I'm writing to see if anyone could give their opinion on LED Conversion Kits. From the articles and information online, they require little invasive modification in drilling for of the assembly, so I'm quite interested in them over HID kits.

These are the two that I'm looking to make a decision to purchase..

http://www.opt-7.com/fluxbeam-led-headlights/
http://kensun.com/LED/

They both share the same manufacture in LED - CREE. I suppose the big factor is if they can all fit behind the projector of the lighting assembly before the cap...that and how legal is it, as Kensun describes it as for off-road use. I don't want to blind others on the road.

Worst case scenario is buying either the Philips Crystalvision or X-Treme Vision..

Thanks!

The Opt7 LED kit appears to have an external driver for the bulbs. So to install that kit, it looks like you may need to drill a hole in the dust cap or other part of the headlight assembly. The Kensun kit has the driver built in to the bulb assembly, so you shouldn’t have to drill any holes. One thing you might want to look into is the difference between a driver that is mounted externally vs. one that is part of the bulb assembly. I’d imagine that an externally mounted driver is inherently more reliable since the heat produced isn’t concentrated in one area, but I’m not an expert on these things.

You might want to contact the sellers or manufacturers to find out the distance between the back of the assembly and the mounting base of the bulb. That’ll give you a good idea of whether or not they’ll fit. I hope others can chime in about the beam pattern and lighting effectiveness, as I'm interested in seeing how LED bulbs perform with the factory halogen projectors.

Thanks for the response! I haven't heard from Opt7 but hopefully soon. I'm hoping it would be a possibility to tuck everything in the housing to avoid drilling...if not I may have to just go with Kensun.

It looks like the Opt7 are producing a brighter signal from this other forum comparison: http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/310-7 ... e-led.html

After more digging and reading, both these lights can fail and overheat eventually due to its mechanical fan and makes perfect sense.

It looks like the next candidate for me now are these Putco Nite-Lux LED that are fanless in design and feature a flexible copper woven heatsink and made in America. An installation video that shows that they could fit inside and be covered by the dust boot:

https://youtu.be/QkfLS8Fkxhk?t=4m2s

http://www.putco.com/products.cfm?actio ... 5C1F53E52B

Or wait for these...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHG7hySkGt8

I haven't tried out LEDs in the EX because I didn't want to mess up the AFS...But I have tried LEDs in a couple other cars. Ultimately, I didn't like them because they didn't distribute the light properly and there were dark spots on the road. However, these are new and I am curious to see how they work. I have really liked Morimoto's products. I have their LED fog lights and they are amazing. Plus the retrofit source seems to be pretty reliable in the products they recommend.

https://www.theretrofitsource.com/led-l ... 9A9z1srKHs

Putco has been very responsive and helpful. They recommended their Silver-Lux line (released 2016) and the install is quite good: http://www.putco.com/documents/instruct ... X-INST.pdf

http://www.putco.com/products.cfm?actio ... 8037D1078D

Looks like I'm going to test it and provide updates when I get a chance to order...

I'm checking to see if I'll need the anti-flickering harness or not.

I would advise against enclosing that mesh/cloth heatsink within the housing as shown in that video. They will be almost completely ineffective at dissipating heat. I think you'd want to run them out of a hole. I've never seen a heatsink design like that, and I have a lot of experience in the area.

Teknical wrote:I would advise against enclosing that mesh/cloth heatsink within the housing as shown in that video. They will be almost completely ineffective at dissipating heat. I think you'd want to run them out of a hole. I've never seen a heatsink design like that, and I have a lot of experience in the area.

I understand.. The heat sink mesh is a copper woven fabric attached to an aluminum heat sink body I'm trying to figure out how hot it would get inside there still or if the heat sink design and material fabric dissipates the heat. I found a few scholarly articles. It would be a risk to enclose everything altogether. I suppose the next question is asking if this would void their 2-3 year warranty. :P

http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JTST_2015032414284348.pdf

Further information from Putco:

To answer your question, these bands will be isolated in most applications and it will not be an issue, you just want to make sure that you “fan them out/spread them” as much as possible to dissipate the most amount of heat.

These are rated at 120F with constant use, wiring and OE headlight assemblies are rated at 170F and in most cases our LED runs cooler than most halogen bulbs.

I ended up buying two different fanless LED kits to do some comparisons, since I was feeling extra curious..

--R4 Slim 60W 7200LM LED Car Headlight Philips Chips H11 Bulbs - Released June 22, 2016 (Made in China)
-- Putco 280011 Silver Lux H11/H8 LED Headlight Conversion Kit high-power Philips LumiLEDs with 4000 Lumen - Released January 21, 2016 (Made in USA)

First thoughts: The R4 had high beam chips and rated at a high lumen and has recently been released, so that supposedly meant they would be brighter and (better?) on paper. I'm still wary that they were made in China. The Putco brand has good reputation for making official products for Ford and GM and their online support has been very awesome. R4 were much cheaper and Putco cost about 4-5x than the lights. So, I'll just buy both and compare..

Thoughts on Installation: Straightforward and everything fits well within the housing of the EX35 headlight assembly behind the dust cover.


Results: I decided to aim them a group of mail boxes:

R4 (Sorry a bit blurry)

Putco

The pictures didn't really help much in comparison and the results were received best from driving. The Putco LED were brighter than the R4 and made my transition from the stock much easier. I drove around with the R4 and commuted to work and such and it was difficult to get to used to. I thought maybe the beams were off-target, which could be that they needed to be adjusted. Both lights could be adjusted, so this may affect the tested. I didn't have access to a garage or wall so I wasn't able to calibrate the lights.

In the end, I'm sticking with Putco for my lo-beams. I decided to keep the R4 for high beams, which ended up being good enough. I hardly use my high beams anyways. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my setup.


Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Putco-280011-Sil ... silver-lux

https://www.amazon.com/Racbox-Headlight ... B01HET0586

My next upcoming changes will be the Parking Light Lamp with Philips Xtreme Vision 360 LED 6000K and the fog lights with Super White 6000K 100W LED Samsung 2323 Projector Fog.

I used these for the fog. A ton brighter than just upgrading the bulb.
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/compl ... b-led.html

Eamess wrote:I ended up buying two different fanless LED kits to do some comparisons, since I was feeling extra curious..

--R4 Slim 60W 7200LM LED Car Headlight Philips Chips H11 Bulbs - Released June 22, 2016 (Made in China)
-- Putco 280011 Silver Lux H11/H8 LED Headlight Conversion Kit high-power Philips LumiLEDs with 4000 Lumen - Released January 21, 2016 (Made in USA)

First thoughts: The R4 had high beam chips and rated at a high lumen and has recently been released, so that supposedly meant they would be brighter and (better?) on paper. I'm still wary that they were made in China. The Putco brand has good reputation for making official products for Ford and GM and their online support has been very awesome. R4 were much cheaper and Putco cost about 4-5x than the lights. So, I'll just buy both and compare..

Thoughts on Installation: Straightforward and everything fits well within the housing of the EX35 headlight assembly behind the dust cover.


Results: I decided to aim them a group of mail boxes:

R4 (Sorry a bit blurry)

Putco

The pictures didn't really help much in comparison and the results were received best from driving. The Putco LED were brighter than the R4 and made my transition from the stock much easier. I drove around with the R4 and commuted to work and such and it was difficult to get to used to. I thought maybe the beams were off-target, which could be that they needed to be adjusted. Both lights could be adjusted, so this may affect the tested. I didn't have access to a garage or wall so I wasn't able to calibrate the lights.

In the end, I'm sticking with Putco for my lo-beams. I decided to keep the R4 for high beams, which ended up being good enough. I hardly use my high beams anyways. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my setup.


Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Putco-280011-Sil ... silver-lux

https://www.amazon.com/Racbox-Headlight ... B01HET0586

My next upcoming changes will be the Parking Light Lamp with Philips Xtreme Vision 360 LED 6000K and the fog lights with Super White 6000K 100W LED Samsung 2323 Projector Fog.

Thanks for sharing your experience, and especially for the pics.

jakenbake wrote:I used these for the fog. A ton brighter than just upgrading the bulb.
https://www.theretrofitsource.com/compl ... b-led.html

Any photos? They look nice on the outside. How was the install? Did it require any modifications for it to fit? I'm wondering if it'll be noticeable from the 6000K lights. The warmer toners were bugging me when they were not similar. :P

The color is a bit cooler than the 5000k HID bulbs I have in the headlights...so it would probably not be far off from your 6000k bulbs.

I have one picture that shows the fog light on hand...But I will get some better pics for you this weekend.

Install is easy. Take the chrome bezel around the fog light off by pulling it straight out. Then turn the wheels and pull back the fender liner. There is one screw on the back side of the bumper holding in the fog light. The fog light comes right out from the front side of the bumper. You might have to re-aim the lights using the adjustment screw, but mine were already spot-on without adjustment.

Eamess wrote:Putco has been very responsive and helpful. They recommended their Silver-Lux line (released 2016) and the install is quite good:

Looks like I'm going to test it and provide updates when I get a chance to order...

I'm checking to see if I'll need the anti-flickering harness or not.

Thanks for this post. Did you end up needing the anti-flicker harness?

I haven't tried it without the anti-flicker harness. It came with it and I ended up putting everything into the lighting assembly and closed the it off with the dust cover. I haven't had problems yet (knock on wood).

It may be worth a try as I'm hearing how it may not beed needed.

Thanks for me know.

Eamess wrote:I haven't tried it without the anti-flicker harness. It came with it and I ended up putting everything into the lighting assembly and closed the it off with the dust cover. I haven't had problems yet (knock on wood).

It may be worth a try as I'm hearing how it may not beed needed.

By the way, I installed Morimoto 2Stroke LEDs without anti-flickers and everything seems to work fine. The bulb and driver all fit into the enclosure.

Thanks again for your post.