Do yall consider your ride(s) as an extension of your

[Dave9]

I was comparing non-DOT approved LED retrofits to what comes stock on many modern cars that certainly then is DOT-approved and asking the question - what is the difference? I get blinded by these legal/OE/DOT-approved lights all the time but that's ok? But my LED retrofits that don't blind a soul are illegal. Just a discussion topic and asking a good question.

NO. You are making a mistake pretending they don't blind a soul, unless they are dimmer than the factory lights since the beam pattern is worse so the only way they couldn't be more blinding is if the result is worse vision for you too.

It is not a matter of someone else defending the difference. What is the difference of me working to earn a living and robbing a bank? I earned the bank robber proceeds right? No. The difference is very clear. It's not at all a good question in this day and age where it is all over the internet that led retrofits do not cast the right beam pattern in incan housings.

The difference is that engineers make the factory headlight housings to take into account the beam pattern and brightness that escapes into the other lane as well as the height in the same lane.

If you can't see using stock light type, you should not drive at night or the problem is the housing has degraded from lens hazing. This is common and a reason to fix the housing instead of selecting a retrofit bulb that casts a wider, and usually bluer beam trying to compensate.

 

[TiGeo]

NO. You are making a mistake pretending they don't blind a soul, unless they are dimmer than the factory lights since the beam pattern is worse so the only way they couldn't be more blinding is if the result is worse vision for you too.

It is not a matter of someone else defending the difference. What is the difference of me working to earn a living and robbing a bank? I earned the bank robber proceeds right? No. The difference is very clear. It's not at all a good question in this day and age where it is all over the internet that led retrofits do not cast the right beam pattern in incan housings.

The difference is that engineers make the factory headlight housings to take into account the beam pattern and brightness that escapes into the other lane as well as the height in the same lane.

If you can't see using stock light type, you should not drive at night or the problem is the housing has degraded from lens hazing. This is common and a reason to fix the housing instead of selecting a retrofit bulb that casts a wider, and usually bluer beam trying to compensate.

I enjoy light discussions b/c most of the time the folks that are upset about it haven't ever had the lights in question but go off of crappy experiences of people putting cheap HID and LED kits in their reflectors throwing light everywhere and then equate that to all retrofits which is getting to be less and less in 2020 as the kits have gotten pretty good vs. 10 years ago when this was an issue with just about all of them. You have zero experience with them would be take based on your comments that I have to scatter light/blind folks to get them work adequately which is 100% wrong. I have done extensive testing on my LED retrofits and I can tell you, again, in my car lower to the ground, nobody is getting blinded by light scatter. I've had my son drive behind me and approach me while I was in both a car and SUV...they are fine. I've never been flashed to-date but you know what I have been flashed in repeatedly? My VW Atlas with factory LEDs...which BTW are in reflector-style housings (not projectors...but to be fair in this discussion they are for-purpose reflectors). My LED kit projects well and have been designed w/r to the diode to mimic the location of the halogen bulb's filament and work with the VW housings which is really the key. Are they 100% the same? No of course not. Here is a good example - which one is blinding everyone? Before I had my LED kit I had the Osram Nightbreaker Laser upgraded halogen bulbs...they work well but not as well as the LEDs.

 

[MCompact]

Oh come on MCompact, you haven’t lived until you’ve squealed the tires on an old Jeep around some twisty-turnies (on pavement)

I have actually. It's fun to keep up with a much quicker vehicle driven by a woefully inept operator("driver" is far to generous a description).

 

[Dave9]

I enjoy light discussions b/c most of the time the folks that are upset about it haven't ever had the lights in question but go off of crappy experiences of people putting cheap HID and LED kits in their reflectors throwing light everywhere and then equate that to all retrofits which is getting to be less and less in 2020 as the kits have gotten pretty good vs. 10 years ago when this was an issue with just about all of them.

If you enjoy it, that can only be because you deliberately ignore facts and instead fancy a delusion.

You just don't get it. There is absolutely nothing in 2020 that is different than 2019, 2018, 2017, etc. LEDs are still individual spot points of light instead of a single near-360' radiation pattern that the incan housing/reflector was designed for. There is NOTHING that can be done to fix this, there is no LED that can operate in this pattern, and this is why automobile manufacturers don't just toss an LED retrofit bulb into an incan housing when their vehicle has both the incan and led headlight options. Think HARD about that. They don't redesign the housing on a whim, on the contrary they'd love to reuse the same housing if that were reasonable.

Now about your silly concept of nobody complaining, I want to know what you consider reasonable and I don't mean to let you know, rather to cause you (force you) to stop using them. Are there magic words that will do the trick before it comes to just destroying them? I want to see those magic words because one way or the other, people are becoming intolerant of this nonsense. If you can't see at night then you don't drive, instead of blinding other people. Saying you know better and it doesn't, makes zero difference, as if you think you have special magic words that dispel reality.

There is no way to use LED retrofits to improve your night vision without increasing the blinding glare to other drivers. You'd need a MORE focused beam to avoid the additional high and wide scatter, while use of an incan housing causes a less focused beam. Like it or not, science aka facts prove you wrong. The housing has to be designed for the type of bulb in it.

 

[Leo99]

I have actually. It's fun to keep up with a much quicker vehicle driven by a woefully inept operator("driver" is far to generous a description).

I've had some fun with Porsches and BMWs in my 4cyl Camry. The BMW drivers were scared to pull 0.01 g. I did need to manually shift in order to keep up with the Porsches. The highlight of my 50 mile trip to the office was an 8 mile stretch of curvy country road. Irritated me when I got stuck behind a slowpoke in a sports car.

 

[TiGeo]

If you enjoy it, that can only be because you deliberately ignore facts and instead fancy a delusion.

You just don't get it. There is absolutely nothing in 2020 that is different than 2019, 2018, 2017, etc. LEDs are still individual spot points of light instead of a single near-360' radiation pattern that the incan housing/reflector was designed for. There is NOTHING that can be done to fix this, there is no LED that can operate in this pattern, and this is why automobile manufacturers don't just toss an LED retrofit bulb into an incan housing when their vehicle has both the incan and led headlight options. Think HARD about that. They don't redesign the housing on a whim, on the contrary they'd love to reuse the same housing if that were reasonable.

Now about your silly concept of nobody complaining, I want to know what you consider reasonable and I don't mean to let you know, rather to cause you (force you) to stop using them. Are there magic words that will do the trick before it comes to just destroying them? I want to see those magic words because one way or the other, people are becoming intolerant of this nonsense. If you can't see at night then you don't drive, instead of blinding other people.

I agree with your first points w/r to the LEDs - and as I said above, I understand they can never be perfect for the reasons you state - mine emit from 2 sides (3/9 o'clock) vs. 360. Here's a nice review that goes into a bit of detail of the kit I use:



I spend a lot of time on the road driving, probably about 25K a year and have for the last 15 years...lot of that is during dark hours during the winter/non-DST. I understand how lights work, done the homework/research and have driven many different vehicles with many different lighting systems. My experience and testing tells me that what I have it not causing glare to other drivers...how hard is the concept for you to understand? I mean I literally have tested it in the real world as I said above b/c I was concerned about it - from the front and back. You didn't comment on the pic I posted b/c you presumably don't like the result - the oem stock LED lights on the right side in my Atlas are causing far more blinding/glare issues than the LED retrofit on the left but that doesn't work for your black/white narrative that it's impossible to have high-quality LED retrofits that don't cause drama so you ignore it. I get blinded by vehicles like my Atlas all the time - so much so that I installed an auto-dimming mirror which has taken care of it for me. Have the last word.

 

[Dave9]

I agree with your first points w/r to the LEDs - and as I said above, I understand they can never be perfect for the reasons you state - mine emit from 2 sides (3/9 o'clock) vs. 360. Here's a nice review that goes into a bit of detail of the kit I use:

You didn't comment on the pic I posted b/c you presumably don't like the result - the oem stock LED lights on the right side in my Atlas are causing far more blinding/glare issues than the LED retrofit on the left but that doesn't work for your black/white narrative that it's impossible to have high-quality LED retrofits that don't cause drama so you ignore it.

I didn't comment on the pic because you're trying to make excuses with it. It's not acceptable to just claim you blind people less than someone else that's also causing a problem. It's like saying it is okay to rob a bank if I stole less money than some other bank robber, lol.

It IS impossible to have LED retrofits that improve your vision driving without blinding other drivers to whatever extent they help you see, because of three factors.

1) The housing is not designed for multi-point, spot points of light.
2) The light is almost always a colder color temperature.
3) There is more light so even if the beam pattern were exactly the same as incan and color temperature too, that is still more high and wide light scatter. Did it not even dawn on you that this is why even with incan bulbs there is a wattage limit?

The funny thing is that you think it's a "high quality" issue. There is no quality factor at all. The highest quality "perfect" LED bulbs cannot fix this. A housing designed for them can.

 

[TiGeo]

I didn't comment on the pic because you're trying to make excuses with it. It's not acceptable to just claim you blind people less than someone else that's also causing a problem. It's like saying it is okay to rob a bank if I stole less money than some other bank robber, lol.

It IS impossible to have LED retrofits that improve your vision driving without blinding other drivers to whatever extent they help you see, because of three factors.

1) The housing is not designed for multi-point, spot points of light.
2) The light is almost always a colder color temperature.
3) There is more light so even if the beam pattern were exactly the same as incan and color temperature too, that is still more high and wide light scatter. Did it not even dawn on you that this is why even with incan bulbs there is a wattage limit?

The funny thing is that you think it's a "high quality" issue. There is no quality factor at all. The highest quality "perfect" LED bulbs cannot fix this. A housing designed for them can.

So again I ask you, are you ok with my Atlas's headlights b/c they are OE and DOT-approved regardless of the outcome w/r to how it pisses you off while you drive? This isn't "robbing a bank for less money" b/c it's not robbing a bank at all - it's perfectly legal to drive my Atlas with these lights and that was the comparison I was trying to draw. In your example, we are both robbing the bank so both doing some illegal. The part you struggle with is simply that my car's LED retrofit doesn't spill/glare or cause issues but you don't think that's possible or believe that based on zero experience with them in the real world it seems beyond getting blinded by folks running ****ty HID or LED kits.

I use the term "High-quality" meaning LED bulbs with diodes in the best orientation possible. Have you seen some of the cheapies that cause all of this drama and have caused folks like you to have your opinion? They have a stalk with diodes up and down all 4 sides....which is why they cause the bad glare/light throw. HID kits are the worst but even some of those have come around to have shielded bulbs to help out with the glare. I have done the comparison in the real world - you are just regurgitating the same tired crap that folks like you always do in this discussion. I could post pictures/video showing my results but it wouldn't matter. This discussion typically has one party that hasn't actually ever tried or tested these kits and the other that has experience with them.

 

[MCompact]

I've had some fun with Porsches and BMWs in my 4cyl Camry. The BMW drivers were scared to pull 0.01 g. I did need to manually shift in order to keep up with the Porsches. The highlight of my 50 mile trip to the office was an 8 mile stretch of curvy country road. Irritated me when I got stuck behind a slowpoke in a sports car.

I had a 2001 X5 4.6is press loaner for a couple of weeks right after that model was introduced. One day I worried a Boxster to no end on a winding rural two lane. It could also blow off Brodozers at will.

 

[Gene K]

Certainly the passenger vehicle I drive is a reflection of my life. It reflects on my vocation and hobbies. If I had a different vocation and different hobbies I would have a different vehicle.

 

[Al]

Probably.. I like good engineering, the ability to go in almost any weather condition, and I'm cheap.
Subaru

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

Cheapness/intellect? Yes, sort of. All my vehicles are old but cared for.

 

[otis24]

Cars are an appliance, just like a toaster. Something to get you from point A to point B!

 

[Skippy722]

Cars are an appliance, just like a toaster. Something to get you from point A to point B!

Kind of wish I had this mentality, but I’m glad I don’t.

 

[Tahoe4Life]

After awhile some people actually look like their vehicle if they keep it long enough. One friend looks just like his 2007 Crown Vic and one looks just like his 2010 CRV.

 

[MCompact]

Kind of wish I had this mentality, but I’m glad I don’t.

I'm eternally thankful I don't have that mentality; I would have missed out on so many wonderful experiences.

 

[2EHA]

I wouldn’t say my car is an extension of my personality because it’ll be gone the next day for something else. Been there done that with pretty much everything.

 

[ARB1977]

Just take care of them and drive them.