I agree Mustangman, hence never backed any project yet. This is the first one as I really liked the idea. I will be asking the same questions I asked here. If the answers are not satisfactory, I will cancel the pledge. They do claim that the delivery will be next month.
Being guinea pig idea aside,
Can you really use such LED bulbs as a replacement?
Well first off, that’s a Kickstarter which means you can’t have them yet, if ever. Kickstarter is a crowd-sourced venture capital system. It’s where you go when you want to make something and need startup money, but regular venture capital firms won’t give you any because they think your idea will fail. Nothing wrong with backing Kickstarter ventures as long as you recognize that you may never get the product, or the product may never work right, and you’re OK with losing your money.
You need to be fully aware that there have been a number of scams on Kickstarter in which the product was always intended to be vaporware, but the guy running the campaign got to pocket the money. You also need to be fully aware that there have been even more campaigns on kickstarter run by people who have no idea how to run a business, and who take people’s money with every intention of making a product and then drive themselves right into the ground through incompetence. Either way, the end result is the same - everyone who invested loses their money. Google “tiko 3d printer” some time for a good object lesson in the latter.
Second, I find it underimpressive that they advertise 4 colors, and then show you varying shades of yellow and count alternating between 2 of the shades as a unique color. They’re obviously fluffing up their presentation in the hopes of hooking someone who doesn’t understand what color is.
There are normal LED replacement bulbs for halogens. I’ve considered trying them myself - there’s no particular reason why they couldn’t work as long as the manufacturer is careful to make sure they have the same light spread pattern as the original halogen bulb so that the headlight reflector works properly.
So, there might be an LED out there that would work for you, but in my opinion the link you posted isn’t it.
You can try polishing the lenses. I’ve done it with pretty good results. But the really big improvement for my 1999 and 2007 cars was to put on new aftermarket headlamps assemblies from rock auto, with Silverstar or similar bulbs. Less money than you might expect. And not only is the lighting much better, the car looks almost like new, so you enjoy them even when you’re just looking at the car.
Are you really sending money to this place ? Have you replace the bulbs with the proper ones ? Have you polished the lens cover tp see if that helps ? Also is it possible that the changing colors might not be legal in all of the states ?
I looked at the site and saw the ( make night driving fun again ) what kind of stupid remark is that ?
I doubt that. The US regulations are that yellow lights are required (not permitted) in front as turn signals for example, but are yellow headlights permitted? Uh-uh.
Sure they are. Halogen lights are yellow. We just see them as white because we don’t have a whiter reference at night. If you stick a halogen light car next to a factory HID light car (not the stupid aftermarket ones), you suddenly see that the halogens are quite yellow.
All this joker is doing is taking the visibility advantage of LED (white light is easier for our eyes to detect than yellow) and eliminating it to make them look like varying degrees of crappy halogen.
The really dumb part is the way that you do this with LED - he’s got an array of 2 different LEDs - yellow, and white. The “colors” are generated by making one of the arrays dimmer than the other. If he’d just stick to one color he could use all of the LEDs at full brightness and get better light output, but no, he’s got to be gimicky and fake having “4” colors.
The thing with kickstarter is anyone can promote anything and people contribute money no matter how bad an idea is. Nobody there to filter out the bad ideas.
LEDs tend not to work well in headlight housings not designed for them. That means any that came with halogen bulbs originally. LEDs do not have the same output pattern so the light is not directed as intended by the car manufacturer.
This looks like an interesting idea, but not something I would ever buy. I have always been happy with the halogen headlights on my cars. By the time I have difficulty seeing at night, the reason is too many scuffs/scratches on the windshield, not the headlights going bad. I actually had to have the windshield replaced on one of my cars because when the lights from oncoming traffic hit it, it basically “glowed” white from all the scratches and I could not see. Attempts to clean it did not help.
Thank you, everyone, for the comments. Many make sense and hence I canceled my contribution to the project.
I am not too sure if my articulation wasn’t best but my question was if LED lights can be used as a replacement in my vehicle with high as well as low beams. Except for one or two comments, none of the comments addressed this question but most focused on Kickstarter.
@NYBo’s comment comes closest. Thanks for the comment. This is exactly what I wanted to know if halogen bulbs can be replaced with LED bulbs. I will take a look at Silverstar bulbs and polishing the headlight (they are not oxidized for sure, at least don’t look like it but still give a shot).
Your headlights should be transparent and clear. If they are, don’t polish them. All you’re doing is removing material - that’s something you do when necessary but you don’t want to be doing it if it’s not.
Agreed. To add to that, many lamp assemblies come with a UV coating to protect the plastic lens. Polish that off and they will certainly degrade even faster…
Yep! If you do need to polish them, at minimum protect them with regular waxing. Some people put a thin transparent film over the lights - kinda like a screen protector for a smart phone. As long as the film blocks UV, it will protect the lights from yellowing as well as grit damage.
