CovertRussian's 05 LGT Build Thread

Whiteline bushings turn out to be a garbage. Big surprise.

The SuperPro is similar story (garbage). The spacers tend to get crushed/broken. Have you checked yours lately?

LED bulbs have finally caught up and surpassed halogen bulbs in brightness in halogen headlight housings. It took a while, because you can't just throw a bunch of LED's on a bulb and expect it to work correctly in a halogen housing. Which will produce scattered, hotspot-less beam pattern, making it completely unusable on dark wet roads and to top it off it will blind oncoming traffic.

After couple months of searching, I finally decided to go with the Hikari H7 kit, the cheaper $37 one on Amazon. I really wanted a fanless, lowprofile setup, but H7 seems to be a fairly unpopular bulb for LED's, thus I had a hard time finding ones that fit that criteria. BulbFacts.com has been instrumental in helping me find the right bulb for the projector housing, for example: while BeamTech's work great on my reflector G20, they produced subpar beam patterns in projector housings.

LED Specific Design Criteria:

First important design for LED's to work well in halogen housings is the diode location and spacing, they need to located around the same spot as the original filament. The thickness of the bar, that separates the two sides of LED's, cannot be too thick either or you'll have a big dark spot. While these Hikari's are not the thinnest, they are miles ahead of LED's from even 2 years ago.

The next very important design is a removable mounting plate that also allows for 360* rotation of the LED! Removable mounting plate makes installation a breeze, and 360* rotation makes it possible to fine tune the hot spot. More on that later though. As you can see this Hikari kit met that criteria too. I also tested a different brand, which only retained the halogen orientation, and I couldn't get a useful beam pattern out of them at all.

With that out of the way, can begin the installation:

Testing out the polarity of the wires (black is wire is negative, red wire is positive on my car) and brightness of the bulb:

LED Mounting bracket removed and installed, once again this is an important feature otherwise the retaining spring wont clear the LED's heatsink/fan body, requiring you to bend the clips to get it to fit right. Notice that Hikari uses a metal bracket too, this insures proper fitment, though I've had plastic brackets LED's install fine too.

LED simply just goes in and twists into place:

That's it for install, now the LED tilt position needs to be tuned for best beam pattern. With these Hikari's, when you install the LED into the mounting bracket and click it once it will be at the same tilt as the halogen bulb. You can see the middle bar creating a dark spot, this actually helped me visually see angle of the LED it self. This orientation produced a bit of a scattered beam pattern, with no definite hot spot. If you zoom in you'll see a drawn on black outline, of the halogen bulb beam pattern. Note that car is parked at an angle in these (no other way to get to my garage):

I rotated the bulb until I saw the best beam pattern and hot spot, what do you know, the projector likes the LED's to be perfectly horizontal (LED's facing left and right), this causes the light to be be reflected back against the sidewalls of the reflector, not against the ceiling or floor of the reflector. Since projectors have the cut off shield in front of the reflector, it would block most of the light created from LED's facing up and down.

In this picture, I focused on the hot spot to better show the beam pattern, but it does make the LED look dimmer then it really is.

Now a side by side comparison of Osram 65w Halogen vs Hikari H7 LED, this time focusing on the door. This really shows how much brighter these LED's are, and that's compared to the brighter 65w Osrams!

I really like the color temperature of these bulbs too, they are very white with no hint's of blue, getting rid of the yellow makes the car look newer too:

Notice that the fog's were off, that's because they look ugly when compared to the 5-6k temperature bulbs (I haven't found an H3 LED that's worth a penny):

Update! Some Night Time Pictures:

Here's a night shot in a poorly lit parking lot:

Dark backroad shot, low beam only:

Dark Backroad, high beam on too, notice that it's barely noticeable

Finally, the real reason why I did this conversion:

The wattage savings are enormousness with LED's, headlight and foglight bulbs are the biggest electricity consumers, thus replacing them was the first priority. This was measured with the car idling at about 14.2v:

To get watts, you simply multiply Amps by Volts, in this case we went from 69.6 watts to 18.5 watts per bulb! That's 102 watts per hour saved total, just from low beam lights. While this might not seem like much, let do some math on how it translates fuel economy:

I drive about 125 City miles a week, now we can't calculate watt HOUR usage based on miles alone, we need to find the amount of TIME you spent driving those miles. For me, since I do 100% city driving, that's about 265 minutes with medium levels of traffic. We now need to calculate how many gallons of fuel using those low beams for 265 minutes would translate to...

Going really deep into the Math:

To further get everything on the same scale we need to convert fuel BTU's to Watts. A Gallon of E10 fuel has 111,836 BTU's which is equivalent to 32,780 Watt Hours. Internal Combustion Engines are 20% efficient at best, at converting fuel into watts, thus we only have 6,556 usable watt hours out of each gallon of fuel. Finally we get to the alternator, which is about 50% efficient at converting rotational movement into actual Watts, which leaves us with only 3,278 watt hours per gallon of fuel!

With my Halogen bulbs, I would use 614 watts during that weekly trip, that translates to an extra 0.187 gallons used just by the low beam lights! With the new LED's I would use 163 watts during that same trip, which translates to extra 0.050 gallons used. Are you starting to see the significance now, because this doesn't even include any other halogen bulbs in the car.

Now lets calculate the MPG Difference:

My baseline fuel consumption with minimum headlight usage (about 30min at 290whrs, since it's hard to get headlight-less runs in the winter) was 6.069 gallons over those 125 miles, giving me 20.58mpg. With Halogen low beam headlight bulbs on 100% of the time (hello DRL's!), that would be about 19.96mpg, but with LED low beam bulbs, it would be about 20.41mpg!

This is why using full power DRL's is so bad for fuel economy too. HowStuffWorks calculated 2 million gallons per day wasted on DRL's if DRL's were mandatory in America. I disabled DRL's a long time ago, mainly to save on bulb life, but now I know I've been saving a good amount of money on gas savings too.

Now to back this up with some real world data, I did do an MPG test right after that 20.58mpg test, with lights always on. I got 19.06mpg with fairly similar ambient temps and driving styles. I did have fog lights on during this test and we do have to add in all the accessory lights too, thus it's about 294 watts per hour, or about 1,298 watts used over 265 minutes. My calculator says that I should have gotten 19.32mpg, but I'm not able to account for all variables (especially the intermittent lights like the brakes (~60 Watts) and turn signals (~40 Watts).

Next week I'll begin MPG testing with just about all bulbs replaced with LED's (more posts to come on switching those out.) We'll see how the real world MPG goes for the LED retrofit project .

i replaced all my external non-headlight bulbs with sylvania zevo bulbs, except the license plate (too bright even with the non zevo). the rear side lights were the best to replace due to the heat/melting of the lens.

what color bulb? didn't see it mentioned anywhere. edit: oh, you did say 5 to 6k. happen to know more specific? surprised they aren't 4 to 5k if they aren't blue.

i replaced all my external non-headlight bulbs with sylvania zevo bulbs, except the license plate (too bright even with the non zevo). the rear side lights were the best to replace due to the heat/melting of the lens.

I looked at Zevo's, but they are a bit pricey and not the brightest, but they are probably a safer bet to go with.

I replaced even the license plate bulbs, I like the white more then yellow and they are not THAT bright. I replaced all but turn signals, simply don't want to deal with hyper flashing fixes yet.

what color bulb? didn't see it mentioned anywhere. edit: oh, you did say 5 to 6k. happen to know more specific? surprised they aren't 4 to 5k if they aren't blue.

Amazon listing claims 6k, Bulbfacts said they are at 5800k.

Interestingly enough Bulbfacts say that they draw 23.9w a little higher then what I measured, wonder why, could be my amp meter, or my car just uses less ha.

...

 

Now if I could find a switch between them... or... hold on.

Low profile OBD2 Y splitter

Boom! That's exactly what I need! I can leave the AP port plugged in, but the AP itself unplugged, and run BTSSM for my daily monitoring, without switching cables!

edit: there's more than a few of these, so i am reading the reviews before buying one...

It sounds like one needs to have the flashing cable wire disabled though. Which my scangauge might not even have so might not be a problem.

 

Let us know which one you decide on and I'll get it too.

Following up on this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U11NQW2

iKKEGOL Ultra Low Profile Left or Right Angle OBD2/OBDII Y Splitter

I picked this OBD2 Y cable and have been using it for about 3 weeks with no issues. It powers the APV3 fine, and works great with BtSSM via a VAG-COM cable.

I did try running both the AP and BtSSM, which from my understanding theoretically should _not_ work, and it didn't work. The AP was on, and I plugged in the VAG-COM cable to my BtSSM phone. The AP briefly flickered and the values all reset to zero, while BtSSM was stuck on "querying ECU". Powering off the AP (still plugged in) allowed BtSSM to fire up.

...Osram 65w Halogen vs Hikari H7 LED...

Thanks for guinea pigging this. I've been on the baller Osram 65W since not long after buying this car in 2012. With DRLs yanked I've gotten well over 2 years per set (might actually be closer to 3 years than 2) with me driving about 22K per year. They seem to be nearly unobtanium now, and I see that the vendor who used to be the main source for them is trying real hard with the marketing language to convince people that a 55W Vosla bulb might be a remotely suitable replacement. Shyeah right.

I've been happy enough with them to have never felt the need to mess with HID conversions in the intervening years, but still, my beam pattern gets swamped by the more modern vehicles as I pass them on the highway. At $37 I might give these LEDs a go in springtime, assuming yours are still holding up.

Got a pic of these projecting down a dark road?

I didn't notice that big of a difference going from stock 55w to Osram 65w's, I wouldn't go out of my way to get them if I have to get halogen's again, but maybe my hazed headlights were to blame. My Osram's have been on the car for about 4 years, and close to 40k miles, but with no DRL's, and I sparsely leave them on during the day.

My Hikari set came out just under $34, they have a 10% discount if you use "BULBFACT" code, cheaper then buying silverstars and will be worth it if they last 1 year :-D

Grabbed some night time pictures for you...

Here's a night shot in a poorly lit parking lot:

Dark backroad shot, low beam only:

Dark Backroad, high beam on too, notice that it's barely noticeable

What I noticed was a big difference when I was forced to downgrade from the 65w Osram bulbs back to 55w bulbs. Now I'm really kicking myself for not stocking up on them before they were discontinued.

LEDs are appealing, and from the sounds of it the Hikari seem to have managed to get the positioning correct so they're not too bad in the OEM projectors. Unfortunately the additional lumen output is a bit of a downside for me. If they matched the 65w, sure, but I have a hard enough time with a blast of new Acura low-beams, last thing I want is to be that guy blinding everyone else :/

The bulbs are the least of my worries now, I've got a stalling issue I need to pay someone to track down

just for clarity, when you say that your bulbs like to be horizontal, does that mean with one led up and one led down? or leds facing left and right?

Good question! LED's should be facing left and right. This causes the light to be be reflected back against the sidewalls of the reflector, not against the ceiling or floor of the reflector.

The reason any other orientation doesn't work as well is due to the cut off shield in front of the reflector, it will block most of the light generated by that LED diode.

http://www.evo-blr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/how-projector-headlights-work-1024x844.png

I didn't notice that big of a difference going from stock 55w to Osram 65w's, I wouldn't go out of my way to get them if I have to get halogen's again, but maybe my hazed headlights were to blame.

The biggest difference is that the Osrams really filled out the pattern of the stock projectors, more even light without the dead spots, plus there's just more of it. Also, even with DRLs yanked, I got poor life from stock 55w bulbs. IIRC one set gave me less than 6 months and 10K miles, versus 2-3 years and 40-50K miles from the Osrams.

I'm due to re-clear my headlights pretty soon. The method of using Varathane cut with mineral spirits lasted me well enough (first signs of flaking after ~14 months, now looking pretty scraggly at 18 months) that I'll probably just do that again. That same coating is still going strong on wifey's MDX, but she doesn't drive anywhere near the mileage I do.

Thanks for the pics. The dark road low-beam only shot, is that perhaps appearing brighter on screen than your eyes see IRL, or is it pretty close? I ask because the road signs and a portion of the double-yellow line appear more blown-out (exposure wise) than I've seen when driving HID/LED lit cars.

The biggest difference is that the Osrams really filled out the pattern of the stock projectors, more even light without the dead spots, plus there's just more of it. Also, even with DRLs yanked, I got poor life from stock 55w bulbs. IIRC one set gave me less than 6 months and 10K miles, versus 2-3 years and 40-50K miles from the Osrams.

Interesting! What brand/model of bulb were you using with 55w bulbs? Sylvania has "Long Life" bulbs for accessory lights, I wonder if the same exists for headlight bulbs too?

I'm due to re-clear my headlights pretty soon. The method of using Varathane cut with mineral spirits lasted me well enough (first signs of flaking after ~14 months, now looking pretty scraggly at 18 months) that I'll probably just do that again. That same coating is still going strong on wifey's MDX, but she doesn't drive anywhere near the mileage I do.

14 months is still little short, not that different then the TurtleWax and similar kits. I had mine redone at Subaru, using their official kit, so we'll see how long they last .

Thanks for the pics. The dark road low-beam only shot, is that perhaps appearing brighter on screen than your eyes see IRL, or is it pretty close? I ask because the road signs and a portion of the double-yellow line appear more blown-out (exposure wise) than I've seen when driving HID/LED lit cars.

It's actually brighter in person. I had to focus the camera against the beam on the road, which made it slightly darker. When I tried focus it against something darker, the picture was too blurry.

As for road signs, I noticed this with LED's on my reflector housing car too. ~6k colored lights really light up the reflective material on signs and vehicles. A roadwork truck lit up like a Christmas tree as he was getting onto an interstate ramp, where I was already at in the left lane. Same applies to people wearing those reflective jackets, I could instantly tell that it was a road work person and safely avoid them.

Not sure what brand of 55w came in the car when I bought it but IIRC they were both dead in 3-4 weeks with the DRLs. Put in ordinary bulbs from my FLAPS, probably garden variety Sylvanias (definitely NOT Silver Stars as they had a reputation for short life). I promptly yanked the DRLs and that set of bulbs still died way too soon, thus leading me to find the Osrams.

I agree 14 months is not as long as I'd like the clearing job to last, but my car is doing 70-80 mph about half the time that the engine is running. Getting blasted with road grit/gravel, rain, or whatever else takes a toll. Wifey's lives outside in the elements full time and the coating lasts much longer, presumably because it's not getting constantly highway blasted. With the regular 3M polishing kit, and no real coating/sealing layer of significant thickness, the lenses started looking crappy again after 6-8 months, so 14-18 months is significantly better. Not sure what would last longer, other than $buying new housings$.

Those LEDs do look pretty insanely bright. Will be ordering a set soon.

EDIT: It appears they may be temporarily out of stock on the H7s as I don't see that option listed.

Were you able to get the rear housing covers back on after installing the LEDs, or do you run without them?

Interesting, that's really odd, I wonder if it's a bulb or electrical issue. My '12 Outback is on stock 55w H7's too and is doing just fine so far.

As for headlight restoration, you might wanna consider using paint protection film, it's UV resistant and should last a lot longer:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHfOo8Nc7bM]Restore Neglected Headlights to BETTER THAN NEW Condition - YouTube[/ame]

As for the cover, I was able to fit it on, but it's definitely pushing on the LED fan cage. But the metal cage does step out a bit, I think they did it to prevent 100% air restriction. Supposedly they are rated for being enclosed in a headlight housing, also the fans are silent on these.

Looks like the H7 kit is out of stock, I'm gonna keep an eye out for it too since I want a set for my Outback too. Though they headlight cover for Outback is more shallow, so might not fit.

It looks like they are back in stock. I skimmed over the bulbfacts site and see that they recommend the "Hikari Ultra". I don't see the kit you selected reviewed. Is there a particular reason you picked the $37 kit over the $69 or $89 kits?

Just curious. I'm going to pull the trigger on the $37 kit since my passenger light just went out anyway and its not that much more than regular bulbs.

BTW thanks for this thread and all the others you have out there. This is my first turbo subaru and I have learned a great deal from them.

It looks like they are back in stock. I skimmed over the bulbfacts site and see that they recommend the "Hikari Ultra". I don't see the kit you selected reviewed. Is there a particular reason you picked the $37 kit over the $69 or $89 kits?

Just curious. I'm going to pull the trigger on the $37 kit since my passenger light just went out anyway and its not that much more than regular bulbs.

Confirmed, H7's are back in stock. Make sure you have "Projectors" selected, Hikari Standard kit shows up as #4 in that list. For Reflectors it's further down, you have to click on "Load all Kits Tested".

The Hikari Ultra seems to be lower profile, but I couldn't justify the price increase, especially when I'm trying to SAVE money by reducing fuel consumption . I almost bought the Katana kit, but it was out of stock for H7, and was also ~$10 more, so in the end $33 was the right price for Hikari Standards. Plus Katana's use 10w more per bulb, so that's another reason Hikari Standard won in my opinion.

With that said, I'm not married to these Hikari's and for fitment reasons I might go with another brand for my Outback (since it has a shallower dust cap).

BTW thanks for this thread and all the others you have out there. This is my first turbo subaru and I have learned a great deal from them.

Thanks for the kind words, glad that my useless rambling is not always so useless

Rear Folding Seat Retrofit from 2007-09 Sedan's

 

I've been wanting folding seats ever since I bought the car in late 2013

OMG. I cannot believe it took me nearly 12 years and this thread for me to realize my 07 has folding rear seats. Dealer showed me the arm rest pass through, and said the rears never folded, so I figured that was that.

Just a little update, it's been ~30F and I noticed my idle car idling up then down while standing at a stop light. Wideband is showing AFR's being jumpy between 14.0 and 15.8. Hooked up the laptop and saw AF1 correction hunting around.

Only thing that I changed recently is LED's, but that doesn't mean they are at fault yet either. It could be another vacuum leak or maybe TGV deletes finally showing their negative signs, but at the same time it could also be LED's interfering with other electronics.

My first gas mileage test with LED's is also not good, less then with even halogens, but once again I'm not ready to blame the leds, because a vacuum leak would explain it too. I just can't remember if I had these symptoms 2 weeks ago when it was just as cold, if I did then it's something else. Just wanted to give people a warning, just incase it is LED related.

Update! Issue was NOT LED related, my air filter fell off due to wind knocking the hood stick and hood off.

On another annoying note, car is back to consuming oil, the seal might be shot again, or maybe the oil cooler it self is leaking, or maybe my piston rings are going out.

Using oil is better then burning it...these things do use oil.

What brand gas did you use during the test ?

Over the years I have found that some gases and a mixture of some brands get better mpg. It's so variable especially this time of year, that I find it hard to believe you can expect to see a slight increase in mpg from the small amount of energy a head light uses.

Its a great exercise but I wouldn't spend to much time worrying about mpg increase from light bulbs.

After all, if mpg was important to you...you would not be driving this kind of car.

I'm more interested in the plug and play aspect of LED light's. If I had to do any labor to make them work, IMO its not worth it. But I'm lazy.

I will say that I do appreciate your knowledge and all the help you give us.

Keep it up. Your a valuable member here.

Using oil is better then burning it...these things do use oil.

True, but I'm not sure which one it is for sure, though not seeing oil clouds is a positive sign.

What brand gas did you use during the test ?

 

Over the years I have found that some gases and a mixture of some brands get better mpg. It's so variable especially this time of year, that I find it hard to believe you can expect to see a slight increase in mpg from the small amount of energy a head light uses.

 

Its a great exercise but I wouldn't spend to much time worrying about mpg increase from light bulbs.

 

After all, if mpg was important to you...you would not be driving this kind of car.

I use a ~5yo Shell Gas station that's right off the highway, not far from my house. I use 93 only and use the same exact pump, unless it's down, then I use the one right next to it. When testing I will wait for "my pump" to free up.

Typically I see 0.2 mpg variation week to week at most, if the temps stay similar. That's only 1% variation, so even a 0.5mpg gain/loss is very noticeable to me.

To me it's a numbers game, I'm not as concerned about cost savings as doing the impossible (turbo AWD that gets good mpg!), which makes it fun for me.

If my math is correct, LED's will provide a pretty good MPG increase (compared to always on), but more importantly, having to have headlights on for rain/drive home wont impact hurt my MPG as badly when testing something else.

I'm more interested in the plug and play aspect of LED light's. If I had to do any labor to make them work, IMO its not worth it. But I'm lazy.

That's my allure of LED's too, I've installed a couple HID kits before and hated them over time, LED's are less work and are cheaper.

I will say that I do appreciate your knowledge and all the help you give us.

 

Keep it up. Your a valuable member here.

Thanks for the kind words and thanks for appreciating more technical topics. I would get bored with the forums if there wasn't enough fun/challenging stuff happening (spoiler alert: this is why I hate Facebook groups, same simple questions get asked over and over again).

Found the issue and it's not LED related!

On Wednesday I had my hood open and wind knocked it down, when the hood and hood stick fell, it knocked loose the filter! I reinstalled it last night, right before driving home, and since then my AFR's are back to being rock solid 14.7-14.8.

It never ceases to amaze me with how sensitive our MAF setups are. Removing the tiny filter restriction caused the AFR's to jump around by 2 whole AFR points (14.0 to almost 16.0)!

There is a thought that some of the oil usage is caused by the aging turbo seals. If it's the exhaust seal, the oil burns off before you see it.

Could be yeah, though my turbo is still fairly new so I hope not!