Time for another upgrade. As you can see from the old pictures above, we've had a pair of KC Hilites Daylighters on this truck from the beginning. Adequate lights for the time, but outgunned by modern standards.
While searching for a new set of lights, I came across this upgrade kit from KC Hilites that upgrades the guts of your original Daylighters to modern
LED components.
I also ordered new
rubber inserts to freshens things up.
For the benefit of readers I only installed one light to perform a comparison.
The first picture is the original halogen insert.
The second picture is the new LED insert and rubber.
Now let's look at the comparison.
I have the truck parked about 20 feet away from the garage door. The old lamp is in a spot pattern with a tight hotspot. I measured 2,600 lux in the hotspot. On the right side we see the larger spread of the LED driving light pattern. The hotspot on the LED is pushing 3,650 lux, with most of the pattern registering at least 3,000 lux.
Overall, the LED version is probably pushing more than double the light of the original light. This is a significant upgrade to the originals. It's not top tier performance, but it's certainly good stuff. And in my case, the character of the original lamps is an important factor in my decision. For comparisons sake, I have a pair of Lightforce 215 LED lamps on my Jeep. They push north of 12,000 lux in their hotspot in a flood pattern. I also note that KC Hilites shows different performance numbers than what I measured. I think it's two things. The halogen's performance has degraded over time and the distance I'm measuring from is shorter than their specs.