Projector based Driving Lights

[lathhomas]

Three questions.
1. Is there any advantage to having a Driving Light with an HID/LED projector unit (similar to those used in auto headlight retrofits), instead of multi LED reflectors found in a typical off-road LED driving light?
2. Are there any commercially available
3. Has anyone built these for their personal use?

 

[John_Galt]

Projector lamps are usually less efficient than reflector based lamps, as so much of the light produced by the source is blocked by the internal shutter mechanism to form the pattern. I suppose a true high-beam or driving light pattern would perform better, but you're still restricting the emission pattern of the reflector bowl by the aspheric lens.

Most multi-reflector lamps with the emitter pointed forward through the cone of the reflector bowl are not going to be as effective at shaping a complex beam pattern as lamps that angle the emitter back towards or perpendicularly to the reflector bowl
They're cheap and easy to make though, and usually allow brute-force methods to make up for the lacl of punch from a low output emitter paired with a small reflector.

There are several co panies that make effective driving lights using side projecting emitters. Cibie has their Oscar LED line, in 5.75", 7" and 9" sizes, which use a pair of LEDs facing a pair of hemispherical reflectors.

I have a pair of 9" LED Super Oscars- they come in two outputs, mine are the lower output version, about 65kcd intensity each. They have a very interesting beam pattern. Up close against a wall, you can see where the two horizontal hotspots overlap, forming the highest intensity portion of the beam, with a pair of different size trapezoidal hotspots surrounding them, the smaller forming the bottom of the beam pattern, with slightly lower intensity than the upper trapezoidal pattern. There is a further, very wide rectangular beam pattern of lesser intensity which illuminates very wide to each side of the roadway. On the road it results in a very visually smooth transition in intensity from very close to the vehicle to the extreme ramge of the beams hotspot.

There are a few companies that make driving lights that use forward facing LEDs, but i stead of reflectors, use TIR optics. Diode dynamics is one. They offer several pods that utilize their standard sized TIRs, with single, dual, quad and 9 emitter lamps in the SS1, SS2, SS3 and SS5 pods respectively. I'm currently running a set of the lower output SS9 pods with selective yellow TIR optics in their driving light beam pattern.

Both here on CPF and on BLF there have been many people who have made different variations of auxiliary driving lights for different purposes, but none in recent memory. Aftermarket lighting has come a long way in the past decade, and you are likely to find a commercially available lamp that will come in under budget for a similarly performing homebrew design. With automotive electronics, the common sticking point seems to be how to drive the LED circuit efficiently from dirty automotive voltages. Newer vehicles have cleaner voltage patterns, but its still difficult to identify drivers that can handle the odd unexpected 48-60v spike for a nominal 12-14.5V circuit.

Edit- I think if I were to try to homebrew a driving light now, I would pick an available optic setup, from say diode dynamics, and then design a bezel and housing around those as a starting point. Ideally running something like the SFT-40 emitter near its max drive currents, to really push the performance envelope from a small emitter count light.

 

[lathhomas]

Thank you John Galt,
Your detailed response has increased my working knowledge of driving light theory. I should have listed the following in my original request.
1. I would like to supplement the HID low beams on my 2006 Lexus LS430. Is there a driving light that has a good low beam pattern, in addition to a high beam pattern for high speed driving on rural highways?
2. Am I better off with HID or LED for these auxiliary driving light applications?
3. What is BLF in your response above?
Thank you,
Thomas in Texas

 

[John_Galt]

Ok, driving lights and auxiliary low beams are two different functions, and should not intermixed.

There used to be a category of lamps intended for use with low beams, that offered a center weighted high intensity hotspot, and a very sharp cutoff for oncoming traffic, with an SAE standard J582 (581 being driving lights, and J583 being fog lamp standards). Hella offered a product called a booster beam, Cibie offered a lamp with a similar name. Sylvania offered an HID unit that looked like a 4x6 reflector fog lamp that had some populatiry with bikers, but I am not sure if any of these are available outside of collectors or random ebay listings. These were true low-beam auxiliary lamps, intended for use in rural areas or at highway traffic speeds where there was too much oncoming traffic for the use of highbeams regardless of the speed of traffic.

I am not aware of any current offerings for a J582 equivalent lamp.

Hella had a 700ff based (if i remember correctly) fog lamp that had a very center weighted hotspot intended tl supplement poor low beams, but function as a fog. I do not know the part number or it its still available.

There was some discussion here several years ago, and our last moderator, who has departed the forum, proffered the advice that the Bosch Compact 100 fog offered a similar beam pattern, with a wide, useful fog pattern with a central hotspot. Iirc his advice was that it could not be considered a true low beam supplementary light, but in certain applications, it had some merit for that role.

Most fog lamps, even current offerings can be very powerful, but they cannot achieve the peak hotspot intensity to truly act as a low beam auxiliary lamp, and the breadth of their beams wpuld cause excessive glare for others in traffic if aimed high enough to provide any useful aid.

However, Morimoto offers a three LED lamp called the "4Banger" (I think a dimension reference) with the osram HXB LED that has a center-weighted beam pattern that has a noteable vertical step in the hotspot of the pattern, and trails off in intensity to the extreme right/left of the beam pattern that is probably the closest to a J582 standard lamp available currently afaik. The nichia LED versions will not have sufficient reach, and the HXB versions are not inexpensive, and I don't know if they offer a mounting bezel for your vehicle. But it's something to look at.

LED v HID is less a problem now from a perfprmance perspective. There are few HID lamps to consider for such an application (a NOS version of the sylvania J582 lamp being the one exception I can think of). LEDs beat out halogen and Especially HID for packaging size and complexity of electronics (many LED lamps don't require a dedicated relay setup to bypass OEM wiring, and don't require additional mounting of external ballasts).

For driving lights intended to augment your High beams, there are many good LED options available that beat out even good Halogen options, and negate the hot restrike/shortened lifespan concerns of an HID auxiliary lamp. And they can be found in small and large pods, and lightbar formats as well.

If your lowbeams are a primary concern, and the exterior lenses of the lamps are in good condition, perhaps the best bang for your buck is to buy new high performance HIDs from Sylvania/Osram or Phillips. The Osram nightbreaker line is available in +200 performsnce ratings now, and Philips has their lines available in +150. There has been some testing on tacomaworld in a headlight application that showed they were extremely close in improved maximum intensity, with the Philips offering a slight lsrger hotspot than the Osram nightbreaker laser offering, and a slightly lower color temperature. I don't have reference links handy directly to the testing, but I can provide a link to the thread and give a rough page estimate.

 

[John_Galt]

I wanted to provide some more links to what I was talking about with the aux. Low beam lamps.

Here is a thread from several years ago about the sylvania lamp offering, the xenarc x1010 model lamp.

Sylvania Xenarc X1010 Questions

I understand the now scarce Xenarc X1010 was the only HID auxiliary low beam. n Was the X1010 ONLY an aux low, or are there fog driving versions out there? Knowing this will be a big help, since eBay descriptions are less than exact. I've been thinking that if I can find a set, they might...

www.candlepowerforums.com

Basic summary- the x1010 lamp was decent, perfprmed better with a higher performsnce bulb, however, -Virgil- (formerly scheinwerfermann, our subforums native moderator) quips that picking up a set of Hella 50mm or 90mm xenon units would result in better performance and build quality than the x1010's.

In more recent lowbeam discussion threads, -Virgil- had frequently dismissed the halogen 50mm units. I don't recall seeing a listing from hella offering the 50mm as an HID lamp, however in asking about them in the past the salesmen (sp take it with a massive truckload of salt) have told me the 50mm lowbeam units perform significantly better with a 9005-based HID unit. I'm not going to suggest that. -Virgil- had more recently taken to recommending hellas new reflector based 90mm LED units, stating they performed better than the earlier generation 90mm LED lowbeam units which use a projector type lens. I believe he was referencing this unit:

HELLA 90 mm LED Headlamp Module R80

Check out the deal on HELLA 90 mm LED Headlamp Module R80 at rallylights

www.rallylights.com

Don't take the iso-plots as ground truth. Virgils usual response about those were that they were usually not representative, not useful for comparison.

 

[yellow]

My last car, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta had "bi-xenon" lights.
Means: (GREAT!!) HID projector low + high beams
(beam opening switching from low to high)
+ a pair of additional halogen H7s, that came on additionnaly with the high beam.
To put it short: it did not matter much if there were the halogens, they barely added anything.

Point of the story:
adding anything (halogen) to the Lexus' lights might not give much benefit, if any.
Could be same with other light source.

Changing the HID projectors of the car?
Apart from cost, is this even possible?


Ps: I once read a car test, where the Giuliettas lights were considered the 2nd best overall. Winner were the ones of a Mercedes (that had 4 HID procectors).
If that really is a must and original HIDs can be exchanged with the Alfa Romeo ones - that were my Route.
--> dunno it that is doable, as well as legal.

 

[John_Galt]

Swapping projectors has usually been very discouraged in this forum.

Ultimately, your vehicles headlamps are self certified by the OEM (or aftermarket replacement parts manufacturer) that they meet relevant legal regulation/law. Changing a major part of the assembly is going to automatically void this certification. Keep that in mind if your jurisdiction has inspections.

Replacing uaually requires pulling the lens, which can cause damage to it, and can compromise the housing and affect the weather resistance even when sealed back up.

There are companies that offer various replacement projectors, even "OEM" units such as the rx350. If you're going to attempt this, go for one of these. The Mini/H1 based hid projectors, while cheap, are not well made and don't perform well (a sharp cutoff is not the indicator for a quality lamp). In place of these, Hellas offerings of their 50/60/90mm standard size projectors are quite good. Virgil used to sing the praises of the 90mm bi-xenon unit. Some units are low beam only, some offer both low and high. The biggest issue is always mounting. The rx350 projectors can be mounted the same way in at least *some* oem headlamps in place of the oem projector, but I am not the one to ask which might possibly be compatible.

Now, replacing the headlamp assembly entirely, with an OEM part is recommended if there is damage to the projector bowl (e.g. you can see the internal reflective coating flaking or burned if you inspect it after removing the burner) or the lens is shot is recommended.

If the lenses are in good shape, and the reflector bowl does not appear burned or flaking its reflective coating, the next thong to look at is your burners. Again, both Philips and Osram/Sylvania offer very high performance fully compliant HID burners. Their difference in performance vs a standard burner is worth considering.


I would not discount the performance of some halogen, and more importantly LED aftermarket lamps.

While modders here at CPF can certainly squeeze more performance from the LEDs of many aftermarket lamps, I can point you towards several good selections.

Diode dynamics SSC2/3/5 lamps with the driving lens optic is a very good lamp.

I have a pair of the SS3 Sport (lowest output model) which originally came with the selective yellow fog lamps lens, which I have played around with various combinstions of driving, fog and spot optics in different mounting positions across several vehicles. Despite being the lowest output of the SS3 lamps, they add noticeable reach and beam width when paired with the high beams on my tacoma, which came with the OEM LED headlamps which are excellent lamps.

I now have a pair of SS5 Sports, which are just mind blowingly bright. I recently drove across the midwest, a large portion of that at night. On the i70 in corridor through Kansas, a pair of them was reaching out ahead of me easily a half mile, and lighting up 3-400 yards wide at that distance. I felt bad for every oncoming vehicle that broke over the crest of a hill, but saw several deer far enough out to slow down and avoid them crossing the highway.

Morimotos HXB 4bangers have an interesting beam psttern. I want to pick up a set to compare them in person, but there is testing available I can point you to.

 

[lathhomas]

All the info above is exceptionally educational.
My 2006 Lexus LS430 has the original HID projector low beams that turn with the steering wheel. My high beams are Toshiba HIR1 Halogen bulbs from Daniel Stern Lighting. I did not want to touch the stock headlights. I prefer to add auxiliary lights with both low beam and high beam to mount below the bumper, to supplement the existing lighting.

Under the assumption that projector units outperform reflector units, I had considered modifying two halogen reflector driving light housings with two HID projectors/LED projectors. Giving me the desired low/high beams desired. I have not been able to find a low/high beam driving light, much less one that utilizes the performance of a projector unit.

Or is there an LED reflector unit that offers me what I am seeking?
Thomas in Round Rock, Texas

 

[Fuzzywuzzies]

All the info above is exceptionally educational.
My 2006 Lexus LS430 has the original HID projector low beams that turn with the steering wheel. My high beams are Toshiba HIR1 Halogen bulbs from Daniel Stern Lighting. I did not want to touch the stock headlights. I prefer to add auxiliary lights with both low beam and high beam to mount below the bumper, to supplement the existing lighting.

Under the assumption that projector units outperform reflector units, I had considered modifying two halogen reflector driving light housings with two HID projectors/LED projectors. Giving me the desired low/high beams desired. I have not been able to find a low/high beam driving light, much less one that utilizes the performance of a projector unit.

Or is there an LED reflector unit that offers me what I am seeking?
Thomas in Round Rock, Texas

Absolutely agreed!!

The Hella range is exceptional. Look into the above-mentioned Hella R80, or Hella P60s. The P60 module is available as a high/low beam combination unit, and are very well regarded.

 

[John_Galt]

Mounting lamps below the bumper, even in the bumper opening for airflow across the radiator is going to be much too low. Even a "good" lamp will flood the foreground with excessive light, restricting your distance vision. Is there any way you could mount these higher, closer to the height of the headlamps? There are aftermarket universal-fit type lightbar mounts that use front license plate mounts, but they will, admittedly, look goody on the front of your sedan.

 

[lathhomas]

I do have one of the license plate bars, but I'm always willing to look at other options. I do want the lights to be higher. I definitely do not want to block any airflow. He will give me much to contemplate, and I will do so….