I took advantage of Diode Dynamics black friday sale and snagged some SLF H10 LED bulbs for my fog lights! This is a long post for what amounts to changing light bulbs but these things are $$$ and I couldn't find much info from other people who might've forked out $90 (black friday sale price) for bulbs, and I wanted the next guy to have something to go back and reference.
https://www.diodedynamics.com/fog-light-leds-for-2002-2012-ford-mustang-gt-pair.html (note the link defaults to the XP48, the SLF are nowhere near that cheap)
I was between the XP80 (510 lumens) and SLF (780 lumens) and I've been trying to find specs for stock H10/9145's vs Silverstar and every website lists them differently (Sylvania's amazon store listed the basic bulbs as 1005, the same as SilverStar which I know from experience isn't true). Since I couldn't find a reliable rating, I decided to go with the SLF because might as well go big or go home. Diode Dynamics has a fairly generous exchange policy so I knew I could downgrade if I had to. But with their street legal claims I figured even if they were hugely brighter than the halogen bulbs they had a good chance of not glaring other drivers.
Initial Impressions
They come with big metal heat sinks on both the bulbs themselves and the drivers and seem pretty decent quality. Compared with the Sylvania bulbs I'm upgrading from, the plastic on bulbs and the factory connections seem a little lower than factory quality, but still seem OK. The heat sink sticks out farther than the connector on the halogen bulbs, but not by a huge amount, and there's plenty of clearance behind the grille anyway, so not a problem. I also held them side-by-side and the LEDs themselves line up pretty well with the filament of the halogen, which bodes well for the "street legal" statements.
Installation
Goes pretty much like...changing a light bulb -- with a few exceptions. I've managed to change factory bulbs without removing the grille before, but you're definitely going to want to remove it for this installation. Reason is because the bulbs don't like to fit into the housings and you're going to use some force to get these things to seat in all the way. I think their o-rings are either slightly to big, too grippy, or not elastic enough to squeeze in on their own. There was a review on DD's site that said he couldn't get them to lock and secured them with electrical tape! I have a feeling he's probably going to have condensation issues.
I gave them a light coating of silicone to help it but I still had to use some force to get them far enough in to lock the tabs.
The same reviewer said he zip-tied the drivers so they weren't hanging though, which seemed like a good advice, so I went ahead and did that, making sure I wasn't putting any stress on the wires:
Plugging the connectors into the factory wiring harness was also a little bit of an issue. Just like the bulbs themselves, they took a lot of force to get far enough into the sockets to latch. Even then I had to press the latches down to get them to click. I'm sure if you slightly sanded down the connectors by half a millimeter it'd be fine.
Comparison to SilverStars:
To do a fair comparison, I took before/after photos and put the camera on manual mode, locking the settings so things would stay consistent between the pictures:
shutter : 1/13 sec
aperture: f/2.8
white balance 4850k (this towed the line between both the HIDs and halogen bulbs looking as close in the pics as it did in my eye)
Here's the beam pattern and brightness of silverstar vs LED:
Silverstar
SLF LED
Definitely a lot whiter and seems a lot brighter too.
Now for these next set of pics, I had to do some photochopping. I haven't been driving the car much lately and the battery was low for the first set of pictures so I couldn't get a shot of the HID headlights and SilverStar foglights on at the same time, I had to get them in separate pics and stitch them together. And even though I had the white balance locked, for some reason the HIDs by themselves look a LOT more blue than they actually are. By the time I got the LED's installed the charger had done its thing so I could get the pics I needed. So here's a combo pic of the HID+LED overlaid with the Halogens. The colors are pretty accurate to what I was seeing in person. You'll notice the part of the photo w/ the LED and headlight is a lot brighter, thats because there was a whole lot more light being thrown out than just the halogen foglights by themselves (the camera settings were still locked).
And just the LED's+HID's. In person there is a very SLIGHT difference in color, but you can't really see it unless you're looking for it. The LED's are slightly more cyan and the HID's are slightly more purple. I have no idea what bulbs are in the headlights or even what color temperature they are, they're the Saleen HID housings I got off eBay with bulbs already in them, but they seem pretty close to the 6K that the LEDs are.
Driving Impressions:
I did a test drive last night (sorry no pics), and they seemed to work OK. Standing in front of the car I had no glare and I didn't have any other drivers flashing me. They lit up the sides of the road a little bit and pretty decently in front of the car, but weren't a jaw dropping WOW difference. I wouldn't go in expecting the sort of brightness you get from HID foglights where night becomes day, but those also glare the ****e out of other drivers and I got pulled over for those once. I wonder if the glare shields in the housing might have anything to do with it, since they sit right over the LED chips.
https://www.diodedynamics.com/fog-light-leds-for-2002-2012-ford-mustang-gt-pair.html (note the link defaults to the XP48, the SLF are nowhere near that cheap)
I was between the XP80 (510 lumens) and SLF (780 lumens) and I've been trying to find specs for stock H10/9145's vs Silverstar and every website lists them differently (Sylvania's amazon store listed the basic bulbs as 1005, the same as SilverStar which I know from experience isn't true). Since I couldn't find a reliable rating, I decided to go with the SLF because might as well go big or go home. Diode Dynamics has a fairly generous exchange policy so I knew I could downgrade if I had to. But with their street legal claims I figured even if they were hugely brighter than the halogen bulbs they had a good chance of not glaring other drivers.
Initial Impressions
They come with big metal heat sinks on both the bulbs themselves and the drivers and seem pretty decent quality. Compared with the Sylvania bulbs I'm upgrading from, the plastic on bulbs and the factory connections seem a little lower than factory quality, but still seem OK. The heat sink sticks out farther than the connector on the halogen bulbs, but not by a huge amount, and there's plenty of clearance behind the grille anyway, so not a problem. I also held them side-by-side and the LEDs themselves line up pretty well with the filament of the halogen, which bodes well for the "street legal" statements.
Installation
Goes pretty much like...changing a light bulb -- with a few exceptions. I've managed to change factory bulbs without removing the grille before, but you're definitely going to want to remove it for this installation. Reason is because the bulbs don't like to fit into the housings and you're going to use some force to get these things to seat in all the way. I think their o-rings are either slightly to big, too grippy, or not elastic enough to squeeze in on their own. There was a review on DD's site that said he couldn't get them to lock and secured them with electrical tape! I have a feeling he's probably going to have condensation issues.
I gave them a light coating of silicone to help it but I still had to use some force to get them far enough in to lock the tabs.
The same reviewer said he zip-tied the drivers so they weren't hanging though, which seemed like a good advice, so I went ahead and did that, making sure I wasn't putting any stress on the wires:
Plugging the connectors into the factory wiring harness was also a little bit of an issue. Just like the bulbs themselves, they took a lot of force to get far enough into the sockets to latch. Even then I had to press the latches down to get them to click. I'm sure if you slightly sanded down the connectors by half a millimeter it'd be fine.
Comparison to SilverStars:
To do a fair comparison, I took before/after photos and put the camera on manual mode, locking the settings so things would stay consistent between the pictures:
shutter : 1/13 sec
aperture: f/2.8
white balance 4850k (this towed the line between both the HIDs and halogen bulbs looking as close in the pics as it did in my eye)
Here's the beam pattern and brightness of silverstar vs LED:
Silverstar
SLF LED
Definitely a lot whiter and seems a lot brighter too.
Now for these next set of pics, I had to do some photochopping. I haven't been driving the car much lately and the battery was low for the first set of pictures so I couldn't get a shot of the HID headlights and SilverStar foglights on at the same time, I had to get them in separate pics and stitch them together. And even though I had the white balance locked, for some reason the HIDs by themselves look a LOT more blue than they actually are. By the time I got the LED's installed the charger had done its thing so I could get the pics I needed. So here's a combo pic of the HID+LED overlaid with the Halogens. The colors are pretty accurate to what I was seeing in person. You'll notice the part of the photo w/ the LED and headlight is a lot brighter, thats because there was a whole lot more light being thrown out than just the halogen foglights by themselves (the camera settings were still locked).
And just the LED's+HID's. In person there is a very SLIGHT difference in color, but you can't really see it unless you're looking for it. The LED's are slightly more cyan and the HID's are slightly more purple. I have no idea what bulbs are in the headlights or even what color temperature they are, they're the Saleen HID housings I got off eBay with bulbs already in them, but they seem pretty close to the 6K that the LEDs are.
Driving Impressions:
I did a test drive last night (sorry no pics), and they seemed to work OK. Standing in front of the car I had no glare and I didn't have any other drivers flashing me. They lit up the sides of the road a little bit and pretty decently in front of the car, but weren't a jaw dropping WOW difference. I wouldn't go in expecting the sort of brightness you get from HID foglights where night becomes day, but those also glare the ****e out of other drivers and I got pulled over for those once. I wonder if the glare shields in the housing might have anything to do with it, since they sit right over the LED chips.