9012 Bulb LED conversion? Is it worth it?

Joined
Sep 10, 2005
Messages
1,867
Location
Erie, PA

Looking at the $89 dollar offereing. I am not happy with the short lifespan of the 9012 sylvania / phillips bulbs in my 2013 taurus. It tried using the cheap chinese $13.99 LED bulbs off ebay and they are terrible. They are simply not bright enough. The headlamps have projectors in them so LEDs should kinda be plug and play.

Will these fluxbeams be a good upgrade over the traditional halogen?
 
I did upgrade to LED in my golf and it made a huge difference in visibility at night.
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They rate those at only 60CRI, which is pretty awful. It’ll make everything look washed out which was my biggest gripe and large part of the reason I removed my LED’s and went back to halogens. Not to mention glare if you don’t have projector headlights.
 
Hate to be the oncoming cars you run across...

LED's in a halogen housing are absolutely terrible. You're going to have the same result with the cheap or expensive bulbs.

Will that pass the PA safety inspection?

It won't pass the VA safety inspection, if the inspector notices.
 
Will that pass the PA safety inspection?

It won't pass the VA safety inspection, if the inspector notices.

Depends on your shop. I had LED bulbs in the headlights (quickly removed as they were terrible) and fog lights on my old Tacoma and they didn't even bat an eye. The shop I tried to use that's local to my new house threw a fit over just my license plate cover.
 
While I had the battery removed, I finally had the chance to pitch the LED headlamps that were in the Legend. While the lighting was much improved over the 9004 bulbs (candles would have been an improvement), the LED's were just not a good thing.
  • Poor connectors had to be zip tied to keep them together.
  • Light projected all over the place.
  • Cooling fans produced a lot of radio static.
  • One developed a flicker.
  • High beam indicator wouldn't illuminate (figure that one out).
I am now happily free of every retro-fit LED headlamp.
 
I replaced the halogen lamps on my 2011 Silverado truck this spring. I purchased Beamtech from Amazon and these lamps are awesome. As good or better than HID.

 
I put a HID kit in my '16 Equinox that has projectors on the low beams. Same beam pattern as halogen as the HID have the same 360 deg. light output as a halogen bulb and not the directional output of the LED. Better, brighter even light and the same vertical cutoff as the halogen bulbs.
Chinese kit has been in for 90k miles now, no issues. I've messed with LED's in vehicles and powersports headlights and none of them have the ''claimed'' output or matching beam quality of a filament bulb in a filament bulb designed housing. Whiter light looking at them is not the same as putting enough down the road, so it reflects back for you to see what's out there. 5-6 Kelvin rating at the most. Anything higher towards the blue spectrum gets absorbed by brown trees and will not reflect back to your eyes.
HID in my '11 Tahoe also, housings have a built-in metal glare shield so no glare and focused beam pattern.
My '20 Traverse has factory LED headlights, whiter and OK on the lows but weak on the high beams, they don't have the down road range of regular halogens. Wish I could upgrade them.
 
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