Directional, sure to a degree, but they’re not exactly lasers... It’s not like the LED flashlight sitting next to me has any trouble illuminating anything. Also, the xmas bow heat sinks on those things seem pretty significant... It’s all very trivial. If you’ve ever worked with LEDs, you know this is a very easy thing…

Valve lift/timing (and similar things) is totally something you can feel.... Can it be felt in that particular car? No idea. I try to avoid getting behind the wheel of anything newer than myself. I used to drive a naturally aspirated RX7 (one of two violations to the nothing-newer-than-me car buying criteria), and…

Why? How hard is it to position an LED in a standard location like the reflector in a halogen bulb? It’s so trivial that NOT doing it would be even harder to believe. It’s not like there are any structural limitations, and standardization makes it beyond easy... Hell, between me and my shop buddy we could 3D print a…

Reading further through the comments, this seems to be an area of automotive enthusiasm that really doesn’t get much attention... There must not be a lot of sciency types on the forums with any background/understanding of light and energy transfer... My best friend/shop buddy is a research physicist at a major…

That’s all just headlight adjustment. Brighter light = more light energy = longer distance for dissipation (unless it encounters an opaque object). Tilt it up (or just put it on the passenger side), and the story reverses.

...And that’s why the aftermarket kits position the lighting elements such that they effectively emulate the placement of the filament/projector in the stock lighting.

Unfortunately, while the LEDs themselves draw less power, the resistors in the retrofit kits make up for it. The car still gives the lighting elements the same amount of power. Those heat sinks are to shed what is wasted in the resistors as heat. You’d have to do more than just plug in some kit.

I’m sure it’s been said, but headlights are supposed to project like that. At least they used to be according to my 50s/60s shop manuals... They also used to specify how to adjust mirrors properly, and these days everyone is driving around with three rear view mirrors... Anyway, lower to the left (oncoming traffic),…

How do you define “hot rod” exactly? Kind of a loaded word in Autotopia... I’ve heard it used to describe anything from a Camry with Pep Boys louvres to a pre-war American car carefully built over decades from salvage yard scrapings into a heavily stylized, heavily powered machine.

The GM engines in AM General’s Hummers are derived from the 6.2/6.5 IDI diesel. AM General bought the rights and the molds for the 6.2/6.5 architecture when GM moved on to the Duramax in ‘99. They had Navistar cast it in a better alloy than whatever brittle glassy alloy GM used in an engine they call the ‘Optimizer’…

This is not unlike my own garage... I approve.

Honeymoon roadtrip in ‘62 bus. Cam gear (brand new, VW manufactured) somehow lost a tooth, which then took out 6 or so more. In the middle of nowhere in Tennessee. Rescued by a professional Santa Claus and a guy whose name was ‘Tennessee Jed’. Engine swap in a hotel parking lot. Ultimately didn’t make it home under…

This could be the case. I feel it was the same when I lived in Texas as well, however. Here in Colorado, where being able to handle very treacherous terrain is extremely common, it’s absolutely the case. There are more Tacomas than anything else on the road almost (save Subarus, of course). American trucks seem…

Ha! This is me in a nutshell... Until very recently (3 weeks ago?) I simultaneously owned vehicles whose means of motivation fall into the categories of air cooled (restoration project), rotary (DD), and naturally aspirated all-mechanical diesel (down with a cracked block @30K miles) in decreasing order of one’s…

Rimshot!

Makes you wonder the sort of person that is smart enough to list the price as the 32-bit integer limit, yet can’t be bothered to correctly spell “Lincoln”...

I had a roommate in college whose parents bought him one of these with the full special edition black/red/silver paint... He was by far the biggest douche that has ever douched... Such a huge douche, that the douchebag frat on campus KICKED HIM OUT for BEING A DOUCHEBAG. Mull that over a minute. The biggest douchebags…

I can’t say I’ve ever seen one of these. That should probably read “noticed”... At any rate, that is far and away the lamest attempt at de-minivanning a minivan ever... Everything behind the front wheels is 100% unadulterated minivan, and the front fascia is some sad thing that sort of looks like a post-op (mid-op?)…

I responded to the other reply to my post regarding full-size trucks where this is explained, so I’ll repost the pertinent part and elaborate a little.

It holds up nicely even with full size (real working truck) segment.