LED headlights and bulbs

[winterset]

I upgraded my wife's 2002 Chevy Venture with LED headlights. All i can say is wow!! The oem bulbs look like candles compared to these. 6000k color (white) compared to the 4000k (orange!) that the halogen bulbs had. We now have 9000 lumens compared to what seemed like 3000 lumens. The bulbs are 45w which is equal to what the halogens pulled, so the factory wireing was fine. It was a plug and play setup. Only part i am questionable is the bulb has a micro fan on the back, and i am not sure how it will hold up. Other LED bulbs had copper fins to dissipate the heat. If these work out, i will get a set for my Deville.

I did upgrade all my Deville interior lights to white LED, and i plan on doing my cornering lights next week. I tried a few years ago to install LED brake and directional bulbs, but they were not bright enough.

With the brighter bulbs, it makes driving at night possible for me. I just don't know if these bulbs are legal yet for headlights. I just know they are amazing, and so far worth the $48 for the 2 headlight bulbs.

[Cadillac Jim]

There are lower limits for brightness (lumens) for headlights, stoplights, turn signals, CHMSL lights, and probably taillights, and in the past plug-in LED replacements for tungsten 12 Volt bulbs were rarely good enough to meet stoplight/turn signal bulb standards. With the bulbs out there now, that's probably not true anymore. If your new LED headlights are quite noticeably brighter than the standard halogen bulbs, then they will meet the minimum brightness OK. The upper brightness limit is not likely to be a problem.

Your fan-driven air cooling is likely to keep the LED bulbs cooler than convection air cooling (just heat sinks), which may be necessary for the brightness that you are getting and will give you longer life LED bulbs. The fans are going to be designed to be reliable enough not to be the reliability limit on the bulbs themselves, and fans do exist in computer CPU coolers and other applications that have the reliability that you need for headlight bulbs, so I wouldn't worry about that unless you know about fan failures.

After a couple of weeks, come back and give us a user report, and a link to where people can get them.