sbranco

I have a 2006 RX4000H with auto leveling HID headlights.

Wanted to share my experience changing over my HID headlights to LED's. Could not find much of a how to anywhere. Lots of opinions and warnings against it.

I've converted all my cars with halogens over to LED which are much better. My RX headlights seem dim in comparison. LEDs are cheaper than new HID bulbs so figured I would give it a go.

I bought a set of H11 LED headlight bulbs and a set of pigtail adapters. The pigtail adapters are just female plugs to match the H11 plugs with short wires leading to two spades.

There is a Youtube video out there of how to remove the headlight assembly. The bumper cover is in the way of one of the bolts holding in the assembly so you have to loosen the bumper cover and push it down or out to get to that bolt on each side. My headlight assembly was held in with 4 bolts. The fourth bolt was near the back of the headlight assembly and this bolt was not identified in the video. The top bolt has a long plastic tab connecting it to the headlight assembly and I cracked one of these off. In my case, I drilled a hole in the plastic and zip tied it back tight when I was done. The headlight assemblies fit snugly in there and it is pretty easy to manhandle them and crack that tab off. You have been warned.

With the headlight assembly removed, I had to unplug 6 or 7 connectors from the wiring harness to remove the headlight assembly from the car. They are each unique so pretty easy to figure out how to reconnect these plugs putting the whole thing back in.

Unscrew the large grey circular cover to get to the HID. The HID bulb is held in with a large paper clip like spring similar to other headlight bulbs. Release the spring clip on both sides of the bulb and remove the bulb with its silver connector. Unscrew the HID bulb from the connector and set aside.

The ballast is located behind a plastic cover on the bottom of the headlight assembly. The plastic cover comes off with three or four phillips screws. The ballast is attached to the plastic cover with another three or four phillips screws. Release the silver connector cable from several tabs holding it in place. The 12V wire to the ballast also has a tab holding it down so it helps to free it from that tab so you have more room to work on it. Pulled the silver connector cable and HID socket out to free them from the headlight assembly. I cut the 12V wire about midway between the ballast and that circular grey cover. I then removed the ballast and did not replace it.

I then cut the spades off of the pigtail adapters and soldered those wires to the 12V supply lines from the circular grey cover. It is probably best to match the polarity up when soldering these wires. If not, the plug on my H11 headlights still fits well rotated 180 degrees. Polarity is important for the LED's which won't work the other way.

Next, fit the bulb into the old HID socket. Mine fit perfectly! Even the clips fit right on and held the bulb in place well. However, I checked the light pattern and found that it was quite different than with the HID bulb. (I did one bulb at a time and compared the HID with the LED light pattern on a piece of cardboard I held up in front of the bulb.)

I found that if I backed the LED bulb out a little, that the patterns were much more similar. To hold the bulb out a little further in the socket I needed a washer or spacer. I wound up turning the red rubber washer around on the H11s and then butting another red rubber washer from old H11 halogen bulbs up to them. That worked pretty well. The spring clips got a little tight but worked to hold it all in place. I had fairly shallow LEDs but there was plenty of room to put the circular grey cover back on so that it looks exactly the same from the outside of the headlight assembly.

That's pretty much it. Just reassemble everything. I tucked the extra wire from my H11s and the pigtail adapter into the plastic tray where the ballast was. The auto leveling doesn't seem to be impacted. I still notice the sharp cutoff that I had with HID. The lights are brighter and have a much better color too. The key for me was realizing that I needed to tap into the 12V before the ballast. Taking the ballast out of the equation means there is no messing with HID and whatever it might entail.

Hope this helps someone considering making the switch to LEDs. Now it makes me want to change over the bright light bulbs as well. Changed the fog lights to LED long ago.

Lexuswiz

iTrader: (1)

Any pics? Would love to see the final product. I left the HID alone (but changed to Cool Blue+ bulbs) but did do LED high beams and running lights (little lights above high beam) on my old RX330 and loved it. But I did disable to the DRL as I could not stand the flickering.