I never thought I'd post this - LED retrofits

[averyislost]

Not quite. DOT doesn't "approve" anything - a manufacturer needs to certify that the replacement lighting complies with all regs - and no replacement at this time is legal for a replaceable bulb housing. The only current vehicle where a swap is legal is if the headlighting unit is sealed beam.

Morimoto is very careful in their wording:

DOT APPROVED: Make no mistake, these will produce a much different [better] result than slapping some LED replacement bulbs into your stock housings. Their quad-projector optics meet & exceed all SAE, DOT, and FMVSS108 regulations when aimed properly...and that's easy to do with their integrated vertical/lateral adjusters. US market lights are equipped with amber side markers.

And then, there is their tiny little statement that they aren't street legal Morimoto: LED & HID Headlights, Projectors, Ballasts, and Bulbs (morimotohid.com) which closes with "Please confirm your usage below and that you will not use the bulbs for illegal street usage:"


Don't hold your breath. NHTSA is well aware of the crap out there and will continue to be very conservative.

All true, you're right. It's an odd set of laws that we enthusiasts follow. My Osram's are technically not legal for road use (considering they're not even US-market), but they pass state inspection no problem. I'd feel a little better about them, legality-wise, if they had the orange side markers, but haven't had a problem.

I wish the DOT would get with the times and allow full housing swaps (like the sealed beam) and actually allow companies to just comply with the regulations to prove the lights are fine.

 

[cb1111]

All true, you're right. It's an odd set of laws that we enthusiasts follow. My Osram's are technically not legal for road use (considering they're not even US-market), but they pass state inspection no problem. I'd feel a little better about them, legality-wise, if they had the orange side markers, but haven't had a problem.

I wish the DOT would get with the times and allow full housing swaps (like the sealed beam) and actually allow companies to just comply with the regulations to prove the lights are fine.

Yeah, the state inspections really depend on the state - PA, for example, used to fail people for missing sidemarkers (I don't know if they still do)

The big companies usually make decent stuff and getting something that is legal in other countries is usually a decent bet that they are mostly OK

 

[Ragdude]

While I agree HID or LED is a much better light to drive by, it makes me chuckle that people complain so much about halogen lights, before halogen it was really a dark road out there. I'd wager a lot of complaints are the fault of incorrectly aimed lights, but thats just my .02

 

[sstarrx2]

I don't have any issues with the stock lights that came in my 2021 GTI S. They light up the road fine. My wife is driving around a loaner Mazda CX-30 right now that is all LED lights all the way around and I honestly cannot tell the difference. I do like the auto high beams, but the brightness level I cannot even tell.

 

[tigeo]

OSRAM makes good stuff - I use/used their Nightbreaker series of over-driven replacement halogen bulbs in some of my cars with good sucess.

Its an LED - placement of the diodes, color, and output is about all you can muck with so I fail to see what beyond paying the money/takign the time to get these approved really differentiates them from other LED bulbs that have the same values for those 3 parameters. The main issue with some aftermarket bulbs which makes some problematic is the placement of the diodes not mimicking the location of the filament on a halogen bulbs. After that it's going too high on the output. Combining those 2 is what makes some of the crappy bulbs an issue. These will likely never be legal here in the U.S. but then so wnon't any of the replacement housings folks use or even the higher output halogen bulbs. You are either blinding folks or you aren't, whether that be in a DOT-legal set of OE HIDs, crappy Chinese bulbs, replica project headlight housings, etc.