H3 LED bulbs?

[blueka]

I'm thinking about changing out the rather dim H3 bulbs in my roof and spots and as there's no room for HID ballasts, I thought, why not go down the LED route...

Has anyone ever used them? I'm thinking of the style pictured

Si

 

[Anime]

Avoid those 'LED' bulbs. And 'HID' bulbs in halogen housings.


An H3 bulb has a really small, precise filament in it.

This is a simplified diagram of how bulbs with filaments work with the reflectors in automotive lamps, from headlights to fog and driving lights:

The 'point source' (yellow dot) is the tiny filament in the bulb. The reflector (blue curve) in that assembly is designed to work with the tiny filament to spread out the light to maximize output (black arrows) as the 'beam' the reflector projects.


Now, think about what happens to the beam if, instead of a halogen H3 bulb with a precise filament, you stuck in that 'LED' monstrosity with 26 cheap-o 'LEDs' that are not even facing the reflector, but are pointing up, down, left, right, and forward.


There isn't an LED bulb on the planet that is a plug-in replacement that will come anywhere near a 55W halogen bulb in terms of light output in an assembly designed for a H3 bulb. The same goes for 'HID' bulbs, too.

If you want LED lighting, you need LED bulbs in an LED lamp. If you want HID lighting, you need HID 'bulbs' in a lamp designed for HID.

Maybe one day they will make retrofit LED bulbs for halogen lamps that work well, but they don't yet make them, and even if they did, they probably wouldn't need to market them as cheap gimmicky 'upgrades'. The bulb pictured is just 26 cheap, dim, junk 'LEDs' that have been stuck to a cheap H3 bulb base. They might be okay if the desired effect is to see what two small candles burning in the lamps would look like.

 

[DjDom]

He summed it up pretty well. ^

Also, LEDs, currently, are no where near the brightness of a halogen bulb.

The only place you can really swap in an LED is your tail lights, since they aren't as picky about the precise location of a filament, since they aren't necessarily high output lights in the back.

 

[Anime]

There ARE LEDs that, in an assembly designed for it, work effectively as headlights or even the 'light bars' for off-road. These are not cheap, however, and they work only as an entire assembly.

You can get 'plug in' LED assemblies for tail lamps, as you say, because they bypass the use of the reflector, but also get away with it in creative ways.

 

[DjDom]

The one you posted wouldn't work in an explorer's tail light.

Honestly, you can use a plug and play in the rear.
I was thinking about swapping to LEDs for my reverse lights. The Cree 5w LEDs are much brighter.