Kubota conversion LED lamp bulbs

Fallon · Dec 25, 2016

JRobyn said:
Conversely, an LED that is designed as a halogen replacement will perform just fine in a housing designed for the halogen that's being replaced.

I'll disagree with that. LEDs need a large surface area for a heatsink. Halogen housings aren't designed to support those large heatsinks. Also the focal point for halogens is designed around a bright bulb. LEDs are designed around many dispersed lesser brightness LED transistors. So the focus & light throw of a LED in a halogen housing will be poor even if it can pump out equal lumens.

It's actually illegal to stuff LEDs or HID bulbs in a halogen housing on a car as improper focus will blind oncoming drivers, as well as providing poor quality light. Not that it's terribly relevant for tractors.

daugen · Dec 26, 2016

But don't halogens run much hotter, like many times hotter?
I thought that's why one needed the extra lamp volume for halogens, for clearances and to allow the inside enough air/space to absorb some heat.
halogens were the best thing since sliced bread after PAR lamps, "sealed beams"....but they sucked more amperage I thought.

Geez I'm thinking I need some purple LEDs for my lamps. Groovin'.....
oops, showing my age

Yup, I want that LED designed as a halogen bulb.
Now I have a pidoodle. Anyone grow up calling them that? (cars with only one headlight)
Actually hard to see the oem lamps or lack of them, the LEDs are so much more powerful.

Someone has to make these...the whole world is converting to LEDs. Am going to start writing down dimensions, starting with Messick's bulbs.

the lamps in question are the ones up high

aczlan · Dec 26, 2016

The problem is that a halogen light bulb is that it runs at over 500F (per: Halogen lamp - Wikipedia ) whereas a LED has to stay below a lower temperature (lets say 200F?) and it takes a much bigger heatsink to keep the LED cool enough to survive.
So, the housings could handle the heat, but the LEDs themselves would overheat.
I would replace those fixtures with something like Amazon.com: EVERGROW(R) 2x 18W 6",7" inch LED Flood Work Light Working Lamp Car Boat SUV Truck Driving Rectangle ATV 12V 24V Stainless Steel Bracket: Automotive or Amazon.com: 7" 36W LED Light Bar Off Road 36lm Spot Beam 3 degree Working Lighting Cree for Heavy Duty car pickup Vehicles SUV UTV Jeep Truck: Home Improvement

Aaron Z

94BULLITT · Dec 26, 2016

aczlan said:
The problem is that a halogen light bulb is that it runs at over 500F (per: Halogen lamp - Wikipedia ) whereas a LED has to stay below a lower temperature (lets say 200F?) and it takes a much bigger heatsink to keep the LED cool enough to survive.
So, the housings could handle the heat, but the LEDs themselves would overheat.
I would replace those fixtures with something like Amazon.com: EVERGROW(R) 2x 18W 6",7" inch LED Flood Work Light Working Lamp Car Boat SUV Truck Driving Rectangle ATV 12V 24V Stainless Steel Bracket: Automotive or Amazon.com: 7" 36W LED Light Bar Off Road 36lm Spot Beam 3 degree Working Lighting Cree for Heavy Duty car pickup Vehicles SUV UTV Jeep Truck: Home Improvement

Aaron Z

The cab is curved to fit the OEM lights. Nothing else will look right.

downsizingnow48 · Dec 26, 2016

There are 35w H3 halogens for automotive and tractor applications. Would probably drop the current draw enough while providing useful light.

daugen · Dec 26, 2016

downsizingnow48 said:
There are 35w H3 halogens for automotive and tractor applications. Would probably drop the current draw enough while providing useful light.

I wish, thanks. These are 35 watt halogens. It's the draw of the halogen at 35 watts that seems to be the tipping point. I put in an 80w led as the actual draw was much less. but the housing
was silly big for the application.
Maybe a 20? not sure they make less powerful ones that are plug and play.

Yes it would be nice to have a little more light, though in the front the new center 4500 lumen bar has both fog and spotlight built in,
and is hard to look at even in the daytime. The rear new led lamps, which I chose to add in addition to the oem lamps. are wonderfully bright.
I put them on when I run the local roads, plus a flashing safety light. So many people texting or dialing or high on meth or heroin frankly. Or yelling at their kids or looking for
something on the front seat. Maybe the extra lights will catch their attention, maybe not. We just had a tractor and bushhog absolutely totaled locally when a guy driving a truck
allegedly fell asleep and hit the rig alongside the road. That sure does remind me to put my seatbelt on.

JRobyn · Dec 26, 2016

Fallon said:
I'll disagree with that. LEDs need a large surface area for a heatsink. Halogen housings aren't designed to support those large heatsinks. Also the focal point for halogens is designed around a bright bulb. LEDs are designed around many dispersed lesser brightness LED transistors. So the focus & light throw of a LED in a halogen housing will be poor even if it can pump out equal lumens.

It's actually illegal to stuff LEDs or HID bulbs in a halogen housing on a car as improper focus will blind oncoming drivers, as well as providing poor quality light. Not that it's terribly relevant for tractors.

Did you LOOK at the link for the SBL LED H3 replacements?? They are designed with a massive heatsink that is lightweight - no support problems with the thin plastic OEM halogen housings on my Polaris. They are designed with just TWO LEDS at the same position of a halogen filament.

Are you possibly in the business of creating LED retrofit housings to match OEM? IIRC, standard replacement housings for Kubota (and most vehicles) are outrageously expensive already. I can only imagine what it would cost to have someone design and fabricate a "dedicated LED" housing. I doubt that many end users would pony up many hundreds of $ just to be able to have a LED-dedicated replacement housing that might slightly out perform an OEM retrofit.

Fallon · Dec 26, 2016

No, but I did a ton of research a couple years ago retrofitting HID projectors into the OEM housing on my Tacoma. My HIDs focus perfectly & have a cutoff just below the car in front of me so they don't blind people.

I've pulled the new front cab halogens on my L4060 & am putting in a 43" led light bar up front & 52" in the rear.

Brackets are all finally fabbed up & just need paint. Going to be running a new circuit directly from the battery with appropriate fuses & relays to power them.

The 52" is suppose to pull 300 watts, but when I hook it to my bench power supply & fiddle with voltage between 12 & 14v, it tops out at 170 watts. When you look at the light bar it has about a dozen 52" long find 2-3" tall, pretty in line with most LED lights. Thats massive surface area very close to the LEDs. When you compare it to the really long flexy strap on those headlights, there is no question it's a lot more surface area much closer to the heat source. The length of those straps really makes the part next to the bulb do most of the work.

I gave up on my headlights right away. To hard to fit in a decent LED & impossible to properly do it in the OEM housing. The killer for me is, even if I did it right, I'd just blind myself with glare off the back of the bucket or loader & still get no light infront. So I went with something mounted in a better location.

In addition to running hotter, halogens put out their light on a tiny filliment. Even if you crammed a pile of LEDs right next together, they are more bulky than that filament. So ignoring the fact they would cook themselves at that density, they would be emitting light hitting different parts of the reflector & coming out of the housing in a very non optimal pattern. HID bulbs are about the same as halogens can't even work in a halogen housing terribly well because they emit light from a different part of the bulb than the halogen filaments.

If you've ever been blinded by a vehicle with really blue headlights that weren't OEM, that is the reason. They stuffed a HID bulb into a halogen housing. It doesn't focus right so throws light everywhere even on low beams. Granted blinding oncoming drivers isn't really a tractor problem, but it does illustrate how light isn't focusing where it should be for proper illumination.