fan...


my car has a acrylic lens so you cant really tell if theres mods unless its really intense.

changing from 60watts to a minuscule 10w would be great.
along with 50k hours of life.

 

[LukeA]

No, it won't be legal or safe. Headlights must conform to very strict beam pattern standards to prevent the dazzling of other drivers.

You need much more light than that. At least 7 Q5s per side. A fan is a waste because you could use forced air from the vehicle's motion.

 

[coolwaters]

dont want to drill a hole on my hood or something to cool the heatsink...also wat if im at a stop light?


i heard the lumens requrement was around 900 lumens so a P7 would fit fairly well. also the new lens on the new cars makes all the lights look the same so i dont know wat your talking about beam pattern?

 

[crazedmodder]

Beam pattern is the pattern that the actual beam of light has. With one LED you'll have a hotspot instead of a wide beam of light like normal bulbs. You can accomplish this if you know what you're doing but if you're planning on using 3 Crees or a P7, no offense but I don't think you'll be able to produce something that is safe. It takes a lot of good optics (reflectors/lenses to control the light), cooling and power management. Not to mention mounting it will be tough as well. In producing a headlight you would be looking at using a lot of LEDs instead of fewer, so that the beam has less or no hotspots. Lexus's headlight supplier did it (3 LEDs/side I believe?), but they know very well what they're doing and used some very complex/advanced optics.

 

[coolwaters]

the older cars has lumens rating around 400...mainly because their color is so red. try coming one R2 LED with a somewhat old car with stock lights.
the P7 seems to be dimmer then my 09 tC
though but they use blue lights and 60watts so its hardly fair....i'll try a demo. once i get that dam P7...

when is the D-bin coming out???!!

 

[-Virgil-]

Please see this thread.

 

[crazedmodder]

The biggest benefit with LEDs is that most of their light is put forward, so you don't need to reflect as much light for it to be usable however you still need to control it.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20070725/136768/
400lm, 5 x 4 chip LEDs per side (one for side, one for foreground and 3 fro distance).

You will need to be able to control the light so that you get a clean cutoff, a lot of intensity forwards and to the sides plus a little flare on the passenger side (driver side is lower to not blind oncoming traffic). You need optics that can take care of all those things. Lexus did it with their beam shaper, normal HID/Halogen projectors use a shaper to block light from going upwards too much.

 

[Jarl]

Another problem with LED's is that little heat is projected out the front, so won't melt ice off the headlamp casings like incans/HID's do.

 

[Lynx_Arc]

check your insurance company to see if you blind someone causing them to get into an accident whether they will pay for their damages using illegal headlamps. You may find yourself with a ticket by the police too, at one time a friend of mine got ticketed for running foglamps and it wasn't cheap.
I recommend you stick with predesigned headlight stuff for safety and liability reasons.

 

[LukeA]

The only concern with LED headlights has been addressed: there are many engineering hours for automotive headlamps that go into making sure the lamps conform to DOT/ECE standards. Those standards are in place for a reason, safety. DIY headlights are a recipe for disaster, and your insurance won't pay out for an accident caused by your use of illegal non-code-compliant headlights.