No ballast and no bulbs. Just an LED for the high beam and one for the low beam. Not to mention some insanely good reflector housings.

Also, as mentioned above the flicker is not present on XJs. It has something to do with the JK wiring harness I believe.

 

I know the LEDs don't have ballast/bulbs. I didn't know if the person I quoted had a HID setup or something other than LED.

I'd love to pick up a set of the LED lights you just got but I have a bunch of other small mods I need to get done first! They look great.

 

I went wheeling with a guy last Saturday that had the Truck Lite LEDs in his TJ. I got a first hand look at them and they are nice and bright. He said that they are a little pricey but, well worth it! Once I seen just how bright they were, I am sold and will be ordering a set for the ol' XJ!

 

I thought about getting these but they are pretty pricey obviously. Can you take some photos where there are no lights. The ones you put up have street lights so its kinda hard to tell how far they really can go.

 

But seriously... how about organizing a group buy to save some money? $380-400 is just too salty to justify for my winter ride... They do look awesome

 

I don't believe that there is a ballast, at least not externally. I LOVE my trucklites. I can tell you that I had the harness when I had my H4's and fatbobs, I left the harness on since I had routed everything to be out of sight. If anyone is wondering whether or not to get these lights, don't. They are amazing with the light output, it is not annoying or bright and in your face like most aftermarket kits for HID's are. They are well crafted and thoughtful in their design

 

I'll post a For Sale thread in the appropriate section, but I have a pair of TruckLite LED's that I bought, installed, and am not as impressed with as I thought I'd be. I frequently drive back country roads and I really like having a well-lit field of view. I've also seen the Chinese half-assed attempt at HID's that include a cheap set of ballasts and 7000k bulbs glued into the back of some 7x6 plastic housings. Those look awful, they're illegal, and they're extremely annoying for other people on the road.

A few months ago I put together my own set of HID lamps with Bi-Xenon projectors. The internals were from TheRetroFitSource.com. This was my second set of housings from NorCalMR2.com- the first lamps I bought from them were only the low-beam (this was before they had the option of High/Low beam with the Pegasus housings). I also bought angel eyes, shrouds, and enough wire and relays to build a new headlamp harness. The light output is brighter than other factory HID setups, the cutoff line is crisp and level, and my favorite part: they're serviceable. I chose 4300k bulbs because blue and purple headlights are stupid.

This thread piqued my curiosity so I bought a pair from eBay member DriveTrain_America for $185/lamp. Shipping was free and really fast. My commute to and from work is before sunrise and after sunset so I was able to see how these TruckLite LED's perform both in the city and on a quick trip to some offroad trails in the mountains. Having used stock lamps, HID's, and LED's, here are the advantages(+) and disadvantages(-) of each headlight upgrade option, at least in my opinion:

HID
NorCalMR2 Pegasus Housings: $193
Apollo 2.0 Projector Shrouds: $45
Morimoto xbA LED Angel Eyes: $55
Morimoto3Five.SS Ballasts : $110 (35w)
MorimotoMini D2S2.0 Projectors: $110
Morimoto 3Five D2S bulbs: $45.00 (35W 4300)
Relays, wiring for harness: ~$40
+Brighter than any other 35w setup I've seen... in fact the 55w ballasts were only barely brighter
+Low beam: Bowl-shaped area of light that is even with a crisp cutoff line
+High Beam: Eye-shaped area of light- light doesn't start to taper off until about 75 yards
+Angel eyes for a Transformer look
+Low Amperage draw of about 12 amps
+Individual parts are replaceable
- High/Low beam electromagnetically-controlled shutter is susceptible to shock. A hard, abrupt bump in the road will make the shutter bounce.
- High bulb heat cooks the reflective surfaces- these lamps will probably last 3-5 years before I need to replace the bulbs and/or housings
-10-second warm-up time if the lamps haven't been on for more than ½ an hour.
-Some assembly required
-Some cutting of header panel required

LED
Truck-Lite 27450C Rectangular LED: $370
+Direct swap from stock lamps
+Low Beam: Thin, focused area of light (reminds me of the pattern of a spot-focused maglite)
+High beam is bright on objects even 100 yards away
+Really low amperage draw of about 5 amps
+Very durable housing and clear lens- these lamps would probably last 5-7 years on an XJ
+No warm-up time at all... you could host a strobelight party with these things
-Somewhat scattered cutoff line
-LED's are durable, but if anything happens to these lights, replacement is expensive
-High Beam: Only brighter than the low beam- doesn't seem to have much more coverage
-Both low and high beam don't have the flood effect that HID's do
-Strange look... may take some getting used to

The angle eyes could be subtracted from the price of the HID setup. They're just for looks, though I've found them useful as markers brighter than the parking lamps.

For those worried about the snow, they take about 15 minutes to get warm, but never get hot. Every light emits some amount of IR radiation. Whether or not these would be enough to melt snow is another story, but a solution I thought of is grip heaters for a motorcycle. They would change the lamp draw from ~5amps to ~15amps though. I think adhering these to the back of the lamps would keep them warm enough.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tusk-Grip-Heater-Warmer-ATV-Snowmobile-Motorcycle-Dirtbike-/111176035509?hash=item19e29bacb5&vxp=mtr#ht_1499wt _1083

In a nutshell, the HID has a better flooding light pattern, while the LED has a beam pattern than goes further but doesn't have as much coverage of the area in front of you.

I'll try to get around to swapping the LED's back out this weekend. Pictures rarely do justice for lighting because the camera often re-adjusts for the change in brightness, but I'll swap my HID's back in one at a time so I can take some side-by-side pictures for better comparison. Since I only used the LED's for two days I'll probably sell them for $20 off what I paid. I'm really interested in the LED headlamps from JW Speaker but they're almost twice the price. I certainly like the durability aspect of LED lamps, so if the pattern ever improves I might make the switch back.

I also missed the angel eyes- they turn on when I remote-start my XJ so they help me tell whether its running in the garage.

 

Almost sounds like you didn't aim the trucklites properly. My cutoff is crisp and clean and my high beams go way further than the lows

 

I agree, my cutoff is crisp as can be just like a projector lense and the high beams go much further than the lows.

 

I've adjusted them over the last two days so that the cutoff line is right at the top of a sedan's trunk in front of me. Not high enough that its shining through their back window, but not low enough that it still throws a beam far enough ahead. The up/down or left/right adjustment of the headlight buckets has nothing to do with how crisp the cutoff line is- when I get around to putting one of each in and snap some pictures you'll see what I mean. The HID cutoff is crisp- there's a definite area of light without any falloff at the edges. Unless I got a pair of defective lamps, the cutoff line just doesn't compare.

 

For what its worth I usually follow this guide.
http://danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html

Let me know if there's a different procedure for LED's.

 

Are they brighter than the pictures in Zingg's post? That's obviously brighter than factory but no where near oEM bi-xenon (I my personal experience). It might be just the pic. I know light is one of the hardest things to photograph.

 

I have read that there was an earlier generation of the Truck Lite LED lamps that were replaced by a second generation. They look the same from what I gather but perform differently. I don't know if there's a way of checking to see which ones you have but perhaps it's possible that you have the earlier generation? It's just a guess on my part but perhaps worth checking into. I am sure if you called Truck Lite they would have some way of verifying which generation you have.

The earlier ones didn't output light as well from what I heard.

 

Keep in mind that's with a crappy iPhone camera. In reality, they look a hell of a lot brighter and crisper. After posting, I looked back at them thinking people are going to get the wrong idea about them. But yeah, much brighter in reality

 

Anyone have experience with these in the fog?