HID to LED conversion

Here you go! All the lights on the 2007 Prius are in good order now. It was easy to replace the passenger side fog light when I had the headlight out for the HID to LED conversion. I also found out that the HID ballasts are a source of the loud electrical hum in the front end. Hum is gone now that the ballasts are disconnected.

We ended with some opinions on how the LED chips should be oriented on the LED assys. 8 chips on one side of the light and 8 chips 180 degrees opposite on the other side, and clockable by using the small allen wrench that came with the lights. For this installation, the driver side has the chips at 6 and 12 o'clock, and the passenger side has the chips at 3 and 9 o'clock. The garage door I used in the first test has a glossy surface and I felt that made it difficult to really tell how the pattern looked. So I taped a sheet (pink) to the garage door to give a nice matte finish. I think I like the passenger side better, but not enough to disassemble the lights and change the clocking. I also looked right at the low and high beams from about 50 yards and couldn't really tell any difference at all between the driver and passenger side. Definite difference between hi and low, though. I might try a drive by test with one of my kids driving the Prius and me in the Tacoma to see if anything looks odd.

HID to LED conversion

LED clocked 6 and 12 o'clock driver side, HI BEAMS , clocked 3 and 9 o'clock passenger side, against pink sheet on garage door.


LOW BEAMS with fog lights. This picture caught the windshield reflection.


The car was only about 5 feet from the door, and pointed slightly up hill, so the difference between hi and low beam is difficult to see, but there was a definite difference. I'll have to give it a try on the road and see how the look to another driver.

But overall, I love the lights and it was a really clean installation. I'd definitely recommend them. Some more detailed pics of the actual installation in another post.
Lloyd-ss

 

Here are some more detailed photos of the actual installation.

Remove this connector inside the big round cover to expose the two 3/16" blade terminals that you will hook the LED lights to. Just pry it out with a jewelers screw driver. It doesn't have any release clips. Observe the red-black polarity. You'll need to crimp new mating push-on terminals onto the pigtail supplied with the lights. No big deal.



Inserting the LED. LED element has been clocked to 3 and 9 o'clock from the square notch.



I had to bend this little spring tab to give clearance to the LED heat sink.



Since the "dead" HID HV connector will remain inside the headlight assy, I wrapped it with some electrical tape to keep it from vibrating too much.



Here it is. 10 pounds of poop in a 5 pound bag. At the very bottom of the pic, near the white ty-rap, you can see a tiny silver phillips head screw that is on the end of the new LED power supply, which is pushed down inside. The old connectors are all securely ty-rapped into place. The 2 new supply wires (red and black) for the LED power supply are plugged into the 2 existing blade terminals inside the big round cover. It all fits and it doesn't rattle, and its weather-tite. With the headlight assy all closed up, you can't tell if it has HID or LED.
AND, heaven forbid, if you ever want to switch back to HID, everything is still there.

I feel real lucky that I stumbled onto this LED replacement kit, and I hope this thread helps somebody else with there Gen2 HID nightmare.
Lloyd-ss​

 

Lucifer, thanks for the heads-up. But that does beg the question about all the LEDs that are sold as direct replacement for halogen headlights and fog lights. Maybe the enforcement of that regulation is more on a local level. These LEDs still fit the D4R socket and the right and left side are of the same type, soooooo.... we'll find out in two months.

 

Funny you should ask. Actually, the new LED headlights are performing flawlessly. They work 100% of the time. They are "normal" brightness, not super bright. You can see the difference between high and low beam. The color is pure white, with no blue cast. No trouble codes on the computer.

But an odd problem has popped up. We almost never use the radio, but the other day my wife informed me that when the LED lights are on, the FM stations all become static. AM is fine. My uneducated guess is that the little black power supply brick that came with the LEDs is some sort of DC to DC convertor with an oscillator with no filtering that puts out some sort of FM interference. To test it, I pulled my Tacoma, with FM playing, right up to the front of the Prius, Sure enough, when I got right next to the front of the Prius, my truck radio got staticy. No I have to figure out a filter or shield of some kind. I still like the lights.
Anybody have experience with this sort of thing?
Thanks, Lloyd

 

I got some hints about how to eliminate the RFI by using some ferrite filters, and possibly a couple of other things if needed. I'll get it fixed and let you know what had to be done. Should be cheap and easy......ha ha, I hope.

 

Ha ha, probably no worse than the old non-resistor type spark plug cables that would wreak havoc on everybody's radios. Maybe I should cruise around the grocery store parking lot on senior discount day and see if anything unusual happens. Oops! Forgot..... I am one of those seniors!

 

Bill, Everything works fine with the LED headlights and there are no error codes. The FM interference is the only problem, but there are lots of YouTube videos with ways to fix that problem. I'll be filtering through those and find one that works in this application. I honestly expect the solution to be very straightforward. Lloyd