News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

derekrosemean

There are plenty of good sealed beam LEDs from reputable, American companies such as JW Speaker, Peterson, and Truck-Lite. Sample catalog below:

https://www.jwspeaker.com/products/categories/headlights/

I hope you chose something from one of the aforementioned companies. The aftermarket clones are just that...poor-quality clones.

Anyway, being able to see wet pavement and puddles is almost irrelevant. Wet road surfaces are good specular surfaces, which means that light from your headlights is bounced away from the car. Dry road surfaces, on the other hand, scatter light in every direction, and as a result, dry roads appear to be better lit than wet roads. However, simple physics dictates that the amount of light hitting a road surface doesn't change just because someone poured a few gallons of water onto the road. The amount of light hitting the road surface is a property intrinsic to the headlamp.

And really, there's way too much emphasis placed on how bright a wet road appears to a driver. Last time I checked, most obstacles (deer, pedestrians, disabled vehicles) were above the road even when the road is wet. The amount of light that is reflected off something above a wet road wouldn't change much whether the road is soaking wet or bone dry. And it's the light that is reflected off an obstacle that's important in perceiving those obstacles (well, that, and the contrast of the obstacle).

Luminosity has dethroned "xenon" as the most abused word in automotive lighting parlance.

Luminosity is a term best left for astronomers and not people who deal with automotive lighting.

Luminosity has units of Joules/second and is the measure of all the electromagnetic radiation emitted by something. This is obviously more relevant to something like, the Sun, which emits significant amounts of not only IR radiation but also visible light and UV radiation.

Luminosity has 0 relevance to automotive lighting because last time I checked, the human eye is unable to perceive IR radiation. We don't drive at night with the aid of IR radiation.

Unfortunately, this simple fact has been lost on the people who attempt to sound smart when pushing their latest and greatest illegal HIDs/LEDs and projector retrofit kits.

It's very common, and very fallacious to think that projectors are automatically upgrades over reflectors.

It's also very common, and very fallacious to think that a cutoff is the be-all, end-all of a good beam pattern and headlamp performance.

The reason people buy "bright" LEDs is they fail to realize that improving headlamp performance doesn't mean throwing random aftermarket parts at the headlamp.

The art of car diagnostics has been lost upon the younger generation. Cars come equipped with long-life halogen bulbs; a mere glance at the bulb you pull out a new car will clue you into that fact, because the bulb will have "LL" (long life) or "L+" (life plus) or "L" (life) printed on it. Long life bulbs trade off luminance and brightness for life. The logical upgrade would be getting a bulb that performs the opposite tradeoff--not throwing questionable aftermarket parts at the car and then, without any knowledge or testing equipment, self-certifying that the car still meets federal safety standards.

https://imgur.com/Ju1g1eo