Hey guys, Andrew Esquivel here, back with another review.
Today I'm going to be reviewing the ZFLIN X7 LED headlight conversion system.
If you have halogen headlights in your car, you may have thought to yourself, "Hmm, I
would sure like to upgrade my headlights to something a little nicer."
You go on the market, you look at HID's and then you see there's LED's, and you think
to yourself, "Okay, well, let's take a look."
You find that it's a simple plug and play conversion.
Well, that's what they say.
But is it truly and how do these LED's actually perform?
Keep in mind, most headlights are designed in mind for the type of light that they originally
came with.
Sometimes a conversion kit without converting the headlight assembly to an appropriate style
to accommodate the type of light, doesn't always work.
Let's see if that's the case with these.
Now, today we're going to be working on the infamous 9007 socket which has always been
reported to have numerous issues with compatibility and lighting problems for conversion kits.
We'll talk about that in just a minute.
Now, each of these bulbs pulls 60 watts and produces 4,800 Lumens, with a color temperature
of 6,000 kelvin, and has a flexible voltage rating from anywhere from 9 to 36.
Now, on the website on Amazon, they will say it is producing 9,600 Lumens and 120 watts
of power.
Okay look, it doesn't work like that, you can't just put two light bulbs next to each
other and say it's twice as bright.
In this case, it's 4,800 Lumens going out in two different directions.
Already, I don't like the fact that they're doing this, but it looks like every LED manufacturer
seems to work like this.
Keep that in mind.
If it's saying it's got some outrageous number for it's brightness, you should probably cut
that in half and that will be how many Lumens it produces on the high beam.
You have to look at the low beam as well because these bulbs work for high and low beam.
4,800 Lumens per bulb on high beam, it doesn't specify how many Lumens it produces on the
low beam.
Something that is definitely important to consider since you don't want to be using
your high beams all the time, that would be illegal.
Let's go the actual bulb construction.
It is, at first glance, plug and play.
You simply remove your old light, put this one in its place and connect it to the wiring
harness to give it power.
Seems simple enough, right?
Well, as I was saying, the 9007 type sockets are infamously difficult to work with.
Here's the first thing you'll start thinking.
Well, normally with a standard light bulb, you plug it in the socket and then you put
the retainer ring in and then you connect the power.
Well, here's a little bit of an issue, you can't exactly do that.
The heat sink get's in the way.
There's no way to slip up the retainer ring to put it where it needs to go, which is right
behind the gasket, that is the red thing right here, that is the gasket.
What do you do?
Well, let's refer to the instructions, these amazing instructions that ZFLIN has provided
us.
It talks about 9007 on here, but it doesn't go into any detail about how to get the retainer
ring on.
That's not good.
Well, luckily, I have a solution for you.
They didn't say this anywhere in the manual but if you twist the top here, it does magically
come off and you'd be able to think, "Haha perfect."
I can now use my retainer ring and put it where it needs to go, right?
Wrong.
Because that's actually a slightly different version.
This is the retainer ring for the Mitsubishi Outlander.
That is the retainer ring for a Mitsubishi Eclipse.
The Outlander is a little more finicky.
See, even though it says it's plug and play with all 9007's, here's the issue, let's try
the Mitsubishi Eclipse 9007.
Okay, it slips on over the top and if we take our ring, put it down, slides and locks into
place, nice, right?
Okay, good.
But that's for the Mitsubishi Eclipse.
Let's try the Outlander, because the Outlander's retainer ring is a little different.
You'll notice that this ring is completely flat, while this one is raised up.
Even though they're both 9007, they do have different fittings, even though the same manufacturer
of vehicle, they have different fittings.
Let's try putting on this particular retainer bracket which is for my 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander.
Put it down and we try to put the retainer ring on and up.
Uh-oh, you can't.
Why is that?
Well, here's the problem.
The heat sink once again.
I'll explain, because the Mitsubishi Outlander has a retainer ring that is slightly raised
up by just a few millimeters, there's not enough space in-between this gasket and the
heat sink for it to sit, which means it is not plug and play.
The only way to get a Mitsubishi Outlander 9007 circular socket retainer to fit is to
modify it, which means it's no longer plug and play.
You're going to have to do a little work to make it fit.
Word to the wise, if you modify this you're not going to be able to go back to your standard
halogens.
I'll explain in a minute and you really want to take this into consideration very carefully
because this little ring right here, I'll provide the manufacturer part to it, there
is no after-market support for this specific product.
This little piece of plastic, they are only OEM made versions of this, and they are expensive.
Unless you are like me and got lucky at a junkyard, good luck trying to find it anywhere
else for a reasonable price.
Let's talk about how we modify it.
Once again, we're talking about the top having too much of a distance on this gap, so we
had to file down the gap and I filed it down a little too thin.
I used a little bit of electrical duct tape to thicken it up just a little bit.
But now we are able to take this off, put the retainer ring down, put this back on and
here we go.
Now it will fit our Mitsubishi Outlander.
The next question is how well does it work?
Well let's go ahead and find out.
All right here we are in the engine bay of my 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander LS and over here
is the socket.
Before you even consider this, you have to make sure you allow for at least two inches
of extra space protruding from the light socket to accommodate for the heat sink that is coming
outside of the bulb.
Now, let's go ahead and plug it in, the original wiring harness is right there, and it's pretty
simple.
All we got to do -- and I'm going to switch hands here, is take the light bulb, put it
in and there we go.
Easy, all right.
Let's give it a little jiggle.
Yes, that's not going anywhere.
The wiring harness just connects right into the standard wires that you would connect
your halogen lights directly into.
Now, we have some three exposed wires here more or less, I don't think that's a very
great job I did right there.
I think I should get some electrical tape and cover that up.
Over here we have the -- well, they call it the EMC, and we have a lot of wire just hanging
about.
You're going to need to find someplace to finagle that so it's not flailing about.
I'm sure zip-tie can make it work somehow.
But for now, well, let's just keep it right there because we're just going to test it
and make sure everything works.
Okey-doke, so we have both lights doing what they do and this is the projection onto my
garage door.
Doesn't really look all that even, does it?
It's all scattered and not evenly distributed.
It's not diffused in any manner.
But let's see how it works when we're actually in the driver's seat going down the road.
We're sitting here in a relatively dark part of town where we've got a straight away that
goes for about half a mile down the road only being lit up just ever so slightly by some
street lights.
Now the camera has been adjusted for night time usage, so it should be slightly more
accurate as to represent what I am seeing from the driver's point of view.
It is exactly what you'll see from the driver's point of view.
Now I got a driver coming up.
Take a look at that driver's light.
See how nice, and even and flattened diffused that light was.
We got another driver coming over this way too, although it's not as good as a representation,
but that first driver going about had halogen headlights.
You can tell just by the way it was functioning.
If you look at the LED headlights we have on this car right in front of me, you'll see
that the fronts are right side which would be in this car, on the passengers' side, is
projecting more than the other side.
Which means, we have a scattered beam, which is not good.
We don't have a diffused even light pattern in front of us and what's worse is, the brightest
portion of the lights in this case, only go a few feet out in front of me.
I'm estimating at about 15 to 20 feet in front of me is the maximum distance in which I could
see with any clarity here in the middle of the night.
Which makes it feel very uncomfortable while driving, because it just doesn't perform as
well as the standard set of halogen light bulbs.
On top of that, these light bulbs are not DOT certified, they're not SAE certified and
that means that they can be illegal to use in your state.
Always check to make sure you know the laws and if it doesn't work, don't risk it.
The color-temperature does allow for better contrast of what you're seeing on the road,
but as you can see, you can't really see much on the road.
What you're seeing on camera, is a very good representation of what I can see here in real
life.
It's not an effective beam pattern and it's just not bright enough.
Which is truly unfortunate because each bulb is supposed to produce 4800 Lumens or a combined
total of 9600 as they say, although that's not really how lights work.
You can't just add numbers together like that.
It doesn't just double the amount of Lumens, Just because you have two.
You just have 4800 Lumens in two different directions.
That's the low beam.
If we turn on high beam, that's much more reasonable.
That's about the beam pattern you would get out of halogen light bulbs.
This is a distance in which I could say is completely reasonable in my ability to drive
at night in terms of my confidence.
It just doesn't feel like these light bulbs perform anywhere near where they should be.
It's not bright enough, the pattern is completely scattered, there is no diffusion of the lights,
hence, on top of all that, it's not plug-and-play.
With all that being said, I simply cannot recommend these light bulbs.
They are unfortunately atrocious.
I will be switching back to my halogen light bulbs for my own safety and for the safety
and courtesy of other drivers around me.