LED Headlights?

In the six years I've had my '97 VFR, I've gone thru 10+ headlight bulbs. I've tried OEM's, Sylvanias, and even off-road heavy duty replacements without luck. A friend suggested LED's. So I've ordered these, they're the highest wattage (100) I can find without them having huge heat sinks attached. Has anyone tried LED's and are they legal?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100W-Bright...ash=item33afcbd115:g:sFIAAOSwSdZWgJxx&vxp=mtr

 

I have a Cyclops Motorsports 3800 lumen LED in my VTR1000F. Awesome light output, no complaints from oncoming vehicles, however I have a connector issue which means the built-in cooling fan is not always on so I am waiting on a warranty response. I doubt that is a common fault however, the rest of the light looks very robust. I don't know about legality, but the bike sailed through the required 6 monthly fitness check by a government-approved agency which checks lighting among other items.

 

The ones I ordered are only 1800 lumen each. May not be bright enough. We'll see...

 

Hopefully they got this wrong in the specification description

Also would you not be putting your reg/rec under more load as the current draw will be less meaning it will need to create more heat shunting the unused current ? or have you upgraded this part of the bikes charging system



Specifications:

Application(Not Bright Enough for Car Headlight): High Beam , Low Beam , Daytime Running Lights , Foglights , Signal , Turn , Brake or Parking Lights ,etc

 

Those aren't going to be nearly bright enough. And I doubt that a generic $8 Chinese bulb will be the answer to your quest for reliability...

I have the Philips LED's from xenondepot.com. They're 3200 lumens each and the heatsink is just a few loops of flat, braided metal ribbon. So the sink material can conform to any space and has no mechanical parts to fail. They're around $120 per pair.

 

Kinda figured they'd be too low output, looked too good to be true. I figured the cause of incandescent bulb failures was due to vibration and LEDs would be more robust. I'll take a look at the higher output LEDs. And Grumpy, wouldn't lowering the current draw lessen the load on the R/R making it run cooler?

 

Grumpy is correct about the function of the R/R, when the current drain is lower, the R/R has to shed more energy in the form of heat.

I have the LED bulb in my VTR, which has a really crusty looking R/R of uncertain parentage. It works so I don't touch it!

 

I went to their site and couldn't find any 3200 lumen LEDs. I found 2500 lumen (nothing to sneeze at), can you tell me if I am just not seeing that product. Maybe they were HIDs?

 

Yeah, 2500 is correct. My apologies.
Either way, they're plenty bright and well made. Plenty of light on the road, and nobody can pretend that they don't see you coming
Mind you, I have a 6th gen, so they just replace my low beams. I'm not sure how they'll work on a 4th gen with shared low/high beams.

 

Underoath, is there a reason that you didn't upgrade your h7 high beam bulbs? Or now that you've seen that the low beams work well you'll be doing your H7's? The PO of my 07 had installed HID's low's and high's and I ended up replacing the high's with Sylvania Silver Star Ultras because of the long warm up time of the HID's. The HID's were useless for flash to pass or if needed to let on coming traffic know that that I only had my low beams on. The Silver Star bulbs are good, but they pale compared to the HID low beams.

 

From the link above, is a link to this page: http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-dist...LED-3157-3156-Bulbs-/10000000178945699/g.html

 

The low beams provide plenty of light, so I barely ever use my high beams and thus can't justify the cost. Damn it, now you've got me thinking about it...

 

I put LED's in from OPT7 http://www.opt-7.com/motorcycle. They work great and are super bright.

 

My suggestion is to only buy H4 style LED bulbs with a shroud in front and above the low beam emitter (at the forward end of the bulb); these mimic the shroud that you'll see on an incandescent H4 bulb that stops the low beam filament being seen directly from the front and causing glare. Some of the cheaper/earlier LED bulbs don't have this shroud.

Like this:

Or this:

 

I have installed them on my gen 5 and they are fantastic. I do some night riding so as we appreciate a good spread of light is required.
I selected the same wattage as the OEM halogens so no effect on the electrics
The are much crisper in the focus and 4 times brighter.
No oncoming drivers have flashed me so I assume the aiming is good. I don't get signs reflecting back either.
I think the low beam is awesome and the high beam is good. I guess at the end of the day they aren't 4WD spotlights!
If I were buying again I'd get a higher high beam wattage but same low beam.
However (there's always a however), the unit I got of E bay (V8 brand) have a cooling fan and it's been trouble since day dot.
I have replacement a light coming FOC from the seller as one the fan on the H4's started squealing nearly as soon as installed.
My plan is to take the headlight out (again) and try a drop off the correct oil on the fan bearings.
I like them so much I'll buy more fans and change them in or another set (different brand) if they fail.
There's many type on Ebay. I selected the same as mentioned above with the CREE LED on the side, as per the OEM halogens.
There's some really poor looking deigns with a cluster of LED's like a corm cob. I haven't tried them but can't see how they would give a focused light.
Mark.

 

I just installed a cree type leds in my 91 and chose 3200/4500 lumens with a 30/40w power consumption. i also order the shims to fit in the headlight housing for this old girl. It still had the stock bulbs. the led's made a big difference in lighting the road. I got them from amazon.

 

The 2014 uses them, I do not know the wattage.

 

55w projection