While searching for Cree 10W driving lights, I noticed a lot of LED headlight bulbs. My question is if anyone had replaced their old headlight bulb with an LED version? If so, what is your experience and what did you purchase?

I picked up a 30w LED h4 today, ordered it on eBay a few weeks ago. I was after putting some in the car and found them great. I checked this one in the car this morning because its easy to do, much less fiddly than getting at the bike bulb. Anyway it works ona reduced wattage for low beam rather than. Different filament. On full beam its dazzling. I plan to out the bulb in tomorrow morning and will be riding in dark tomorrow evening so will be able to report back. The think I found is that H1 and H7 LED bulbs must through light out the sides to use the reflectors properly. You also get H1 and H7 bulbs designed for projector lights and they put most of their light out the front of the bulb.

My other choice is relay and wiring so I can instal 160W H4 bulb. Incidentally the car is 1995 and I bought new headlights forst as the reflectors were dull and that made a big difference.

More later!

When installing a 160W bulb, keep an eye on the reflector....
a 160W bulb would also produce a lot of heat.

Kalamityboy,
I bought some 10W LED's from China recently, well at less than £1 each, post free, it's no great loss if I don't use them.
Driving them from my variable power supply, I found that 300mA gave quite brilliant light and pushing it up to 1A made them, guessing, only about 20% brighter. I suppose it's like maximum speed, you need twice as much power to go just a bit faster.

From this, I then bought some 300mA constant current LED drivers, also from China at 80p each!, and mounted 4 LED's on a heat sink to fit into the K headlight.



The box includes a relay to switch off the LED's when on dipped beam and the box would be mounted on the fairing frame behind the headlamp unit.
There's no way my camera could cope for a picture with them illuminated.

My existing pilot light LED's are still very effective, 48 'old hat' LED's predating SMD's, so I'm not sure when, or if, I'll get around to using these..............but you have to do something with all this time now camping has finished for this year.

Paul.

Looks very interesting. DO you have the ebay links for the LEDs and the driver?

A rather old (seldom) headlight housing you got there , Paul...
I think they changed to black housing late -84.

Not original Inge, I painted it white to go on the outfit at some time! My solo has an original silver one though.

Bikerboy here's the link for the drivers:-

http://www.tmart.com/300mA-HWM0301-LED-Driver-for-MR16-Light-AC-DC-6-18V_p214545.html

And the led's

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10W-20W-30W-50W-100W-High-Power-Super-Bright-Light-Lamp-LED-Chip-Cool-Warm-White-/300945277884?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Components_Supplies_ET&var=&hash=item8bbb31c3fc

The led's seem to have gone up to £1.29, but you may find 10 for £9.99, as I did, somewhere on their site.

Paul.

sidecar paul wrote:Not original Inge, I painted it white to go on the outfit at some time! My solo has an original silver one though.

Thanks, I also did remember the very early ones as silver....but start to be in doubt about remembering
correct when I did see the white one............well done, looks like brand new.

Thanks for the links Paul. The driver spec says that it runs 3 1watt LEDs for an MR16, which I know is a 12 volt light. Is it still reliable with a single 10 watt LED?
If that is the case then I will need a few to make the old RS look like a Christmas tree  

Very Inspirational Paul. Sadly my electrical skills are not up to this. Or to say this another way "what is a variable power supply?"

I am more of a plug and play type of person so was looking for an off the shelf solution.

Thanks for the detailed and insertional response.  

nice job paul

youll have to take a pic of them illuminating something for us

Bikerboy,
I don't know what the long term reliability will be like as yet, I've only run them for a few hours in my workshop, but as the drivers will only deliver 300mA, the LED will not be running at 10W.
I've just been and measured the voltage across the LED, after the driver which has 12v input, as 10v; so at 300mA that would be 3W.
Even so, a 3W LED is pretty powerful.

Kalamityboy,
I made my variable power supply many years ago when I was the mechanics of an electronics department. All it is, is a transformer, some circuitry, an ammeter and a voltmeter. A knob on the front winds up the voltage from 0 to 15volts, with a maximum current of 5 amps. It's a very useful bit of kit when playing with electrics.



Yes Charlie, I'll see if I can get some sort of pic.

Paul.

still that would be a lot of light paul ...4 x 3 watts of led light   dang !! sunglasses please  

Check out truck-lite LED headlights / headlamps.  I had one for awhile on my other bike and it was awesome.  It was literally daytime in from of my bike.  I believe truck-lite does also make a square LED headlight.

http://www.truck-lite.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10001&categoryId=10326&langId=-1

sidecar paul wrote:Kalamityboy,
I bought some 10W LED's from China recently, well at less than £1 each, post free, it's no great loss if I don't use them.
Driving them from my variable power supply, I found that 300mA gave quite brilliant light and pushing it up to 1A made them, guessing, only about 20% brighter. I suppose it's like maximum speed, you need twice as much power to go just a bit faster.

From this, I then bought some 300mA constant current LED drivers, also from China at 80p each!, and mounted 4 LED's on a heat sink to fit into the K headlight.



The box includes a relay to switch off the LED's when on dipped beam and the box would be mounted on the fairing frame behind the headlamp unit.
There's no way my camera could cope for a picture with them illuminated.

My existing pilot light LED's are still very effective, 48 'old hat' LED's predating SMD's, so I'm not sure when, or if, I'll get around to using these..............but you have to do something with all this time now camping has finished for this year.

Paul.

Interesting, I bought about ten of those a while back along with a 12V to 9v 2A converter in a block - it now makes two of those LEDS run as reverse lights on my ute. Jeez it looks rough but I have had a gutful of reverse light issues, and the biggest one I had after this was the wires falling off the switch in the gearbox again. A friend guesses that the light output is about that of a 50W bulb, but it's not especially well focused or long distance.
They will run up to 12V input but heat control is the big issue, led's this bright need a heatsink and current control for longevity.