[me78569]

With all the talk about LED bulbs and Morimoto plug and play LED headlights etc etc I figured I should share my headlight Build using Morimoto Mled projectors in the Quad housings.

You can find the full article here



The perk of the Mled setup vs a HID setup is the lack of wiring needed for a modern truck. The entire wiring and all parts are located inside the housing. No relay's no canbus foolers no extra wires or screws in my new truck.


Here is the approx location of the LED controller.

You just plug in the stock wiring to the housing and away you go!

I spliced the high beam to trigger the MLED high beam while keeping the OEM High beams active.

I used some oven cleaner to peal off the reflector on the low beams

Housings put together I did however scratch the lense when sealing it. FML

anyways here are some quick output shots. I didn't freeze the settings on the camera, but you get the picture. I still need to aim and true the lights up a touch, but they are close

Stock Low

Mled Low

Stock High

Mled high

My 2nd gen had Mini H1 6.0 installed and I would compare the MLED to the Mini H1 in terms of width. The MLED is brighter in the hotspot however. The D2S 4.0's are a good bit wider and about as bright in the hot spot.

The high beams are crazy bright with the MLED and the Stock High beam.



Pro's and Con's as with anything. Hopefully that helps guys make up their minds.

 

[me78569]

Some thoughts after a week of use. The 2 biggest complaints people have with the MLED setup is the lack of width compared to the HID brothers and the huge amount of foreground light.

The width is just a con of the setup, as you can see in the output pictures is the width is still way better than stock. So even though the width isn't as good as it could be, it is still better.

next is the foreground output being really high. This causes "glare" in the drivers eyes ( for lack of a better word) that will cause the drivers eyes to adjust and actually make your night vision worse as a result. having too much foreground will make you unable to see down the road because your eyes are adjusted incorrectly for the ambient light. I would not recommend the MLED setup on a car due to this. You would end up with a ton of foreground light; however on the front of my 4th gen it isn't to bad due to the height of the headlights. There is still more foreground light than I would want, but isn't bad. It's about on par with the halogen reflectors.

I'm happy and more importanly the wife is happier now with better lights on "her" truck. Best of all there are no warning messages or any flickering out of the box that I can see. It is really nice that everything is packaged within the headlight housing.


In the end if you "need" led headlights to be cool the MLED is a good choice rather than a plug and play bulb setup. If you want the best then stick with HID, but accept the con's of that as well.

 

[McGivern]

So I just bought a set of spare Quads and I am going to install projectors. I really like the simplicity of the MLED. I thought to solve the width issue you could always install the LED fogs that spread a lot of light? Also, it seems Retroshop and other recommend an anti-flicker, but it sounds like you didn't install one- is that correct? No issues with flicker?
Thanks,
Mark

 

[lasthope05]

Im running a NHK G5-R projector which is similar to the d2s 4.0 but has a much better hot spot and smaller cutoff step. LEDs are quickly becoming much better but still can't fully match the light out put of a good projector setup. However, I can't wait to see what comes out in the next few years to make me change my mind.

 

[me78569]

I had to go with anti flicker once it it got cold. It was cold it was like a light switch.

 

[McGivern]

One other question- I see you said you left the shrouds off with the quads, but do you have any pics that show how much room there is for a shroud, even if you had to trim the corner? Thanks

 

[me78569]

literally you would have to trim everything but 1/4" on the top and bottom

 

[McGivern]

Check these out...

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjI84nwHb4E/?taken-by=retroshopllc

Maybe he trimmed the headlight bezel instead of the shroud or both? Those appear to be Apollo 3.0's....

 

[me78569]

Yea it looks like the bezel for the low beam area is cut out.

I feel like a putts for not thinking about that lolol.

however you really can't tell

 

[McGivern]

Still need to do the wiring stuff but the trimming is done. I may paint the bezel blue to match the truck as that is a lot of chrome...

 

[me78569]

Your trim job looks good. nice work.

 

[McGivern]

Thanks! When you get up close it's not perfect, but it came out alright. Still deciding on whether to paint the bezel or not...