Who's running LED headlights in the Northeast?

[patsfan]

Hi all.
I am thinking of switching over to LED headlights for my Jeep Wrangler JK Unlimited, in doing some initial research there seems to be a couple of reviews who state that snow and ice make them totally inoperable.

So my question is who is using LED headlights in the Northeast and how have you found their usefulness in bad weather?

I forgot to mention I live in Rhode Island and my Jeep is a daily driver, and I drive a lot at night regardless of the season.

 

[tarditi]

Not running them for precisely that reason - not sure if this helps your decision process.

TruckLites have an available model that has a heater wire intended to keep frost and ice off the lens. It is quite a bit more than just the LED housing.
http://www.quadratec.com/products/97009_8003.htm

I opted to just get a set of driving lights and call it a day.

FWIW, Jeep is revamping the lights in the 2017 models - would be really cool if they could be retrofit, but I'm sure they'll engineer that option away... perhaps it will usher in some less expensive alternatives at least.

 

[East Coast Overland]

I have LED headlights in my JKU and I live in NB, the Province, not the NJ one. Now I haven't had them in last winter so I can know for sure yet. Makes me curious to find out. The housing and glass heats up quite a bit and quite fast, so I'm not sure how much ice will actually be able to stick to it. I'll come back to this after some cold weather experience.

 

[LR Max]

Running LED lights on my old rover (the housings and everything look exactly the same as the truck lites...just different connector).

It never really got cold around here, but their performance at night was amazing. Especially on back roads. I could actually see, which was extremely nice.

A very good upgrade. Also do a search here. Hilldweller has done a crap ton of testing on LED lights.

 

[kojackJKU]

I live in Newfoundland, I ran truck lites for two winters, and hated it. I switched to hella e codes, and the light output is awesome with these and the hella 2.0 bulbs. My trucklites would ice over and become virtually useless. LED lights seem to not have the power to power through minor dirt, snow, ice etc. Where as with halogens, you can not even notice things like bugs on the head lights etc. I would NOT recommend LED lights for snowy areas. Like I said, coming from first hand experience. And if you use a good halogen, the LEDs are not that much better anyways.

 

[doug720]

This was with leds! They would not stay clear, so I switched back to my Hella's and no problems.

 

[patsfan]

I live in Newfoundland, I ran truck lites for two winters, and hated it. I switched to hella e codes, and the light output is awesome with these and the hella 2.0 bulbs. My trucklites would ice over and become virtually useless. LED lights seem to not have the power to power through minor dirt, snow, ice etc. Where as with halogens, you can not even notice things like bugs on the head lights etc. I would NOT recommend LED lights for snowy areas. Like I said, coming from first hand experience. And if you use a good halogen, the LEDs are not that much better anyways.

Thanks Kojack.
I read your review in another post, it was actually the first time I heard of the issue, I'm just unsure of how bad it would be down here in Rhode Island, I'm assuming Newfoundland has way worse winter weather.

I see lots of Jeep Wranglers driving around with aftermarket LED headlights, maybe they just don't drive in the snow at night...

 

[patsfan]

This was with leds! They would not stay clear, so I switched back to my Hella's and no problems.

View attachment 365022View attachment 365022

That's a great looking truck!

I noticed that you have with I assumed to be halogen driving lights on the bumper? If so how much better did they fare compared to the LEDs?

 

[patsfan]

Not running them for precisely that reason - not sure if this helps your decision process.

TruckLites have an available model that has a heater wire intended to keep frost and ice off the lens. It is quite a bit more than just the LED housing.
http://www.quadratec.com/products/97009_8003.htm

I opted to just get a set of driving lights and call it a day.

FWIW, Jeep is revamping the lights in the 2017 models - would be really cool if they could be retrofit, but I'm sure they'll engineer that option away... perhaps it will usher in some less expensive alternatives at least.

I was just about ready to pull the trigger on the heated truck lights, but then I ran across a video from Northridge 4 x 4 that compared the heated truck-light to the non heated truck-lite, it was supposed to show how Superior the heating element was, but frankly I was unimpressed with the difference.

 

[fiddypal]

Sounds to me like LED technology still has some work before common use in vehicles as headlamps. I thought laser headlights were the new big thing around the corner and only thing holding them up in USA is stupid wording of DOT regs?


Thanks for sharing tho, had no idea this was an issue with led headlights.

 

[doug720]

Thanks.

The halogen lights run warm enough to make the snow/slush slide right off the lenses. On the LED headlights, the snow/slush would continue to build up until you could not see the lights.

This was a couple of years ago and I was given the LED's to try by a local auto parts company. The leds are bright, but the light color takes some getting used to, and I went back to my Halogen headlights and have been happy.

 

[Hilldweller]

The heated Trucklites aren't the best answer.
I have JW Speakers and the shape of them is better for shedding snow, curved, and they stay snow-free longer than Trucklite/GE or Peterson/KC (older model KC) but they don't stay snow-free in a determined snowfall.
The real problem is the recess that the lights sit in. If they were flush with the grill there'd be no problem. But the recess forms a shelf and snow accumulates on it. I was driving to work one snowy morning and had to stop about every 10 minutes to clear the lights.
But if it's snowing hard enough, even a halogen will cake with snow on that shelf.

I heard a pretty good rumor that JWS is developing a version with a warmer ----- their original 8700 had one. I had those lights on my 2008 JK and they worked like a charm. But the lights were very difficult to fit in a JK and JWS stopped making them...
If I hear anything else I'll holler. For now it's still a rumor from somebody not working for JWS but does work in automotive lighting.

 

[kojackJKU]

I went back to Hella E codes. best option for anyone in the snow belt. I feel I am loosing NOTHING from my truck lites. Best part, is when I drop a bulb now, I dont have to wait to get a full replacement headlight unit, I just replace the bulb and carry on. I went through 3 truck lights. First one I lost low beam all together, second one, (replacement), the color was really blue compared to my original in the other side, Got two replacements which were proper color (white), and one of those had a low beam go low output on me. got another replacement and then promptly sold them. Installed the Hellas and took my first real trip in the night this past week. They performed great, My HID hellas still drown them out, as I expected they would, but.......The ecodes actually get down the road farther than the truck lites on high beam. I am using the hella 2.0 performance bulb which I love. I have them in both my jeeps now and they perform as advertised. I am not getting a set for my F150 as well.

The other big issue i had with the truck lite is from "dirt" even a couple of small bug hits would cut light out put greatly. Where as you do not even notice them with the halogens. When bug hits the lens on the truck lite there is a big shadow in the beam.

Bill am I imagining that or do you have information to the same?

As to the snow accumulation, My stockers never iced over like the truck lites, there maybe some at the bottom edge, but there was enough heat to melt the snow from covering the lens. I would say I lost the bottom 1/4 of light.....so I had 3/4s light left, with the truck lite it was covered quickly and if you even got any ice on the lens you got bad shadowing.

 

[4wdCamper]

Decent H4 LED bulbs cost $280, and the beam pattern is not as good as $5 halogens.
LED bulbs will supplant halogens someday, but we're still a few years away from it.

 

[kojackJKU]

We are not talking bulbs. We are talking actual headlights. I would NEVER run those LED replacement jobbies. They are terrible.