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JW Speaker LED headlight install

Did you use them in the snow on your way back? Wondered if they get warm enough to melt, snow/ice off?
 
Having now driven from MI to Vegas to Seattle and back to MI with many, many nighttime road hours, I don’t think I can fully explain how incredibly well these lights perform.

I had to aim them down a bit pulling the trailer to keep oncoming traffic happy with me, but the light from these is amazing for highway and back road driving.

I put on a Rugged Ridge 20” light bar on the bumper for the show and while it added some light, the light/hi headlights were truly all I ever needed down the road. I can’t wait to get my old bumper back on and play with setting up the lights I’ll have installed long-term along with the JW Speakers. It’s going to be awesome.
 
Jeeper_4_Life said:
Did you use them in the snow on your way back? Wondered if they get warm enough to melt, snow/ice off?
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They did want to ice up a bit, if you regularly drove in snow/ice, you’d probably want to find a heated option or wait for the new JW Speaker heated lights they have coming next year.
 
Awesome my friend. going to install the other LED in Red this afternoon. installed one at the dunes to replace another broken passenger side. Unbelievable difference.:wave:
 
Yep. I'm all about function over form and the function on these should make up for anyone's impression on the appearance. The more I see them, the more I like the look of them anyway, so I couldn't be happier :woot:
 
After 5637 miles to/from SEMA over just a handful of days (never figured that out... 3 there, 6 back, that's 626 miles a day average :eek: ) I put in a LOT of night miles and I could not possibly be any happier with these lights.

Say what you will about the look in a CJ, they JUST FREAKING WORK. My uncle was blown away when I first turned them on after picking him up in Seattle and heading east, it was quite funny. Having this kind of light at night makes driving much more comfortable.

Anyway, I came back to share the blog post that JW Speaker put up today. I thought it was funny how they focused so hard on the headlights in the photos, I would have included at least an inset of the overall vehicle. It's also funny how you scroll down through there and all of a sudden there's a dinged-up, rusty CJ grille :rotfl:
https://www.jwspeaker.com/blog/featured-vehicles-sema-show-2018/

The writing could be a lot better and they didn't get my quote right, but I'll take it :shrug:
 
@Big Walton, I am starting this modification but I ran into a question. When you cut the headlight bucket and remounted the secondary bucket that accommodates the adjustment screws, how did this work? The 3 "tabs" on the outer bucket touch the inner bucket for adjustment and appear to provide support. Has this been a problem?

Thanks
 
TXJEEP said:
@Big Walton, I am starting this modification but I ran into a question. When you cut the headlight bucket and remounted the secondary bucket that accommodates the adjustment screws, how did this work? The 3 "tabs" on the outer bucket touch the inner bucket for adjustment and appear to provide support. Has this been a problem?

Thanks
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As I remember, I cut more than I needed. I was in a hurry and should have gone in increments so I don’t remember if I had to cut off anything as far as where the two met, but I can say that if I did, the JW housing must have replicated the spots where they touched well enough because I was easily able to adjust the lights.
 
That makes sense. I cut down the perimeter and left the "tabs". I had to bend them out a bit to clear the light housing so it stands to reason that the back of the light provides that needed seperation. Thanks for following up.
 
TXJEEP said:
That makes sense. I cut down the perimeter and left the "tabs". I had to bend them out a bit to clear the light housing so it stands to reason that the back of the light provides that needed seperation. Thanks for following up.
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yeah, pretty sure you’ll be fine.

To add on, I even had to adjust my lights down significantly after a couple thousand miles towing my trailer to and after SEMA because I finally realized that the squat in the rear was causing my low beams to make drivers flash me thinking they were my brights.

I pulled off the road in nowhere northeastern CA late at night and had plenty of adjustment to angle them down appropriately and added a little more right to make sure.
 
bigwalton said:
yeah, pretty sure you’ll be fine.

To add on, I even had to adjust my lights down significantly after a couple thousand miles towing my trailer to and after SEMA because I finally realized that the squat in the rear was causing my low beams to make drivers flash me thinking they were my brights.

I pulled off the road in nowhere northeastern CA late at night and had plenty of adjustment to angle them down appropriately and added a little more right to make sure.
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Glad this thread popped up. I am thinking ahead about headlamps for Red. I’m thinking these would be perfect.
 
Randyzzz said:
Glad this thread popped up. I am thinking ahead about headlamps for Red. I’m thinking these would be perfect.
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My one knock on these (other than the price) is that they do ice up a bit in slushy weather. If there's any chance of needing to drive when there's crap on the roads, you'd want to get a heated headlight. I inherited a spare set of the Truck-Lite heated LED headlights from Dan Grec when he got back from Africa and put them in my TJ. They perform perfectly in terms of staying clear in crap weather and the light is almost as good (and a damn sight better than any stock headlight). I think JW Speaker now has a heated option too.
 
After having done the headlight upgrade in the ZJ, I've been thinking more and more about lights for the Scrambler too. I've been siting on some conventional H4 housings for years (since the original Scrambler build order in 2007) with the intention of installing a separate harness, but aftermarket headlights have come a long way since then. I've unintentionally acquired another set of H4 housings too, but I'm not sure I'm going to use any of them. The JW Speaker/Vision X/TruckLite 7" LEDs have always bugged me by how they looked, but if we're talking about moving away from a stock look, then we also need to talk about the Morimoto Super7. The quality of the M-LED 2.0 in the ZJ has been mind blowing. The last time I drove the pass it was a clear night, so I really tried to stretch my eyes on the straightaways to determine what the useable distance was. I was also really hauling a$$ since the engine tuning is done, traffic was light, it was in the teens and twenties (so actual consistent packed snow and ice rather than melty glare ice with a layer of water on top, or recently re-frozen ice, or worse yet re-frozen ice with a thin layer of whispy snow on top). I was able to "see" around 30 seconds down the road, which meant over half a mile going 70-80 mph. It was at a point where I was looking so far down the road that I started missing what was actually right in front of me, and I had to refocus my eyes on the immediate next couple hundred yards instead of watching for moose that were still 1/4 mile+ away.

A buddy of mine installed the Morimoto Super7 in his TJU, which uses the M-LED 1.0 projector integrated into a 7" housing unit. While the M-LED 2.0 is a definite upgrade (particularly in terms of width) over the 1.0, the original is no slouch either. And I'm no more offended by the look of the Super7 than I am by the JW Speaker/Vision X/TruckLite style. (Morimoto also makes a version of the same light sold as the Sealed7. I expect it's of the same quality as the JW Speaker/Vision X/TruckLite light.)

https://www.morimotohid.com/morimoto-super-7-7in-headlight-pair?quantity=1

He's reported no problems in snow/slush with the Super7. I was also concerned about it with the projector conversion in the ZJ, but the M-LED runs hot enough that it requires an integrated fan with the heatsink. While it's still cooler than an HID projector, I figured that the fan running inside the ZJ housing that it would at least prevent serious accumulation. Well, on the last drive back, we had wet heavy snow at around 30 degrees, and sure enough, it froze up. But it froze up EVERYTHING. I couldn't keep the ice buildup off of the windshield wipers either even with the defrosters on full, and it was packing in on the edges of the H3 fog lights too.

People up here who have the heated TruckLite 7" lights have reported that they'll still do the same thing in those conditions, and they otherwise end up baking the road grime onto the covers. Owners of the new JLs with OEM LED headlights also report no significant adverse issues with snow/ice packing up (except in the conditions described above), and I don't believe the JL lights have heating elements.
 
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I can't take the look of those personally.

The one thing I especially love about the JW Speaker, if folks don't realize it, is that they're 100% made in the USA.
 
For what it's worth, here are a couple of pictures of the housing. At first I cut too little out and it became a pain to try to trim where needed. I just used a dremel to get the job done.thumbnail.jpegthumbnail2.jpeg
 
A side note on the plastic capture nuts for the adjusting screws: The top one on the passenger side stripped when removing it. Remove the spring before the adjusting bolts and you might have better luck. I could not locate any type of replacement without buying a complete headlight assembly so I repaired this one.

I filled the hole with JB Weld and then coated the bolt with one layer of teflon tape. I drove it into the hole and let it dry overnight. I then removed the bolt and let it dry another day. To my shock it holds. Quite possibly it may give out with road vibration but it works for now.
 
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