ninebosox

Hi, have had my CT for one week so far and enjoying it.

Lots of good information on this site so I am reaching out again.

It was rainy here today so I put the auto climate control to 22 degrees Celsius but no heat came out. I had already driven for 30 mins on the highway so the ICE had been on. I had to turn the heat up to 28 to get any heat. Is this normal due to it being a hybrid?

Second question is about LED headlights. I have read some posts and know they are plug and play and not to get ones with fans. I tried some of the listed links in some potsts but they are all dead. Can someone point me to some they have bought and are happy with?

Thank you in advance.

TheRob

I can answer your second question. I have these fan less LED low beam lights. I’m actually really happy with them. Super simple to install and a really good price too. Definitely worth it.


And if you’re looking for LED fog lights. I have these.

Alla Lighting 2800lm Xtreme Super Bright H11 LED Bulbs Fog Light High Illumination COB-72 LED H11 Bulb H8 H16 H11 Fog Lights Lamp Replacement - 6000K Xenon White

spiral

I also have the fan-less (look very similar for the tower as TheRob's) that I got here (superbrightleds.com). A bit more expensive than TheRob's version, so since his work, go that route.

I drive a lot at night and was burning through bulbs like there was no tomorrow. Prolly spent $500 on bulbs over the years, so spending $70 seemed like a bargain. When i first installed them, though, I didn't realize they had polarity, so I connected them backwards and the didn't work, doh. Then saw polarity and have worked well for 2+ years. I haven't changed the fog lights...yet


As far as your heater, I can't say i've ever been impressed with the "auto" climate feature. I have had it on and started a hot car and seems like it barely blows any cool air, but when I switch over to just normal operation it works great and I can blast myself with as much air as I want. I do the same during the winter with the heat.

ninebosox

Thanks for the info.

The more expensive set say lifetime warranty so maybe worth the extra money?

E46CT

I would not recommend those plug in LED lights for constant-on critical-use low beam application. Poor performance and fire prone. High beam, short use, non-critical application is OK. I have extensive experience w/ deep lighting modifications since the year 2002. Many conversions (proper expensive ones) under my belt. I can go into great detail w/ pages and pages and pages upon why it's bad. I just recommend don't. If you want true LED, that's engineered for critical use, you will want proper OEM (or equivalent) hardware and it'll cost you. Its not that bad though. you can do a decent conversion for about $500. Which would smoke the living bleep out of those chintzy plug in crap everyone links you to. That's truly poor stuff. Truly. Objectively. Factually.

Since people are spending $500 over the years, do it right the first time and go for PROPER hardware with millions of dollars of R&D behind it. Not some little toy lights. Seriously.

My personal CT has proper OEM hardware. bi xenon. using german (OEM Grade) bulbs

spiral

tell us how you really feel! hahahaha.

What amount of time do you consider to be detrimental for our low-grade LEDs? Like I said, I was burning through bulbs and the ones I got have lasted over two years. But my night driving is generally on my hour commute home or just quick trips around the city. Only every once in a while will I travel late friday night (but never for longer than 4 hours).

I won't argue with you that the OEM headlights would blow the bleep out of the chinzy ones. I'm guessing they have a better spread of light. However, what exactly does an expensive, highly researched, set of LED's do differently from an electrical standpoint? LED's aren't anything special. So do they just dissipate heat better? Trying to google only seems to compare halogen/hid/led.

EDIT: I see Bi Xenon are HID headlights. I found OEM LED headlights for $400, but it just looks like the lens assembly.

E46CT

Where do I begin?

As I said I can write forever on this topic (if you dig around some, you can see some stuff I wrote) but long story short is the headlight needs to be built from the ground up for LED application (or rebuilt to house proper internals). Good lighting generates a lot of heat that can't be managed by the tiny heat sinks on these cheapie bulbs. That gives you an indication that these bulbs are simply too weak or don't have effective heat management.

A proper LED conversion (and HID conversion for that matter) requires opening up the headlight and tossing the stock projectors in the garbage and replacing it with other hardware. Which is what I've done. Twice. To two CTs. For proper lighting on the CT, you're going to need to gut and discard the stock headlight internals.

E46CT

By far the best, most cost-effective, and easiest to install solution for CT owners. Hands. Down.

ramenboy

welcome to the site!

yeah... i'm like jon snow when it comes to led/hid and lighting. i know nothing.

but in terms of the heater blowing cold, maybe just check that there's enough coolant in the radiator. if its low, car heaters tend to blow cool.

also, i agree w spiral. i don't think i've ever used the auto climate to any success. use the manual temp up, or down. it works fine for me that way

spiral

man @E46CT , you really piqued my interest on this LED discussion. I tried doing an advance search with you and LED/Headlight since you said you've written some stuff already and well frankly there are a lot of threads and would take a long time to sort through. Of the handful i looked through, I only saw #1 and #2 that you talk about it. So what I am gathering from those responses, you indicate that the plug in LEDs just don't provide enough light to which I can only infer makes them less safe to use when driving? Whereas the HID upgrade you did will provide enough light as a suitable upgrade.

I guess I can understand after watching a YT vid about LEDs how not all of them are created equal and how different headlight configurations (reflective vs projection) can make the LED light reacts differently. With an LED specific configuration I could understand a light beam improvement, and more powerful LEDs can project further.

Next I was thinking since LEDs are either Fan or Fan-less, maybe i would find heat related issues and should stay away, but nothing is really jumping out at me that heat is a huge problem. I guess I'm also not seeing a lot of general posts saying to stay away from LEDs entirely.

So is the answer that Bi-Xenon HID upgrade just improves visibility during night driving by being brighter? Cuz again, after two years, during my night drives the only visibility differences between all the halogens/LED that i've used, the LED just seems "whiter". I don't find myself struggling to see at night at all.

If you find an old thread where you get down to the nitty-gritty differences, please link it, I'd love to read it.

spiral

Though if this is you,

"But Mango, all HID is the same. It looks bright blue and bad ***! I look so gangster coming down the street with my slammed suspension and rap music playing. What's the diff, yo?"

i laughed with that line.

I think I'm starting to understand a bit more, though I'm not sure I ready to jump on the full on replacement from the ground up just yet. I completely get your point from that blog post. If your goal is to "improve" your headlights and make them optically the best they can be, it has to be done right with proper heat management. However, I'm still gonna stick my heals in and say if I'm just trying to avoid changing out factory halogen bulbs less frequently, LEDs seem to fit the bill. The light from an LED doesn't seem to be a step backwards compared to halogen and I would think if heat from the LEDs were leading to melting lenses or fires, it would be plastered everywhere.

E46CT

Fires are more of a concern with the more powerful LEDs that don't have enough cooling. Or when you've caused so much heat at the stock thin wiring that the insulation melts over time and arcs to ground. It's not a problem you'd realize right away but in 5-10 years time. You sell the car, next owner gets it, and the fire happens to them. One of the problems when buying older used cars is you don't know what the prior owner did to it, and a lot of problems and mysteries go unexplained. I've seen plenty of headlight related fires in the BMW community where people were jerking around w/ the headlights with mickey mouse mods. Heat does some interesting stuff to your car long-term...

headlight packages are designed by the manufacturers as a system. You can't change one thing without affecting the other. This is why LED plug ins are a bad idea. The stock halogen projector is just not designed with aftermarket LED plug in bulbs in mind. And vise versa. Sure you'll get light out in front of your car, but you'll have width or foreground, but never width, foreground, and distance. And that's before you start getting into carefully balanced color temp for eye fatigue.

All this may seem like a foreign concept to your typical saturday car modder who has seen pictures or has had friends who had installed LED bulbs with "great success." That "great success" is usually defined by "look, Dave! I have me some blue looking lights on the road! I can see stuff!"

That's not really how proper automotive lighting works though. Aside from all the other technical issues you introduce.

Just saying, go proper or just stay stock. There's no good in between.

ddonalds

I think running on eco turns the fan down and makes the thermostat system less responsive (to save battery / fuel). So if you are in Eco, you might notice a larger temp differential from the set point.