subenviro

New to forum, so excuse the newbie mistakes. Picked up an 06 CTT for short money. Got sideswiped last night by a lunatic weaver doing 100+ mph. Wanted to upgrade my headlights anyway, but now I need to. Only seeing the Spyder LEDs online. I previously replaced my tail lights with the SPPC smoke (one of originals had a crack and condensation). No issues with SPPC. They look great against silver paint. Any thoughts on Spyders and/or alternatives.

Dilberto

Are you willing to trade the Ballast and guts over to the LEDs?

jeff spahn

Stick with the bi-xenon.

J'sWorld

Fricken hate LED headlights. Scatter light everywhere, no focus, blah, should be outlawed. I want to smash all of them.

nodoors

Agreed. I want to smash the lights out of the cars that blind me on the country 2 lane roads at night with that trash. The worst is when you flash thinking they are just on high beams, and then they hit you back with high beams brighter than a thousand suns! It is weird how some people get their kicks. I know they want to see deer, but at the cost of hurting other peoples' eyes it really needs to be stopped! Popo is more concerned with stuff I guess.

These use the factory xenon light bulbs, have similar focus and cutoff to avoid blinding oncoming cars, and use LEDs for the turn signal and incorporate DRL's:

deilenberger

A generalization. Bare LED's - like are used on lots of aftermarket lights sold for "off-road-use-only" certainly will blind you. You're looking directly at the light source with no optics creating a beam.

Correctly designed LED's - like the PIAA ones I have on my motorcycle - which use a computer designed reflector to shape and direct the beam, and do not expose the light source to oncoming traffic - won't blind you.

Lots of people think more is better. In the case of light - more light poorly directed is worse than a smaller amount of light directed where it's needed. Lots of light falling close to the vehicle (as all the bare-LED lights do) - cause your iris to close down and the rods in your eye to retract, meaning your eyes are less sensitive, and that kills your distance vision.

The PIAA lights I have produce a flat-top beam, that can reach about as far as the CTT HID lights do - and they're the ones that self-adjust for conditions/speed. I've seen reflective targets (road signs for instance) - illuminated at about 1/2 mile away with both the PIAA lights and the CTT lights. They're quite effective since the beam is flat, low and travels a long distance.

So - lesson is - hating a technology isn't rational. Hating misapplication of the technology probably is.

FWIW - I have yet to see an "LED" replacement light capsule that works as well as a properly designed HID light with focusing optics (like the Porsche Dynamic Light System). I also haven't driven one of the new Porsches that uses LED sources. I imagine the ones on the upcoming new Cayenne will be pretty damn good.

BTW - the aftermarket "off-road-use-only" lights are "outlawed" in that they are not legal for on-road use.. but most police feel the bother of trying to get someone to remove them via motor-vehicle laws isn't worthwhile. States like NJ - in the interest of "economy" have eliminated inspection for anything on the vehicle except emissions, and then it's only checked if you have an OBD-II port they can plug the computer into and see a big FAIL or PASS on a screen. Some states don't even do that.

knfeparty

a lot of the aftermarket headlights for the 955/957 don't have auto-leveling. So keep that in mind. That's one of the reasons the stock bi-xenons are so expensive.

jeff spahn

moved, sorry.

Dilberto

Cayenne Turbo NEEDS auto-leveling... period.

J'sWorld

Agreed. I guess I havent noticed the well designed led projectors because they work well and dont blind me. From the rear seems to be the worst and I notice more low end vehicles with them. I assume they are cheaper to manufacture and implement. On a side note Im considering retrofitting some Acura TL projectors into the CTT headlights. Last time I opened them to clean I noticed the chrome in the bowl was getting corroded and not so reflective. The TL projectors are one of my all time favorites.

nodoors

MDX headlights are pretty stellar too