Is it possible to retrofit the 2018 LED headlights on previous model years ?

 

Search is your friend. Been discussed a bit on other threads, short answer is I don't think anyone has done it, and if you do, you'll likely need relays/transformers and or at a minimum a modified harness. Many are puzzled as to why one would even want to do this, the soul-less LED lights do nothing for many of us....

 

If you can find and remove or by-pass the HID ballast you could find LED bulbs to fit the original style HID projectors. But LED headlights aren't nearly as good as HIDs, just cheaper to manufacture. And as mentioned above, why put the cat to sleep?

 

I'd be happy to trade out my HID style headlights for anyone with LEDs.

 

I think someone on the XJ forum switched out there HID for the LED headlights

 

Why not just buy form fit LED bulbs? Obviously you'll need to bypass the HID ballast.

On one of my cars I turned the fog lights into a second set of headlights using the highest power LED headlight projectors I could find. It made sense to go LED since the fog wiring was limited to 35Ws. The upper set are still HIDs.

With both sets on, you can hardly tell the LEDs are there. Toggling the fog switch on/off makes little difference. HIDs penetrate a lot farther than the best LED has to offer. Even through a projector housing LED light scatters a lot more.

 

I like the design of the LED, which is completely different.

 

Having driven both xenon and LED optioned F-Types I can confirm the LED headlamps do have better illumination (further throw, wider angle full beam, better reflection from road signs and cats-eyes/road markers).

I only had the LED car as a loaner for 2 days (1 night) so had limited chance to play, but it had the new adaptive lighting where it moved the beam up and down the road as well as left and right. On the motorway doing 70mph the road signs where reflecting further along than on slower residential roads, and further than my XJ with the OEM LED lamps (older generation adaptive lamps without the throw adjustments). I'm not really sure how they achieve that because the visible beam cut off was well below the signs, but it was strong enough for me to worry I had the full beams on a couple of times although no-one flashed me. They are supposed to be able to mask the beam only where it detects an oncoming vehicle, but I was not able to noticeably test that.

The only thing I didn't like about them was the appearance when walking around the car - the xenon projectors look great, the LEDs look like the car is squinting.

LEDs retrofitted behind xenon lenses are illegal in many regions because the light is too dispersed and you end up blinding oncoming drivers and wasting energy. The lenses for the OEM LEDs are totally different to correctly focus the beams. It's also a bit pointless to do that as you will lack the LED drivers.

As to retrofitting the OEM LED headlamps to the xenon cars... we need to find a way to replicate the LIN bus they use that is not present on the xenon cars. It's a bit more involved than the XJ retrofit I did in my signature. Nowadays with the ready availability of $5 MCUs it ought to be possible, but is outside my present ability as I just don't have the time to dedicate to it.

On a personal observation - as someone who drives more at night than during the day, don't be a dick who uses their fog lamps as running lamps, especially not if you have fitted bright LEDs behind incorrect lenses. I don't want to kill a pedestrian or crash into a kerb because you suddenly blind me. Fog lamps are 1) meant for fog, and 2) not meant to be overly bright as that defeats the purpose of having fog lamps (you want to illuminate the road, not the fog).

 

i have cars with all types of lighting, leds behind reflectors, leds behind projectors, xenon bulbs behind projectors, xenon bulbs in reflectors....

xenon bulbs behind projectors is still the best in terms of output

the only setups that come close are the cars i have with adaptive leds, like my f80 m3 which is constantly changing the beam pattern to maximise max output, including shaping the high beam around vehicles in front, which afaik is tech jag don't offer atm

but in terms of actual lumens output, leds are still behind xenon, the cooler colour seems to give impression they are brighter

retrofitting on the f-type is something i've always wanted to do, but i doubt we're going to get that adaptive-lite oe functionality from them that makes them more useful than xenon, unless as you say someone can wire in the adapters correctly

 

HIDs penetrate much farther than LEDs, especially if you look at very distant objects on brights. But the quality of the HID projector housing makes a big difference. Cheap projector lenses will squash output, as well as where you adjust the cutoff line, what shape it is and how sharp it is. And creating or approaching a hill greatly changes cutoff distance and height.
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Wattage also makes a big difference, as most OEMs run 35W HIDs. Most retrofit wiring can run 50W no problem, and with a simple $5 relay harness 75W or 100W HIDs are easy. That said, above 35W, HID bulbs can melt cheap plastic or chrome parabolic mirrors inside crap HID projectors, making the higher wattage system dimmer than a lower wattage HID bulb.

As far as running four fulltime headlights, it depends on your State, but in many States only the number of down range lights is limited to four at one time. Output doesn't matter.

Unfortunately, a lot of people run HIDs without spending money on HID projector lenses, which looks like the Sun to oncoming traffic.

Along the same lines but for different reasons, most OEM and aftermarket LED installs are dangerous too, as LED bulbs scatter light no matter what the housing making them very bright to oncoming traffic even if weak to the driver.
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The F-Type LEDs don't offer selective beam blocking (aka matrix blocking, so as a vehicle moves across the beam the LEDs or shutters selectively mask it), but they do offer basic shaping.

There are three types of headlamps fitted to the current F-Types.
1) Xenon
2) Basic LED
3) Adaptive LED

The basic LED just has low and high beam modules with their own fixed lenses. The adaptive LEDs are the newer generation JLR AFS123 system which is different to the 'standard' AFS and gives you different 'classes' of AFS based on where/how you are driving:

1) City class - operates below 48 km/h (30 mph) - (3) in the image
2) Country class - operates between 49 km/h (30.5 mph) and 110 km/h (68 mph) - (2) in the image
3) Adverse Weather class - operates below 64 km/h (40 mph) - also (2) in the image
4) Motorway class - operates above 110 km/h (68 mph) - (1) in the image



The 'country class' (beam throw 2) is the standard class used with the xenon and basic LED headlamps.

As mentioned in my message above, when I was driving at motorways speeds the distant visibility was notably increased with signs near the horizon reflecting clearly despite not being in the visible beam. There seems to be some periphery effect with the LEDs that I don't see with the xenons.

The auto high beam/image processing module works alongside the AFS to, in theory, adapt the throw to the best possible without blinding oncoming drivers. I was unable to see that working, but as I wasn't getting flashed by blinded drivers it appeared to be doing its job.

It is worth mentioning that other JLR vehicles from the 2019MY do offer matrix blocking with their LED headlamps, for example the 2019 RRS has them. Whether that technology filters through to the next F-Type MY depends on how much longer they want to keep the model going.

(BTW for reference in case it wasn't clear earlier, I am in the UK where it is a traffic offence to drive with your front fog lamps on when visibility is not reduced. It is rarely enforced, but still an offence.)

 

Illuminating signs above cutoff just means there is a part of the reflector in the headlight assembly pointing a bit of output above cutoff, or having a semi open projector bowl with a reflector sitting behind it (my r35 gtr had this setup) - most headlights do this, and it's often such low output it just looks like a bit of blur above cutoff when parked up against a wall

it may look noticeable in f-type because the led colour output is a larger contrast to street lights and other vehicles on road projecting light at same sign - same reason why most feel leds are brighter than xenon, or fitting a higher kelvin xenon bulb seems brighter even though we know as kelvin increases lumens decreases

my m3 has the different beam patterns for varying speeds, but it's not really noticeable when driving, i only notice the adaptive matrix movement creating a light tunnel around car in front




getting back on topic, how can we retro fit the led headlights, who's going to be the guinea pig. i wouldn't be fussed with that adaptive-lite functionality, as long as low and high beam work correctly, just aim them really well and they'll work fine

looking at pics, it seems the f-type led headlight uses a mix of projector and reflector for low beam, and reflector for high beam

 

Hear. Hear. I much prefer the earlier lights.