H4 LED Headlights? | GTAMotorcycle.com

H4 LED Headlights?

Jayell

Jayell

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Does anyone know any information or have any experience with these LED H4 headlights? https://www.kapscomoto.com/product_p/ddl-h4.htm The price seems too good to be true. Are they really plug and play?

Thanks.

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Jeebus that is a good price for this side of the pond.

I ordered these a few days ago from China:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/181848304574?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Many more individual LED's on the one I ordered, 80 watts vs only 15 watts on that one, however.

I watched a ton of demo/test YouTube videos on the H4 retrofit bulbs before deciding on the ones I found on eBay. Seems the consensus on the LED conversions is that they don't have as nice of a cutoff as a halogen, and some of the decent low-end ones (like the ones I purchased) are just as good as many of the far more expensive ones.

I'll report back when they arrive and I get out for a few evening rides for those interested in the ones I bought.
 
It's hard to separate the good from the bad, and wild claims abound. But, the lack of any sort of heat sink on those is cause for concern. The light output of LEDs drops off as their temperature goes up, and it seems that a number of the sellers of these are claiming light output based on the initial moment when the power is switched on, not what the light output stabilizes at after the temperature equalizes.

The good LED products seem to have gotten a lot better in the last couple of years. The old stuff that doesn't work so well is still on sale ...

I have LED bulbs in three vehicles at the moment.

The FZR400 has an older (couple years ago) generation of LED H4 bulbs in it and there are two of them; these are replacing the stock dim 35-watt bulbs that were so bad that you might as well just light a couple of candles in front of the bike, so just about anything would be an improvement. The beam pattern isn't very good ... but it wasn't very good when it was stock, either. The older LED projects a relatively narrow beam to the front of the bike. If this were a single-headlight bike, it wouldn't be wide enough to illuminate the roadside. Fortunately, having two of them means I can set the horizontal aim separately, so that's what I've done. It is good in terms of brightness compared to the dim stock halogen bulbs, not great in terms of beam pattern but it wasn't great with the stock halogens either, there's no magic involved.

I just bought an H4 from http://dynamicinno.ca/ at the January bike show and just installed it (on another bike that uses a single H4, to replace a HID that had a very poor beam pattern AND was failing after a couple of years). In the shop, beam pattern seems OK. Haven't tried it on the road at night yet. The nice thing about this one is that it leaves the low beam lighting elements on when you select high beam. Stock H4 halogens don't do that, and the older-style H4 on the Fizzer doesn't do that, it's strictly one or the other.

In my car ... I have LED replacements for the fog lamps which look much like the ones linked to in the ebay ad in the previous post. No external heat sinks. It is a different bulb style (H11 with only a single beam, not hi/lo) but the working part looks the same. These are not even remotely close to the equal of the OEM halogen fog lamp bulbs in terms of light output. Oh well, what do you expect for 20 bucks from China. I don't use fog lamps much (never had a car with them before) so this doesn't trouble me much. But I also put in LED replacements for the headlights (9012) ... and they have heat sinks ... but they do not perform as well as the stock halogens. Beam pattern is OK, it just doesn't project enough light far enough down the road.

By all means post up what your findings are. If they turn out to be good, I might replace the older-type LEDs in the Fizzer.
 
The last post above mine was a simul-posting. Don't buy those. It only CLAIMS 800 lumens of light output (and I'd wager it will be less in reality). Same as what was claimed for the cheap fog lamp bulbs that I bought. This will not be enough. You don't always get what you pay for, but you certainly don't get what you don't pay for.

LEDs around the outside of a housing will not produce the same beam pattern as a central filament inside a bulb. An H4 halogen bulb has a shield around part of the filament to guide where the light is directed towards the reflector. The LEDs need to have some way of emulating that in order to even have a remote hope of having a beam pattern that is somewhere close to what it should be.
 
Brian P said:
It's hard to separate the good from the bad, and wild claims abound.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%.

The reason I settled with the one I listed is because it's a Cree, which is a reputable brand. Of course, being China, it could very well be a knockoff of a Cree, but at least the dynamics of the light should be decent (given the layout and number of LED's) even if the actual LED's themselves are a little bit lower quality or something. The YouTube reviews I could find of this style had them on-par with much more expensive options which yielded basically the same amount of light and same pattern.

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Jay, I'd agree, don't buy those ones. I've bought a LOT of LED bulbs in various designs and styles over the years and the ones with those big single square LED's (vs smaller ones but in higher numbers) have almost always been of low quality. I have a bunch of that style in 1157 that I planned to use for my horse trailer a few years ago and they were junk - there was so little difference between tail light and stop light that they would have been unsafe. I bought some 1156 (single contact/brightness) in the same batch to use for the interior lighting in the trailer and I discovered that they were super voltage sensitive as well - the old wiring and long wire runs in the trailer meant that there was only about 10v getting to the sockets...and they refused to work.

As for the lack of heatsinks on these H4's we're posting, well, yes...a concern, but if the output drops as they heat up my thinking is that they'll still be WAY better than the current candles in there no matter what. My concern with the bulbs with the big heat sinks and fans etc etc wouldn't fit in the headlight enclosures on our bikes - haven't dug into the enclosures on either yet (Haven't had reason to) but I didn't want to buy bulbs that wouldn't work in the end.
 
Brian P said:
It's hard to separate the good from the bad, and wild claims abound. But, the lack of any sort of heat sink on those is cause for concern. The light output of LEDs drops off as their temperature goes up, and it seems that a number of the sellers of these are claiming light output based on the initial moment when the power is switched on, not what the light output stabilizes at after the temperature equalizes.
Click to expand...

This.

Check out the heat dissipation required on an OE Prius unit. I remember years back when Audi first showed up at LeMans with LED headlamps and the talk about the incredibly large cooling system required to make them work at such high output... Now, you should look up Audi's next potential market innovation. Laserlight.

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Don't waste your money. Led bulbs will not match halogen bulbs in halogen headlights, not hid in halogen headlights. They do not provide any Hotspot or width, both of which make up a quality headlight.
But but but oems are doing it you'll say.
No, oems are designing complete projectors around the led CHIP not replaceable bulb, with massive heat sinks.
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You'll also notice the huge amount of forground in both those pics, which focuses your eyes really close, instead of a bright hot spot which focuses your eyesight in the distance, where you want to be looking.

I'd go on a huge tangent, but only on my phone right now.
Source: I own gtaretrofits.com, headlights is my game.
 
I agree that retrofitting any non-halogen bulb in a halogen enclosure is less than ideal (and I'm the first to get ****** at the lousy HID conversions), but in the case of single headlight bikes I have seen some pretty impressive results with LED's. Two of my riding buddies have LED conversions on their bikes and their lights are incredibly better than mine.

I just can't see any halogen bulb coming close and that's the desire for me to switch.
 
Again, it looks impressive when looking at it, but line up 25 feet from a wall, and you'll see the same results as the pictures I posted with all the forground you don't want.
 
I rode several thousand K with the one guy last summer and even when he was in formation behind me his bulb was lighting MY way better than my own headlight.

I'm going to try it out either way, can't hurt for the price in the end. If they suck I'll look for a halogen solution again, but they just don't compare in lumens which is the main reason I want something different/better.
 
Find out exactly what he had. The older/garbage LEDs are as described (may still be better than oem if oem was garbage, as in my case), some newer ones are a lot better.
 
Hyperion said:
Don't waste your money. Led bulbs will not match halogen bulbs in halogen headlights, not hid in halogen headlights. They do not provide any Hotspot or width, both of which make up a quality headlight.
But but but oems are doing it you'll say.
No, oems are designing complete projectors around the led CHIP not replaceable bulb, with massive heat sinks.
52e75c6528d874371015ff32d4d9edd0.jpg
37ac481e7d74ac18f4730138186c32db.jpg


You'll also notice the huge amount of forground in both those pics, which focuses your eyes really close, instead of a bright hot spot which focuses your eyesight in the distance, where you want to be looking.

I'd go on a huge tangent, but only on my phone right now.
Source: I own gtaretrofits.com, headlights is my game.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Do you include these in your non-recommendation? https://www.cyclopsadventuresports.com/7000-Lumen-H4-LED-Headlight-Bulb_p_169.html

I tried a cheap eBay H4 LED 3 years ago, was absolute garbage, worse than the generic halogen that was in my bike at the time. Threw both of them in the trash and bought a simple Sylvania Xtravision halogen, which is great and relatively cheap.
 
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Re the bulb in post #1: It does not seem plausible that this puts out 4000 lumens from a single LED element (for a bulb that is meant to have a high and low beam emanating from "filaments" that are in different locations inside the bulb??) while using only 15 watts and not needing a heat sink. AND it's too cheap to be good, which is a close relative of too good to be true. But feel free to try it and report back ... not much to lose at that price.

Re all of the bulbs that claim to be replacements for H4 and which have a metal housing with LEDs around the full perimeter and on the end (post #2, post #3): I just went downstairs and took a look at a normal halogen H4 bulb. The low beam filament has a little reflector/partial enclosure inside the bulb that stops light from coming out of that half of the bulb. The light is only supposed to come out of one side when it is on low beam. Not the other side, not all the way around the perimeter, not out the end. The bulb in post #1 has this aspect right ... I just don't see how they get high beam out of it.
 
LEDs provide a very bright intense light but they just don't have the throw/distance of halogens or proper HIDs.... at least not yet.
So when you stand in front of them you're like "wow this are crazy bright" but walk some distance away and you will be like "oh....nevermind"

Add to that, I wouldn't want LED headlights on a car in a Canadian climate. The bulbs themselves don't produce any heat so when it snows it doesn't melt the snow and ice off the lens like halogens or HIDs would.

I was told ( I cannot confirm this story but I would see no reason to lie) by a guy I worked with that worked for Traffic at the time.... The first winter after they started to install LED Traffic lights they all got covered in snow and had to have crews go out and clear them as the bulbs didn't melt the snow off them like normal.
 
JamJam said:
LEDs provide a very bright intense light but they just don't have the throw/distance of halogens or proper HIDs.... at least not yet.
So when you stand in front of them you're like "wow this are crazy bright" but walk some distance away and you will be like "oh....nevermind"

Add to that, I wouldn't want LED headlights on a car in a Canadian climate. The bulbs themselves don't produce any heat so when it snows it doesn't melt the snow and ice off the lens like halogens or HIDs would.

I was told ( I cannot confirm this story but I would see no reason to lie) by a guy I worked with that worked for Traffic at the time.... The first winter after they started to install LED Traffic lights they all got covered in snow and had to have crews go out and clear them as the bulbs didn't melt the snow off them like normal.
Click to expand...

Here's the tractor I was operating the day of the ice storm.

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Those are factory LED headlights. MOST of the lights on it are LED for that matter, both inside and out.

Yes, the LED headlights heat up and have no issue melting snow and ice. As you can see in the pic it was not nice the day this photo was taken but the headlights were clear and were actually actively melting show off them that had slid onto then when I stopped at this customer.

It was *incredible* driving this tractor at night - the lights were just so staggeringly better vs anything I had ever operated before, and I've been in the industry for decades.

Yes, there is a real issue with LED tail lights and clearance lights collecting snow and not melting however this is being dealt with by most manufacturers by adjusting mounting setups - instead of being recessed like they used to be they are now typically mounted in such a fashion/location that wind blows them clean as the vehicle is operating.

And yes, LED traffic lights do present problems in some areas where blowing snow is common, but they figured out a solution.
 
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