[GraniteRebel]

Been following the following thread over at ramforumz in regards to some Philips 9012 LED bulbs fitting the projector style headlights:
http://www.ramforumz.com/showthread.php?t=203617&highlight=LED+headlights
Was never really happy with the Rebel having the white LED fog lights and the yellowish halogen bulbs in the projectors. I ended up ordering a set of these from the Auto LED Corp(their email is: [email protected]) and took about 6 business days to receive them as they are located in Canada. You end up getting a set of the 9012 Philips LED bulbs along with a set of decoders to help eliminate any error codes(light out, etc.). Install was pretty easy, just have to stuff everything inside the projector light housing. Here are some pictures below for comparison. Happy with them thus far as they match the LED fog lighting well and provide a little more light output than the halogen bulbs.

 

[TheGreatRam]

Wow that looks a lot brighter when you see it from the front. Were there any error codes after the installation?

 

[GraniteRebel]

Wow that looks a lot brighter when you see it from the front. Were there any error codes after the installation?

No error codes, thats why the decoders are included to help eliminate those issues. Picture(borrowed from ramforumz) attached below of what is included in the kit. My cost was $138 for the kit, I believe this is a standard cost for this kit, but it may vary.

 

[ufokillerz]

No error codes, thats why the decoders are included to help eliminate those issues. Picture(borrowed from ramforumz) attached below of what is included in the kit. My cost was $138 for the kit, I believe this is a standard cost for this kit, but it may vary.

googled for this kit..

$50 bucks shipped on amazon. sold by 3rd party and maybe a extra 20 bucks for canbus cancellors.

My worry is that in the long run, after extended run times, the heatsink straps will get pretty hot and warp the plastic it may be in contact with.
Even the actively cooled leds easily hit 200 degrees heatsink temp, i did some tests at some point. These passively cooled ones, i have no doubt will hit 200 degrees at some point in time.

 

[ncbeast]

The resistor would have to be mounted outside the headlight housing so you would need to drill a small hole to run the wire for it through the dust cover or a slot in the housing where the dust cover attaches so the wire can pass through. Same way you would if you were to install HIDs.

 

[johnj]

ufokillerz: In response, I was also thinking about the heat dissipation. Standard incandescent bulbs convert 98% of their power to heat, and only about 2% becomes light. OEM is a halogen, which is about 4% efficient at light, 96% becomes heat. The headlight (low beam) is designed for a 55W halogen, so we can estimate that around 53 Watts of the power are converted to heat inside the housing.

LEDs convert on average about 90% of incoming power to light, and about 10% to heat. That heat is concentrated in a very tiny space - the LED chip, less than a 1/8" square area, unlike bulbs that spread the heat throughout the base and the glass envelope. So the LED chip gets far hotter than a glass bulb does, and heat sinks are required to move the heat away quickly. But it's still less heat energy overall.

According to Philips, that bulb draws 1.6A, +/- .2A. Assume that it's on the high end of tolerance, that's 1.8A and the alternator is supplying the truck at 14.5V. Power (Watts) is easy to calculate: 1.8A x 14.5V = 26.1W. That's about half the power draw of the OEM halogen. Plus, LEDs are approximately 90% efficient. 90% of power is converted to light, and only about 10% of their power becomes heat. This means the bulb generates somewhere around 2.6W of heat.

So the difference overall should be a heat reduction from 53W to 2.6W. That's about a 95% total decrease in heat generation.

Now, the heat sinks tend to make you think there's going to be a heat problem. But there shouldn't be. In a typical bulb, the entire bulb gets hot, including the glass envelope. In an LED, the area that gets hot is very tiny, the chip itself, usually less than a 1/8"x1/8" square. The heat that it produces, though, is all concentrated in that area, and must be wicked away quickly to prevent it from damaging the chip. So heat sinking is designed to be big but it's often not very hot to handle except near the chip end. Unlike the entire halogen bulb which might burn you if you touch it.

 

[ufokillerz]

ufokillerz: In response, I was also thinking about the heat dissipation. Standard incandescent bulbs convert 98% of their power to heat, and only about 2% becomes light. OEM is a halogen, which is about 4% efficient at light, 96% becomes heat. The headlight (low beam) is designed for a 55W halogen, so we can estimate that around 53 Watts of the power are converted to heat inside the housing.

LEDs convert on average about 90% of incoming power to light, and about 10% to heat. That heat is concentrated in a very tiny space - the LED chip, less than a 1/8" square area, unlike bulbs that spread the heat throughout the base and the glass envelope. So the LED chip gets far hotter than a glass bulb does, and heat sinks are required to move the heat away quickly. But it's still less heat energy overall.

According to Philips, that bulb draws 1.6A, +/- .2A. Assume that it's on the high end of tolerance, that's 1.8A and the alternator is supplying the truck at 14.5V. Power (Watts) is easy to calculate: 1.8A x 14.5V = 26.1W. That's about half the power draw of the OEM halogen. Plus, LEDs are approximately 90% efficient. 90% of power is converted to light, and only about 10% of their power becomes heat. This means the bulb generates somewhere around 2.6W of heat.

So the difference overall should be a heat reduction from 53W to 2.6W. That's about a 95% total decrease in heat generation.

Now, the heat sinks tend to make you think there's going to be a heat problem. But there shouldn't be. In a typical bulb, the entire bulb gets hot, including the glass envelope. In an LED, the area that gets hot is very tiny, the chip itself, usually less than a 1/8"x1/8" square. The heat that it produces, though, is all concentrated in that area, and must be wicked away quickly to prevent it from damaging the chip. So heat sinking is designed to be big but it's often not very hot to handle except near the chip end. Unlike the entire halogen bulb which might burn you if you touch it.

in a standard bulb setup, the heat is in front of the reflector where heat is designed to be.
I am speaking from my own hands on with "automotive" led bulbs in open air applications. In open air, heatsink with fan very easily hits 200 degrees. Once again that is open air.
The philips chips are designed to run at up to 135°C.
Have you seen the oem heatsinks on properly designed led systems?

 

[johnj]

in a standard bulb setup, the heat is in front of the reflector where heat is designed to be.
I am speaking from my own hands on with "automotive" led bulbs in open air applications. In open air, heatsink with fan very easily hits 200 degrees. Once again that is open air.
The philips chips are designed to run at up to 135°C.
Have you seen the oem heatsinks on properly designed led systems?

Yes. I've done some design work on heatsinks for LED applications.

You're correct in saying that the heat is (mostly) in front of the reflector (don't forget a lot gets transferred through the bulb base, which is often behind the reflector). But the headlight assembly is a sealed assembly. The hot air around the bulb can't get away, so heat transfers to the reflector and lens, and on to the rest of the housing. The real issue we're concerned with is how much heat is transferred, and how fast it is in turn transferred through the housing to the open air.

The reason you see fans on heatsinks is so that they can be made smaller, take up less room. But then they run hotter, don't dissipate heat fast enough, and the fan is required. Passive heatsinks are usually not as hot, except near the chip itself.

The chip is like the head of a match - very hot, but only at a small point. A match reaches nearly 400°C. A tungsten filament in a standard bulb - around 2500°C. You can't heat a room with a match alone, there isn't enough heat energy in it. Yet, you can burn your finger touching it pretty easily. You won't burn your entire hand, though, like you would if you stuck it in a fireplace. My point being that seemingly high chip heat temps mean very little total heat energy. Hence heatsinks are designed to wick that heat away from the tiny point source of heat. If well designed, passive heatsinks never get as hot as active (fanned) heatsinks. Philips is a good company with solid engineering. I doubt they'd under-design the heat sinks.

My math on the previous post was reasonably sound. Even if we changed the LED to a 50% light efficiency and therefore 50% loss by heat, the total power consumed by the bulb is still half the power of the OEM halogen, and half the heat loss, so it would still only be generating roughly a quarter of the total heat the halogen does. But the math says the total amount of heat energy generated by the LED bulb is around 10% of the halogen's.

All this said, I'd like to see one in operation and get a feel for how warm it's getting. While the engineer in me says "No problem" the caveman says "match burn!"

 

[ufokillerz]

you are more then likely right about the heat thing. Probably not as big a worry as i think it is.

The only correction is that while the led emitters are made by philips, everything else isn't.

Looking at some comparison beamshots that the OP of the thread over at ramforum posted, it seems that while there is a great amount of light being put out, it loses a lot of distance lighting compared to even the stock HIR2 bulbs. There is no distinguishable "hotspot" in the beam pattern. So while the led bulbs are great for everything from city and local driving. At highway speeds, you will lose a great deal of distance lighting. Someone correct me if i am wrong though. I'm going off all the threads i've read over at hidplanet over the years with pictures of output shots etc.

 

[johnj]

I was reading some of those threads, too. I'm not sure that the distance loss is accurate. The stock Philips HIR2 bulbs are tested at 1875 lumens. These LEDs are rated at 2500 lumens. It makes me wonder if the guys posting knew to make sure their camera had the same exposure setting each time (not a standard autoexposure). Every year there are new developments across the board that change the landscape, so to speak. But there is a limit of just how bright the things can legally be, and I wonder if we're approaching that.

I am a little bit concerned from what I read in a few places on beam pattern. I don't like distinct hotspots, particularly. Good projectors can through out more graduated beams if designed well. But our projectors are made for bulbs, which radiate pretty equally in all directions. These LED devices radiation in lobes based at the LEDs, like figure 8's, so not all parts of the projector are used equally, which seems to in some cases leave dark spaces in the beam.

Yeah, I misread and thought the whole device was made by Philips. Thanks for pointing that out. The device is actually made by Eastar LED in China. LED auto light, LED G4 light, LED G9 light, LED corn bulb

 

[ufokillerz]

I was reading some of those threads, too. I'm not sure that the distance loss is accurate. The stock Philips HIR2 bulbs are tested at 1875 lumens. These LEDs are rated at 2500 lumens. It makes me wonder if the guys posting knew to make sure their camera had the same exposure setting each time (not a standard autoexposure). Every year there are new developments across the board that change the landscape, so to speak. But there is a limit of just how bright the things can legally be, and I wonder if we're approaching that.

I am a little bit concerned from what I read in a few places on beam pattern. I don't like distinct hotspots, particularly. Good projectors can through out more graduated beams if designed well. But our projectors are made for bulbs, which radiate pretty equally in all directions. These LED devices radiation in lobes based at the LEDs, like figure 8's, so not all parts of the projector are used equally, which seems to in some cases leave dark spaces in the beam.

Yeah, I misread and thought the whole device was made by Philips. Thanks for pointing that out. The device is actually made by Eastar LED in China. LED auto light, LED G4 light, LED G9 light, LED corn bulb

You sound like someone who would be qualified to test this hah. I'm happy with my 50w Hid kit so far. I know leds can be great, but they rarely work well with projectors designed for halogens/hids. That's why i'm hesitant to try this out. I have a few led kits for my durango projector fogs that i shelved in favor of hids due to weird beam patterns.

The biggest thing with the current ram projector is that one of headlights, i cannot remember which side has a very weird bulb holder, i believe it is like this on all rams. The bulb sits weird. On the correct side my hid electrode? return wire is pointed down, but on the wrong one, its pointed at something like 3 o clock position.
I think that would have some affect on LEDs in the projector.

 

[johnj]

Yeah, the engineers that designed it didn't need to worry about orientation of the bulb. There are a lot of aftermarket housings available. I'm considering them now. I have the chrome headlights, but since I bought mine off the lot, didn't order it, I got what I bought. I doubt the dealer will ever consider swapping them out. I am wondering, since I have a 2015.5 model, if the projectors on the SEMA Rebel will become available and fit. Although it's likely there will be the same bulb orientation issue you described.

 

[ufokillerz]

Yeah, the engineers that designed it didn't need to worry about orientation of the bulb. There are a lot of aftermarket housings available. I'm considering them now. I have the chrome headlights, but since I bought mine off the lot, didn't order it, I got what I bought. I doubt the dealer will ever consider swapping them out. I am wondering, since I have a 2015.5 model, if the projectors on the SEMA Rebel will become available and fit. Although it's likely there will be the same bulb orientation issue you described.

i mean for the engineers, the bulb orientation isn't a problem. They designed it for HIR2, and there is no wrong orientation for HIR2

the issue only arises with hid bulbs or led bulbs which the projectors were not designed for.

 

[johnj]

i mean for the engineers, the bulb orientation isn't a problem. They designed it for HIR2, and there is no wrong orientation for HIR2

the issue only arises with hid bulbs or led bulbs which the projectors were not designed for.

Yep, I meant the same thing. The engineer was definitely designing for an omnidirectional bulb as you said. I would have done the same in his/her shoes.

 

[halla]

I just contacted the AUTO LED Group and they said on my 2016 Rebel (that arrives this week), will have a 9005 bulb instead of the 9012, he said they changed them. I had not read anything about that on this site or the others. I guess I am going to have to wait to get my new LED's until the truck arrives. Great write up, thank you.

 

[johnj]

Might just be confusion, too. Iirc, the quad headlight units use 9005s, while the projectors use the 9012s in the 2015s. Maybe they're looking at the quad info? I don't know if quads are even an option on the Rebel.

 

[RAMageddon]

I just contacted the AUTO LED Group and they said on my 2016 Rebel (that arrives this week), will have a 9005 bulb instead of the 9012, he said they changed them. I had not read anything about that on this site or the others. I guess I am going to have to wait to get my new LED's until the truck arrives. Great write up, thank you.

You can always try cross referencing the information you're getting from that guy with the parts department of one or more RAM dealers.

Another thing you can do is called up an autoparts store and check with them, usually they'll have a system for looking up parts they sell or can order for you.

 

[GraniteRebel]

I just contacted the AUTO LED Group and they said on my 2016 Rebel (that arrives this week), will have a 9005 bulb instead of the 9012, he said they changed them. I had not read anything about that on this site or the others. I guess I am going to have to wait to get my new LED's until the truck arrives. Great write up, thank you.

I would think they would still use the 9012 bulb. I believe when I contacted them I told them that I had a Ram with the newer projector lights.

No issues to report with them thus far either, no noticeable light loss either.

 

[H4ydenn]

How are these working out?

 

[GraniteRebel]

How are these working out?

Still working fine with no issues.