LED headlight upgrade completed
 

I just finished installing LED replacement headlights into my 951S and thought I'd put up a little review. These headlights are pretty new to the market and made by GE. They are sold under both the GE "Nighthawk" brand and Truck-lite. They are a little expensive at about $200 per bulb.

Install
Replacement is dead simple. It's as easy as changing a regular bulb with no rewiring or anything. You just pop out the sealed beam unit and plug in the LED unit with no fiddling. The harness connects up and the retaining ring holds the bulb in perfectly. I wanted to retain the pop-up headlights, while improving lighting and getting something a little more unique for my car.

Performance
They are definitely brighter than the stock halogen and the pattern of light they throw is much more contained. The cutoff is fantastic; mine will need some adjustment to line the right and left to match. Unfortunately it's the middle of winter and I can't get any pictures in the wild yet, nor can I comment of how they do under driving conditions yet. The top half of the bulb is the low beam setting and the bottom half is the high beam.

Pictures
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...213_150206.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-W...213_150307.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-f...213_150228.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q...213_150443.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-c...213_150451.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-c...213_150459.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C...213_150543.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-g...213_151602.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-W...213_151622.jpg

Verrrry Interesting. Are they the same irritating blue lights I see on the highway or just bright white?

They are close to 5600K color temperature... so daylight color. My garage is painted blueish, so that might make it look more blue than it really is. They should not be annoying to other drivers because the cutoff is so good. I'd say it's even sharper than my E46 M3 projector headlights.

Nice work! I wonder what'd be involved in something like that for the 968...

If the 968 uses 7" sealed beam halogen bulbs, it should be a plug and play.

I would like to see action shots of these, at night whenever possible.
What wattage are these? With my full headlight setup I am using about 40 amps so being able to cut back while still seeing would be nice.

Those are usually people with drop-in HIDs that just buy the bulbs, and not the projectors. Genius.... :banghead:

You're going to have to wait till spring for action shots, it's still -10°C here in Edmonton. There are a bunch of action shots from Jeeps that are using these. I'm not sure how they will compare because of the difference in height off the ground. As far as wattage, this is what the GE FAQ says "The GE LED Headlamps produces a similar amount of light to 55 watt halogen product however, because LEDs are more efficient, the LED Headlamp uses less power."

I second this!

I like.

imo LED will be the ONLY option in few years. Very long life, excellent performance, lighter and low power consumption will drive this. Too expensive for now but the price will drop rapidly in a couple of years.

Yeah, it was a bit of a gamble. The local guys were having a discussion about headlight options and I volunteered to be the guinea pig on this one. I like the look of these ones better than most of the CGT conversions and "quad headlights" etc. that I've seen. The biggest surprise was that the bulbs actually are noticeably heavier than the sealed beam halogens they replaced.

Very cool! I think I may order a set myself fairly soon. For what it's worth, I found them as Truck-Lites for $370 on eBay.

So the top half is the low beam and the bottom half is for high beam?

These are cool but I'm disappointed that they don't have more output. A set of e codes with 90/130w bulbs likely still out does these. That said I'm interested to see beam shots. Thanks for the heads up on these.