Fsharp9

has anyone used these, will they throw any headlight fault messages ?
http://www.vette-lights.com/collecti...-low-beam-leds

jrprich

Don't know, but they will bother other drivers as LEDs do not produce the same light pattern as your stock halogen bulbs. There are tons of posts about this here on CF

runner140*

[QUOTE=Fsharp9;1596345982]has anyone used these, will they throw any headlight fault messages ?
http://www.vette-lights.com/collecti...-low-beam-leds[/

If you purchase LED's, they sell for $40.00 for two bulbs and they are plug and play. Take a look at fleabay.

I use both LED high and low beams. Also use the high-four harness. They are perfect for me. Never needed the resistor b/c the buckets go up and down as they should. Never a fault message.

PM me if you need any additional information.

bwill03z

I put low beam led's in mine and never could get the light pattern adjusted correctly. Also I had to turn on high beams to get the lights to go back down... probably because I didn't have the resistor. I ended up taking them out.

Z06 Zephyr

I don't have LED's but i do have HID's in the stock housing and the light spread is perfectly fine. Easily triple as bright at stock. Can easily be found for under $50 with a long warranty.

bwill03z

where did you get yours?

old stingray

I also have HID's in the stock housing and they work great. Most of this misinformation is from people trying to sell custom lens/housing or someone who reads and believes this bull$hit.

bwill03z

Well I have come close a couple of times to ordering the hid low beam kit from corvette mods but never did because of what I read on here. May just go ahead and do it.

sirdano

Here is something to read if you put them in stock housing.

http://www.lxforums.com/board/texas/...s-illegal.html

Z06 Zephyr

This x2

Tsumi

Pic proof or complete BS.

C6_Racer_X

LED (and HID) "retrofits" that fit in the stock housings are both dangerous and illegal.

The best lighting you can get in a C5 is new stock housing (Euro housings if you can get them and want a better pattern and longer lasting housing) with the newer HIR (9012/9011) bulbs. The bulbs have the same filament geometry as the 9006/9005 bulbs, but are significantly brighter,, and they last longer than "high performance"/"high output" 9006/9005 bulbs. The HIR bulbs do need a slight modification to one of the tabs on the base, but they will fit the stock housings. For anyone interested, the bulb mods for HIR bulbs are covered here: http://dastern.torque.net/Mods/HIRmod.html

Anything that signficantly changes the pattern or aim of your headlight is definitely illegal (no "DOT" or "E" in the circle ECE markings), and probably unsafe.

I've been in the single car accident that resulted from bad HID conversions. It's not fun. You can't see as far because every one of those conversions (and LED conversions) that I've seen flood the foreground area with very bright light too close to the car. The result is that your pupils constrict, and you lose distance vision. I rode the passenger seat of one car equipped with HID conversions in stock headlights into a fallen tree on a rural 2 lane road. That's no fun at all. I really think that with standard headlights, the driver would have seen the tree down across the road and would have stopped in time.

I've seen a couple of other single car accidents where improper headlights were a significant factor in the accident.

bwill03z

Not disagreeing with your post at all, in fact I completely agree. I will say though that I have tried two different sets of the 9012 bulbs and the light output is still nowhere near bright enough for me to comfortably drive at night. I think the best option is just pay up and get the full HID setup with the projector housings.

UM Rebel

I tried both LED and HID. They are very bright, but you can't see s#it! I'm back to stock bulbs. I did make the 4 High mod. I like that for rural driving.

Tsumi

With my 55 watt FX-R 3.0 setup, I can really only see the road clearly about 400-600 feet in front of me (approximately 4-6 seconds at 75 mph). At 100 mph, this translates to only 3-4 seconds. High beams don't really help unless it's an actual object on the road that isn't too short, and I believe this has to do with the low seating position of the Corvette. Beyond approximately 750 feet, no amount of light will illuminate the road because the angles involved are just too extreme.

I can see road level reflector markers up to about 20 seconds away though, so I know my light can reach that far. It just doesn't illuminate the road itself that far away.

ztheusa

If you can't see with the stock headlights, you're driving too fast.

C6_Racer_X

9012 (HIR-2) bulbs will generate about twice the light of a 9006.

They won't help old headlights that are past their prime, and they need good wiring, just like 9006 bulbs.

There are three things I usually do to any used (new to me) car when I get it on the headlight front.

First, I measure voltage at the alternator charge post or the positive battery post, and I measure across the low beam headlight wires at the headlight with the bulb installled and lit!!! That last bit is very important. If there's a voltage drop more than 0.3V to 0.4V at the bulb, compared to the battery, I make and install a good relay harness. No headlight will be "bright enough" if it's getting less than 13V, and any drop more than a few tenths of a volt really diminishes the brightness of the lights.

The second thing I do is check the optics. If my car is over 10 years old with original factory headlamps, I don't even bother checking, I just order replacements. This is mostly a subjective test. Park next to something new with conventional halogen headlamps. Daytime is fine. Compare how clear the lenses are on yours compared to the nearly new car, and compare how shiny the reflector surfaces are. 10-15 year old optics can easily lose 40 to 50% of the light from the bulb to dull reflector surfaces and hazy lenses.

If you have good optics and good wiring (good voltage with no significant voltage drop in the wiring), the 9012 bulbs perform very well. If you found them to be lacking, I'm betting that you had issues with optics and/or with voltage supply.

As for HID's in "projectors," provided both the lamp optics assemblies and the bulbs are marked "DOT" (or the E in the circle with a number that is ECE standard) and the bulb designation on the optics assembly matches the bulb designation on the bulb (both are D1S, or both are D2S or whatever), that works, generates good, safe lighting and is legal. For European specs, substitute the E in the circle markings for "DOT" but the same requirement goes for bulb designators, the bulb has to match the optics to be safe and legal.