LED headlights for D1?

glester

Well-known member
Jul 11, 2017
96
3
Seattle
I did some searches and found some options, but wanted to know if anybody has done this and if anybody has recommendations.

Thanks in advance!
 

ERover82

Well-known member
Nov 26, 2011
3,899
450
Darien Gap
https://discoweb.org/showthread.php?t=96925

There are no LEDs that work properly, that look right, or that are legal. There probably never will be. The best you can do is to change the bulbs yearly and upgrade the wiring.

That said, Discovery 1 & 2 have the best stock halogen headlights I've used, likely due to their relatively large effective reflectors.
 

1920SF

Well-known member
Jan 6, 2007
2,705
1
NoVA
The upgraded wiring harness than ERover alludes to is well worth the investment.
 

gimebakmybulits

Well-known member
Dec 11, 2013
1,067
85
Pasadena
https://discoweb.org/showthread.php?t=96925

There are no LEDs that work properly, that look right, or that are legal. There probably never will be. The best you can do is to change the bulbs yearly and upgrade the wiring.

That said, Discovery 1 & 2 have the best stock halogen headlights I've used, likely due to their relatively large effective reflectors.

Which halogen bulbs do you recommend?
 

4Runner

Well-known member
May 24, 2007
660
110
Boise Idaho
I don?t know why people hate LED lights. Yes some people by ones that just throw light everywhere and I hate that as much as anyone else but there are great bulbs out there. If you did a search then you saw the quick pics of the LEDs in Bosch lenses for a classic. Not sure if I would use that set up again. I never posted any of my disco. So here you go. You can make your own decisions. I had my wife drive past me while I was in my truck and a neighbors car and walking down the street so I would know what it was like to see the lights coming at me. I have never had a problem but again you can make your own choice. The harness upgrade does make a difference if you are running halogen bulbs. There is a pic of my low beams and my high beams on my garage door from about 10 ish feet away. Been running them for about 4yrs now. Good luck and I enjoyed my 10yrs in Seattle.
 

robertf

Well-known member
Jan 22, 2006
4,778
354
-
Looks like a divergent beam pattern to me

That last pic is the most telling. Should be much dimmer when viewed at that angle
 

ERover82

Well-known member
Nov 26, 2011
3,899
450
Darien Gap
No LED in a halogen housing can emulate exact filament placement required to produce the correct reflective beam pattern.

RRC, Jeeps, etc with round sealed beams can replace the entire housing/bulb with an led unit, but it still looks stupid.
 

glester

Well-known member
Jul 11, 2017
96
3
Seattle
UPDATE: I bought a set of LED lights off Amazon and it is like night and day! So much brighter. Fit great and I am very impressed.

They are the LASFIT H4 HB2 9003
 

p m

Administrator
Staff member
Apr 19, 2004
15,617
837
58
La Jolla, CA
www.3rj.org
UPDATE: I bought a set of LED lights off Amazon and it is like night and day! So much brighter. Fit great and I am very impressed.

They are the LASFIT H4 HB2 9003

6000K headlights....

I can only repost what I took time to write on nas-row.com:

---------------------------
There's an issue of brightness temperature.
Most bulb manufacturers claim that the Sun is around 6000k, and we're used to that, so the bulb's brightness temperature should be as high as possible.

Now, bear with me for a while. Pardon me if you know all of this from the high school AP physics or elsewhere.

When/wherever there are particles scattering the light, light gets scattered, and depending on average size of the particles, different parts of the spectrum get scattered differently.

For instance, dust particles are much larger than visible light's wavelength, and the light experiences what is called Mie scattering. The fraction of light that gets scattered back doesn't depend on the wavelength and only depends on how large the particles are.

In fog, however, the water droplets are much smaller than the light wavelength, and this is termed Rayleigh scattering. The fraction of light that gets scattered (back and elsewhere) is proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength.

This is the cause of the sky to be blue, and this is the cause of the sun disk color temperature being actually lower (it does look yellowish, doesn't it?).

The ballpark wavelength of the blue color of visible spectrum is 450 nanometers, and the red - about 700. It means that in a fog, the most-reddish components of light will travel about 5.9 times further than blue. Curiously enough, red traffic light will appear red, yellow - somewhat reddish, and green - somewhat yellowish, which has been attributed to the initial choice of colors (that I have not been able to verify).

There are consequences to that:
(a) the light getting back to you from what you want to see on the road will also be scattered differently: the red-most components will propagate about 5.9 times further than blue-most. Between the losses back and fourth, it makes for an astonishing factor of 34 in difference in the amount of light you get back into your eyes.

(b) it gets worse: the glare back from the fog will be heavily biased towards blue part of the spectrum. So the bluer your lights are, the more heavily you are blinded by your own lights, and the less light you get from the objects on the road.

(c) the "other party" watching you from afar will also see more of the red light and less of blue light. It can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

That kind of leads to an obvious observation - that the "old-school" foglights were always amber, on the reddish side of yellow. As you may also know, in France for decades the headlights HAD TO be yellow. But the roads got better and this somehow faded away, and most of today's foglights are a fashion accessory.

To round it up:
LED lights are neither blue nor red, but on average their brightness temperature (and relative fraction of blue) is higher than halogens.
It makes no difference or makes it even better in dusty conditions (desert races), but it makes it a lot worse in fog.
Pick your poison.
--------------------------------
 

glester

Well-known member
Jul 11, 2017
96
3
Seattle
Thanks for the info. Sounds like it is advisable to have fog lights as well...if I'm reading your info correctly.
 

p m

Administrator
Staff member
Apr 19, 2004
15,617
837
58
La Jolla, CA
www.3rj.org
Not entirely.

At night, predominant type of vision is called "scotopic vision" - mainly, we are more sensitive to blue and green light than to yellow and red.

This means better vision for you, and worse blinding the drivers in front of you.

So far, I could not come up with a single reason in favor of high-color temperature headlights. And I am certain that using LED bulbs in housings designed for incandescent bulbs does not help with light pattern a single bit.
 

El Ed

Well-known member
Apr 20, 2004
309
11
San Diego
Not entirely.

At night, predominant type of vision is called "scotopic vision" - mainly, we are more sensitive to blue and green light than to yellow and red.

This means better vision for you, and worse blinding the drivers in front of you.

So far, I could not come up with a single reason in favor of high-color temperature headlights. And I am certain that using LED bulbs in housings designed for incandescent bulbs does not help with light pattern a single bit.

Peter, you hit the nail in the head in your last paragraph...simply replacing with an LED bulb in a light fixture not designed for it, is far from optimal when it comes to projection and dispersement of the beam. Yes, the color of the light will be brighter but it will not necessarily improve how much you light up ahead of you. The JW speakers 7?round in my Defender 110 definitely project significantly more than the stock Lights.
 

jim-00-4.6

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2005
2,037
6
61
Genesee, CO USA
OK, got all that.
Now, since we're on about lights...

Daytime Running Lights.
Not a bad idea, fucked up as usual by lawyers (legislators).
Requirement is lights on front of vehicle at all times.
Great.

Implementation of same by manufacturers also turns on dash lights, especially the electronic dash vehicles.
So what happens?
The fucking stupid cunts think they have automatic lights; there's some light out in front of them, the dash is lit.
But...
The back of the vehicle is DARK.
No fucking lights at all.
Either the asshats who created this mess change the rules to turn on rear lights, or people just stop being so fucking stupid.

Neither of those will happen.
And that doesn't even touch the morons who put the black plastic covers over their taillights...
 

p m

Administrator
Staff member
Apr 19, 2004
15,617
837
58
La Jolla, CA
www.3rj.org
I am willing to be a guinea pig for some testing. Ordered some H4/9003 LED replacement with 3000K color temperature for low beams and 6000K for high beams yesterday, hope to see what comes out of it.
At least, these should answer one concern I have; light pattern is another that will have to be [somewhat subjectively] evaluated.
 

El Ed

Well-known member
Apr 20, 2004
309
11
San Diego
I am willing to be a guinea pig for some testing. Ordered some H4/9003 LED replacement with 3000K color temperature for low beams and 6000K for high beams yesterday, hope to see what comes out of it.
At least, these should answer one concern I have; light pattern is another that will have to be [somewhat subjectively] evaluated.

Peter, what kind of bulbs did you order?