EatonXJ

I think you would be disappointed. The JWs wouldn't even compare to your setup and if you are in deep enough water to ruin your HIDs you are probably going to have other more important things to worry about. That's just my opinion though.

investinwaffles

Well not necessarily - I have "dunked" the front headlights on occasion (usually when entering a river or mud hole), and my right headlight fogs up during heavy rain if I am on the highway for a while.


USN_JeepXJ, post up some beamshots when you get a chance!! Maybe one side TL and the other side Morimoto.

I agree, the trucklites are a huge improvement over stock, but they just dont have the lumen-output that I am looking for.

The JW Speakers look like they do, but at the same time the beam shots I have seen online have always been kind of "meh" for how much they cost.

EDIT:
And yes, Morimoto has really good QC - I wouldn't say they are the "best" (especially when comparing OEM options like the newest stuff from Mercedes/BMW/Acura), but for aftermarket they are pretty much as top notch as you can get.

BooGTS

This is timely because I built my own retrofits and I just dunked them - not enough to hurt them or affect output, but there is mud in the very bottom of the housing now.

From what I've been able to gather, a good 35w HID will put out 16000 lumens. The morimoto puts out 9800 - likely the maximum and LEDs do fade over time. Maybe HIDs do too, but they're easily replaceable. You have more than that given you have 50w units.

Point is, I don't think you're going to be happy with them compared to the HIDs you've already got.

For someone who has sealed beam halogens right now...well, this is a no brainer for $150.

thatXJguy

HIDs fail a lot too. I always see cars with 1 HID and 1 nothing or 1 HID and 1 Halogen because they're so unreliable. LED are very solid state and seem to have long service life.

16,000 lumen sounds very over-rated. Most aftermarket headlights push about 5,000 true LM.

mschi772

Lumens mean nothing if that light isn't being directed to the areas it is needed most. Again, a good pattern is more than just a sharp cutoff.

A sharp cutoff is not a guarantee of a quality pattern.

The measure of lumens is also one of the most abused measures for marketing headlights. Companies are regularly disingenuous about how much light is realistically provided by their products.

Too many lumens in a bad pattern not only does you no good, but that's that much light that could be dazzling oncoming traffic.

USN_JeepXJ

Let me start by saying that these are definitely on par if not better than the big name LED headlights on the market and would typically be priced as such. Morimoto is selling them at a reduced price due to a manufacturing defect (they are not plug and play, some modification is necessary) and they will probably only be available for a limited time. Hopefully Morimoto is redesigning them but for the time being they are not listed on their site. Morimoto is a fairly well known and trusted name in the aftermarket manufacturing mostly HID retrofit products. Other than the obvious fitment issue, they are very well built! The packaging was impressive:



Next to a Truck-lite. Take note of the corner circumference difference. This will be dealt with later.



I had to cut a notch in the buckets to avoid pinching the wiring:



I removed some material from the heat sink to get them to seat properly in the XJ buckets:



I then had to rework the corners:



I also had to remove some material around the inner edge of the retainer rings to make them slide over the lens:



Daytime:



Night:



The light output is much fuller than the TL pattern. The light is even brightness throughout with no hot spots. The cutoff is very crisp with a slight yellow hue at the transition. It absolutely rivals if not outperforms the factory bi-zenons on my SRT. I highly recommend them as long as you're not afraid of grinding them down a bit to fit.



Truck-Lite beam pattern for reference. its hard to see but there are hot spots in the center of the pattern and the rest of the light is dimmer:

thatXJguy

Just as I thought, they look like they have some nice quality to them. Enjoy!

investinwaffles

USB Jeep - you rock for posting all the details.

I am going to order a set of the blemish ones and sell my Bi-Xenon retrofit if it ends up working out.

Safe to say that your are keeping the morimotos instead of the Trunk Lites?

USN_JeepXJ

Yup! The pictures don't do them justice. The light output is far superior to the TL LEDs (and I've always been a big fan of the TL's). The only downside is that they are made in China as apposed to the US like the TLs. I'll have to survive with that knowledge but the Morimotos are staying!

I ended up creating a headlight harness w/ relays (similar to the Putco harness) as I was having a problem with some stray voltage (like 1.2V on the low beam) and that was causing a single LED on one of the lights to illuminate anytime the ignition was on. I'm sure the problem was present with the TL's also but I just never noticed it. I was also having a problem with the headlight delay circuit not fully turning off if I let the headlight delay kick in after shutdown. The harness I created today solved those problems completely!

thatXJguy

The advantage to the Trucklites is that they use low-power LEDs and have very powerful reflectors. As a result, they draw significantly less power. JW Speaker and other off-brands that use projector-style LED output are using high-power LEDs, which draw a lot more juice.

The fact that Trucklite uses reflectors is the main reason for their less-than optimal and scattered light output, but you really can't beat the razor-sharp focus of a glass ball.

investinwaffles

Damn autocorrect. Obviously meant USN

Yeah, I had the same problem with my HID ballasts till I pulled the fog-light relay. What did you do to get rid of the stray voltage (as far as harness goes)? Just a simple relay (mine seems to still trigger with the "phantom" voltage on the circuit), so I have to go full high-beam to fully turn the relay/ballasts off
I kind of liked it because I could run it as a DRL but never could figure out a way around it other than maybe a resistor to eat up some voltage on the trigger wire for the relay

I pulled up behind a white range rover on my way home tonight, and the cutoff from my Bi-xenon projectors looks just pure awesome with the thick blue cutoff. Gonna miss that for sure, but the LED headlights look like they are fully waterproof which is worth the change...

Is the color temp actually ~6000K (bluish)? Wish they went with 5000K instead, 6K is a bit too blue in the winter when its snowing at night but 5000K is not great either

Proper relay wired to the battery exactly for that reason. It was a terrible design to run full current through the actual headlight switch (which is why the PO melted the previous one with higher wattage sealed beams)

USN_JeepXJ

I made my own Putco style harness with 12 gauge wiring and 2 relays. The stray voltage is not enough to trigger the relays so it works perfectly. I did not have factory fog lamps so I'm not sure where the stray voltage was coming from. Strangely it did go away if i went to hi-beams. I dug into the factory harness looking for the fog trigger wire but couldn't find anything. I don't even have the wiring for the 2 fog light relays. They are just blank spots in the power distribution center. So who knows. But the harness fixed it and now it works as it should.

The color temp is not correct on TRS. The box claims 5500K and I'd be willing to bet they are more towards 5000K. They are pure white with very little blue to the color.

andrewmp6

The lights look better then i thought they would,Let us know in 6 months to a year how you like them.

rzldzl

jw speaker 8900's draw 2.6 amps.

mschi772

Specifically, at 12 V DC, JW's draw 2.2/2.6 amps low/high beam, and TL's draw 1.8/3.6 amps low/high beam.

2.2/2.6 is hardly "a lot more juice" than 1.8/3.6. I wonder where you ever even got the idea that they were very different since both companies make the electrical specs of their products known.