Thread: RRC Headlight Switch?

Originally Posted by PhilipA

[COLOR=#333333]F

Even if you fit LEDs, it's a good idea to put in a harness, and its all plug and play.
Funny, I have 3harnesses sitting in my D2, one OEM, one relay, and one for HID, yet here I am back at 130/100H4 after trying LED and HID.

I do not like LED or HID on wet roads as to me it's like no headlights as the high Kelvin seems to reflect much more , and both on a D2 have dark patches so I am once again back on H4 and not so absolutely dazzled by road signs which is also a problem with high Kelvin..

Next when I feel flush (if ever) I might try 7inch round LED headlight units.
Regards PhilipA

If you buy the "proper adr compliant" LED projector units there is no beam scatter, the kelvin temp is good and believe me, you will hardly ever use your driving lights again - the high beam on them and the spread is that good.

I've had mine in for years now and I'll never go back.
If I sell the car, I'll pull the buggers out and fit the hella H4 super inserts I bought before I purchased the LED's.

IMG_6256.jpg

Those additional driving lights are literally only required on the most remote off-road trips, because the high beams are more than powerful enough.

I fitted the yellow covers to the main (lower) driving lights and use them as fog lights when offroad, or around here where the escarpment fog rolls in thick and heavy in the middle of the day.

Originally Posted by Mercguy

If you buy the "proper adr compliant" LED projector units there is no beam scatter, the kelvin temp is good and believe me, you will hardly ever use your driving lights again - the high beam on them and the spread is that good.

I've had mine in for years now and I'll never go back.
If I sell the car, I'll pull the buggers out and fit the hella H4 super inserts I bought before I purchased the LED's.

IMG_6256.jpg

Those additional driving lights are literally only required on the most remote off-road trips, because the high beams are more than powerful enough.

I fitted the yellow covers to the main (lower) driving lights and use them as fog lights when offroad, or around here where the escarpment fog rolls in thick and heavy in the middle of the day.

I've been looking for some good LED lights, what ones are you using?

Cheers,
rob

Originally Posted by RMMMM

I've been looking for some good LED lights, what ones are you using?

Cheers,
rob

Hi Rob,

The LED lights are all from ashdown-ingram (now called NAPA I believe - all subsidaries of Exego) under the Great Whites brand.

https://www.greatwhites.com.au

cheapest price I could find online:
Great Whites 7 LED Sealed Beam High/Low Headlight Insert with Park Light"

Other than Narva or JW Speaker these are the only brand I'd bother with.

JW 8700evo2's are about 1400 bucks a set, and don't have the full ring light for DRL/parking lights (which are actually bright on the Great whites)
The narva one:
Narva |
7" INCH HI/LO/DRL LED INSERT 9-33V
Narva 72104 7 HI/LO/DRL LED Insert 9-33V | Automotive Superstore - $549 ea.


The 7" High/low projectors have a DRL ring / parkers, then low and high beam.
Aesthetically I prefer them to the narvas and JW, despite the chrome 'look'.
It doesn't detract from the vehicle in the flesh, which is something I always try to maintain.
The high beam is not excessively narrow, like the speakers nor is it too wide that it doesn't throw long enough. I believe JW speaker have changed their headlights now so that their high beam is a combined high and low beam, unlike the GW's and Narvas which have separate dedicated lenses for high and low (and can be combined with a specific relay if required)

When I had the narva superH4 heavy duty inserts and 90/130W globes, I found I needed the 18LED driving lights on as well for highway work (it was the reason I purchased them, because I was unhappy with the superH4 reflectors and the huge current draw of the halogen globes), and I had the 9LED's as a 'wide throw' for illuminating the road shoulders when offroad on gravel roads etc.

Basically I no longer use the 9LED round pair (on the top of the bullbar) for anything once I bought the 7" LED's. initially I used to have them set up with yellow fog lens covers, but Over the last 7 years the covers got UV damage and I bought new ones just before xmas, and put the yellow ones on the lower mounted 18LED pair, and fitted a clear cover set to the upper mounted 9LED pair, which are simply sitting on the bar doing nothing now.... more or less.

Basically only ever use the 18LED's with the high beam as remote gravel road driving at night and usually take the covers off, but found taking covers off to be unnecessary, and the yellow cover does a good job of not startling wildlife as much. I did have blue tinted covers which were really good for keeping bugs off and they do seem to reduce glare a little, but compared to the clear covers, I'd say probably anecdotal and not easily proven. Those gen2 round LED's are still very expensive, I wouldn't recommend them unless you had cash to splurge. I got mine at trade prices for obvious reasons.

The one reason I buy the GW's is because they use proper graded CREE LED's and they are properly warranted here. So getting replacements never been an issue - I did have my first set of 9LED units replaced under warranty after 3 years - and subsequently found out that they were pre-production units sent for testing - and they were supposed to be returned after 12 months for a production pair..... In fact there are some stories I can tell you about the first unit, which I fitted to my Ducati monster as a main headlight..... never had issues seeing anything..... But the guys at HQ were sent some pics and it sure opened their eyes a bit..

The biggest issue you will have in trying to get good 7" round projectors is Price and availability. The Great Whites I found to be better than the JW Speaker evo 2's and about 60% of the cost of JW Speakers.
The Narva lights were not available when I purchased the Great Whites, and knowing Narva, their product will be good, expensive, but not as bright.

I almost exclusively used Narva branded products until I bought the first set of LED driving lights, Those 9LED Great whites have seen service on 3 cars and a motorcycle - and they have really been abused and used and yet there is not a scratch oon the polycarbonate lens, but I have to say the 9 LED housing has an issue with the powdercoating coming off - mainly due to overzealous use of CT18 on it many years ago, until I realized that stuff is pretty nasty on alloy and powdercoated stuff.
The gen 2 18LED driving lights have not suffered any issues at all and are far better mounted and much stronger and stable. They are more than overkill. If I had my time over, I'd buy just those and the LED headlamp replacements and be done..... Except I don't have a picture of the alloy roof rack on the vehicle, which has an additional Light bar on it, a product that Great Whites no longer sell - because it was far too expensive for the market, and they currently do not offer a product with the same long range throw or lumen output.
It's a guineapig product I tested for 2 years, before returning it, upon which they supplied an upgraded unit, with a backlight. It has 21 ultra-long throw reflectors 15000 effective lumens (about 24K raw)and is no longer made. I don't believe they make any lightbar with that much output - probably because of the wiring requirement and current handling. It needs it's own dedicated 20A circuit, and the cable run in my application is long, so the wiring is quite heavy (2B&S, a bit of overkill)

If you have any doubts as to how to run your cable, measure the cable run length, give yourself a 5A overhead on the fuse for the cable max rating on that length. Then combine however many circuits (individually fused) to meet that feed line.
https://www.oex.com.au/wp-content/up...ue-2017-LR.pdf

Here's the grat whites catalogue.Attachment 176796

I'm not shilling for them, but I've used their products and ended up testing some things for them thanks to some friendly staff at Ashdown's HQ in sydney at the time.
The products have proven to be reliable and not give any grief whatsoever and they aren;t the cheapest, but they've been excellent value for money and I'd happily recommend them to anyone as a sound purchase.

Do shop around though - because you never know how retailers work these days.

good luck.

cheers,
Joe

Thanks Joe for the detailed response and recommendations. I'll start doing some research.

Cheers,
rob

Originally Posted by PhilipA

[COLOR=#333333]F

Even if you fit LEDs, it's a good idea to put in a harness, and its all plug and play.
Funny, I have 3harnesses sitting in my D2, one OEM, one relay, and one for HID, yet here I am back at 130/100H4 after trying LED and HID.

I do not like LED or HID on wet roads as to me it's like no headlights as the high Kelvin seems to reflect much more , and both on a D2 have dark patches so I am once again back on H4 and not so absolutely dazzled by road signs which is also a problem with high Kelvin..

Next when I feel flush (if ever) I might try 7inch round LED headlight units.
Regards PhilipA

IMHO, anything above 4,000K is Not Comfortable. Vaguely recall a set of LED globes being '3800K' and being as blue as my fussy eyes tolerate.
You're correct. Bluer = Stupidly bright roadsigns.

If the k colour figure is accurate in the ads 4 to 4300 is the limit, based on my experience with HID's. You lose depth of field the bluer it gets and the white on roadsigns is tiresome.

That's why skiing sunglasses have a slight yellow tint.

5k is beyond white and into the blue.

cheers, DL

Replace the RRC headlight switch with a Defender dome light switch. Both are 3 position. It's a direct swap. I also like Rigid/Trucklite LED headlamps. They pull only 6 amps together when on high beam/low beam together.

Originally Posted by 350RRC

If the k colour figure is accurate in the ads 4 to 4300 is the limit, based on my experience with HID's. You lose depth of field the bluer it gets and the white on roadsigns is tiresome.

That's why skiing sunglasses have a slight yellow tint.

5k is beyond white and into the blue.

cheers, DL

It's also very necessary to point out that both the HID and LED globes are primarily designed to be encapsulated within a projector housing arrangement and not a reflector arrangement, and this greatly affects the intensity, as well as the spillover / beam scatter.

Projector HID/LED's don't have any issues with roadsigns at night, unlike reflector type retrofit globes.

HID's inserts are in exactly the same boat, and if anything are far worse than the LED's when it comes to beam scatter in reflector housings - which is why there are so many horrible supercrap auto retrofits out there which are not in anyway useful.

There are many ways to upgrade the lumen output of the headlights, but there aren't as many correct ways to go about it.

retrofitting HID or LED globes to an existing reflector housing is not the correct way, but people do it because they either don't know any better or they see it as a cheap mod or upgrade.

Doing it properly isn't cheap, but then doing it correctly also won't blind oncoming divers, potentially causing a collision, nor does it cause unwanted beam scatter, which can cause the driver night-blindness and fatigue.

Another thing that is often neglected is actually setting the beam throw to comply with ADR's / legal requirements. 'Back in the day...' people would deliberately adjust the reflectors so they aimed a little higher, so the high beam throw was a little better. When you think about the old sealed beam units, they weren't much better than candles, and that yellow light wasn't all that bad, there just wasn't enough of it. With HID or LED's there is no need to do that, because the intensity of the light is far stronger than the old sealed beam jobs. If you left them high, you'd blind oncoming drivers.

If you have an LED light bar or driving lights that are too far into the blue end of the colour temperature spectrum for you and reflect too much light off road signs, then buy some yellow acrylic / polycarbonate transparent lens covers and that will alleviate some of the reflective intensity, but it won't do anything for beam scatter or light throw.

I guess the French weren't as stupid as people made them out to be. As far as I'm concerned, they were far more intelligent with regards to the nighttime sensitivity of human vision.

Most of the reputable manufacturers market the covers as fog lamp lens covers. Worth investigating if they are available before you consider purchasing driving lamps as well - because if the covers aren't available and you go bush and get the bare lens sandblasted with rocks or stonechips, they're just as toast as an old H4 glass lens.

Covers are every bit as important as the fitting.