Never liked Halogen, LED’S look better and brighter.

I see lots of people discussing HID kits and angel eyes, but can I just replace the stock H7 halogens with LED’S? I know the halogens take 55w (manual says that's both high and low beam...) and the LED’S I'm looking at take anywhere between 55-80W.

Anything I need to be aware of?

 

They should be plug and play.

 

Just in case, I would try and find led's that draw at least a similar amount of power, to reduce possible long term stress on the charging/regulating system

 

LED should draw less power than the stock halogen or anything else.

 

I wrote that because I remember I heard of a case where led bulbs were suspected to cause r/r to prematurely die over long term from excess heat because they were drawing too little power. But then again wasnt my bike and dont know the details. I agree he/she should generally be fine

 

Just be careful where you get the bulbs from as a good fan / heatsink will protect the bulb and generally the better makes have better design to prevent excess scatter, in theory they should draw about half the power that the halogen, but once again would be make dependent.
A tested product and / or a recommendation of which type of build would be very helpful, unfortunately I have not done this change yet.
Keep us up t date of your choice and how they perform.
Cheers
Al

 

Should, but the OP already quoted them as the same to 25w higher draw possible.

 

wouldn't an "85w" led replacement bulb draw only like 10w in reality?

 

I personally just installed an H7 LED on my bike (954rr) and it seems to work just fine. It is 25W, but I did not measure it. I did it because I hope that it saves a bit of energy and thus less heat in the alternator.
However I'm looking for some more powersavings in the future.

The most important things to consider when replacing halogens with other bulbs:
- It is illegal: A headlight is made for a certain bulb. Anything withoout an E-branding is not suitable for using on the road. Replacing an halogen with LED suspends the E-branding.
I know all the details and I can explain further when requested.
- You can get away with it when buying proper designed LED's: The better the LED's are positioned at the same place as the tungsten wire of the halogen would be, the better the headlight performs. LED's bulbs with a large diameter an many LED's will have a lot of "escaping" light which blinds other road users, which attracts the wrong attention af certain government employees....
- If you want a higher quality lightbeam to see more, first consider buying a premium brand halogen with more blue light. For example Phillips or Hella bulbs. These are very high quality bulbs of which the difference in lifetime and lightbeam are obvious.

 

What brand did you go for Chris?
As you have suggested scatter is my main concern and the fact that our normal reflectors are designed for a 360 deg halogen beam whereas 'most' LED are 180 deg at most.