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Installed a set in my 987.2 and am not impressed. Lots of light scatter above the cut off. Haven't been on the road, but looking at the pattern on the wall I don't think these are going to be an improvement over halogen.
Interesting. I'm not seeing that. How do you have the capsules aligned? I drove with them tonight - but it was a rainy night - and wet pavement soaks up light making it look much darker.. Have to wait for a dry evening.
Here is how mine are aligned:
Just curious how yours are aligned.. I can say I'd prefer a warmer color than 6K. 4.5K or 5K would be great.
Interesting. I'm not seeing that. How do you have the capsules aligned? I drove with them tonight - but it was a rainy night - and wet pavement soaks up light making it look much darker.. Have to wait for a dry evening.
Here is how mine are aligned:
Just curious how yours are aligned.. I can say I'd prefer a warmer color than 6K. 4.5K or 5K would be great.
Mine are the same. Do your housings have the projector looking lenses? Mine do.
Mine are the same. Do your housings have the projector looking lenses? Mine do.
Yes - although there is a lot of confusing chit-chat on various lighting vendor sites about "Clear lens" - etc. And different focal lengths (and diameters) - dunno what all that's about.
Installed the Hikari LEDs in my Cayman last night. I am disappointed with results. They are definitely brighter than halogens, but as eagle1960 observed the light is scattered. I am going to try to play with bulb alignment to see if it makes any difference.
Easy install, no errors or flickering, which is a big plus, but so far no real improvement in performance.
Installed the Hikari LEDs in my Cayman last night. I am disappointed with results. They are definitely brighter than halogens, but as eagle1960 observed the light is scattered. I am going to try to play with bulb alignment to see if it makes any difference.
Easy install, no errors or flickering, which is a big plus, but so far no real improvement in performance.
I'd be interested in hearing how playing with the alignment works out. I was thinking this might be a PITA having to remove, align then reinstall the housing in the car to try it out, when I realized it would be simple to just hookup my old motorcycle battery that sits on a tender (forever) to the plug on the LED. Housing doesn't have to be in the car to see the effect of rotation. Work just as well on a bench projected to the inside of my garage door.
I'm committed to stuff this weekend so I won't get to it - perhaps midweek next week. If you get any results - please let us know.
Oh - something else - I find it curious that there is no alignment mechanism for the projector. It looks as if part of the motorized mechanism is there, but without the motors it's pretty much useless. I'll have to look in AllDataDIY and see if there are any hints how to align the halogen headlights.
Other things I've since learned - there are LOTS of 4300K LED bulbs on eBay - thing is trying to pick the right ones. They generally are around $10/pair. Some of them have 3 faces with LED's on them, probably giving a better approximation of the 360 degree light pattern from an incandescent filament bulb. Would it be perfect? Probably not - since the filament has a very small diameter (and long length) - while they can approximate the length with the LED's - the three mounting surfaces mean the light sources are at a different position than the filament would be. How much difference does this make? Dunno without setting up a test station. It may not be a really critical factor - since as mentioned the filament is a narrow diameter, but the light radiating from it expands 2x^2 with the distance from it, so if the LED sources are wider and at the correct distance - the effect in the reflector might be the same. If that's all confusing, yeah, I used to do this sort of thing (mostly lasers actually) for a living back when lasers and LED's were a new thing (think late 1960's-mid 1980's). Anyway, since these are also available at 4300K, my preferred color (about the color of an HID factory capsule) - spending $10 to find out if they'd work isn't out of the question.
Sometime we can go into why I'd prefer 4300K vs 6000K. There is a reason and it has to do with the light (color) sensitivity of the human eye and different brightness light sources.
Possibly order some tomorrow.. oh - that's already today.
Last edited by deilenberger; 10-13-2019 at 02:02 AM.
Reason: (Just went back and corrected my color numbers - the "K" should be capitalized. It means Kelvin - named after Lord Kelvin.)
I had some time to play around with the headlights today. Was able to rotate the bulb to point the leds to 3 and 9 o’clock positions as advised in the posts above. It made a significant difference! Seems this is the optimal positioning for Hikari bulbs, as it maximizes the amount of light emitted through the projectors.
I had some time to play around with the headlights today. Was able to rotate the bulb to point the leds to 3 and 9 o’clock positions as advised in the posts above. It made a significant difference! Seems this is the optimal positioning for Hikari bulbs, as it maximizes the amount of light emitted through the projectors.
Here are some photos.
Which photo is which?
It would be very interesting to see photos of the headlights with the bulbs rotated to different positions - projected on a blank wall (or garage door) in a dark location (back when I was trying out different motorcycle lighting, I used a local graveyard that had a long straight road lined with tombstones - it was easy to see the difference in reach - how far the light projected - by seeing which tombstones were lit up, And there are no streetlights in a graveyard, but I digress..). The amount of light isn't a big complaint although it doesn't appear to be much more than the stock halogen bulb - the problem people noticed was too much light above the cutoff, which will cause glare and you'll have people flashing headlights at you.
BTW - found out how to align the height of the beam - it's done by moving the base the lights mount on. The AllDataDIY is pretty complete in explaining how. There is basically a builtin tilt mechanism that can be adjusted with the headlight in the mounting bracket on the car.
I have a 05 987 with HID headlamps, i did not do the conversion they where already there when i bought the car. If you would like i can take out my HL assemblies and take pictures of what they look like assembled and when replacing bulbs. I did recently change out bulbs when one burned out and i paid $100 a piece for the 2 bulbs, but they are worth it. At night on high i can see everything inwhat seems like a 1 mile radius. I will see if i can take a good picture of what im talking about for those who have not experienced the HID lamps on a vehicle before.... i let a friend drive it one night and the very first thing he said was omg i love you head lights. But i might be able to do the comparison photos.
Thanks for the info here so far - I did the low beam H7 and like it so far, who has done the high beam? Is it even possible to get in there without a major headlamp housing dismantle project?
Also - what has anyone done to upgrade the driving / fog lamp bulbs?
10-09-2019, 11:11 PM
thought I was in the Cayenne forum for a second!
