The fog lights on my '08 have a mirrored 'shroud' (though I don't know what the interior sections look like). Will that reflector you refer to be necessary ?

 

I see plenty of 9006 LED 'lights' with heat sinks and cooling fans and also see some like these. Anyone have that kind ? What's the difference ?

I also see some of these LED assemblies reference the LED manufacturer (Cree, COB, etc) and some reference the "chips" manufacturer (Philips, etc). Which are the ideal components to look for as far as reliability ?

 

They don't provide great output and typically have shorter lives than HID. That said, don't put LED in your headlights yet, the tech just isn't there.

 

See below.....

I put the non-ballast LED bulbs only in my fogs on the GTO because from what I've read the function of fog lights is to disperse a ton of light in front of and to the side of the vehicle. These do that perfectly, I wouldn't run them as my low or high beams.

As I said in my post above, the complete LED kit I used is hands down far better than the halogen bulbs the GTO came with (H11). Of course we have intense discussions about the HID vs. LED replacements on ls1gto but a lot of goat owners are running the LED's and loving them as do I. One of the big points in agreement we discuss is finding a LED kit that includes bulbs designed with 360* light output and "having the headlight filament like the original halogen bulb making the reflection angle the same as the original designed." Again, a quick search on Amazon only shows one company that makes kits like mine for the D2R/D2S so obviously selection is limited which from my naïve point of view means they're not enormously popular.

 

The point is LED light is single point source light where Halogen is a wire burning and HID is xenon gas arcing. They all have different optics that trying to make it work in a certain housing just can't work.

Buying a projector made for that type of light is the ideal way to get output you want with the tech you desire.

Reality is HID in a projector still trumps LED in hotspot output, width, and low glare... by a long way. If LED was a worthy upgrade without blinding everyone and having too much foreground (what everyone thinks Is good output) I would do it for sure, but unfortunately it's just not there.

 

What distance should fog lights be 'judged' at for usefulness ? I'll take pictures showing the difference with them on vs off. With other cars, you could definitely see a change when they're turned on or off. With this car, at least the '08 models, they seem to be more for looks than function.

 

25' from the front of the vehicle to the wall. Here is an output shot from about 20'.

 

Finally got pictures. Two of them are showing the fog lights on and off. The third picture shows the color difference between the Xenon headlight bulb and the standard halogen fog light bulb.

 

Looks good and non blinding bA+!

 

 

If the halogen bulb that's in there already has the reflector cup inside the bulb (like H4 bulbs on the low beam filament) then you'd need LED lights with the reflector part to replicate the beam pattern. See this image >>




I would avoid LED lights relying solely on passive cooling (the ones with no fans) unless they are being used for fogs or high beams only. The LED chips really need ample cooling for long life so a passive cooled set of lights running large number of hours as the low beams wouldn't last very long. For fog/highs which aren't used as often they'd be alright.

The LED chip manufactures like CREE, Philips, Lumileds etc are good brands of chips. COB is chip on board - a type of LED chip. COB is normally cheaper and more common on low quality lights. Because COB is an array of LEDs placed on a board it's very hard to distinguish between each actual LED. This means if 20% or so start to die out or lose colour, on the surface most consumers won't be able to tell the difference in output. Because of this, manufacturers can get away with using low quality components. Compared with a 1-3 single LED chips, if one goes out it would be a very obvious failure so the quality of parts and production must be kept high. Also, COB are quite fragile and most aftermarket COB lights get damaged by the jolting vibrations from day to day driving.