Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 Is The Most innovative LED Bulbs!
Here at Dynamic Appearance, we carry the best automotive lighting upgrades for your car or truck. We have partnered with the best LED brands including the top-rated Morimoto. Morimoto recently launched their 2Stroke 3.0 LED bulbs that are reinventing luminosity from the ground up. So it is time to take a deep dive into what makes the Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 LED bulbs stand out from the competition. For this, we turn to Headlight Revolution, the LED light testing experts which we are proud to be part of their dealer network. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the video or read below.
Introduction To The 2Stroke 3.0
This new LED bulb from Morimoto isn't just your average run of the mill, look at me, I'm a super-bright bulb. This thing was designed with a purpose. There are five things about this new bulb that literally blows my mind. You're not going to want to miss this. First of all, they're using a brand new automotive-grade LED chip from OSRAM. This is the OSRAM OSLON chip. It's also used in their popular Morimoto XB LED headlight assemblies. This LED chip is specifically designed to be used in automotive applications and allows this bulb to have the strict control and lighting footprint that it was designed for. Nobody else has this chip, and it's a game-changer. This bulb is designed with the main idea that no matter what housing you put it in, it will perfectly mimic the original halogen light bulb. And that's really one of the biggest innovations with this bulb because if you ever watch our other videos testing many different headlights, you're going to see that one bulb acts differently in different housings.
And that's a problem because it creates a lot of guesswork on what you should buy for your application. The idea with the 2Stroke 3.0 is it takes the guesswork out of LED upgrades. This bulb will create a perfect beam pattern, no matter what you put it in. The second thing that's really a game-changer about the Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 is the driver. The driver is what converts the electricity from your vehicle to a signal that the LED bulb can use. Now, normally it's a pretty plain functioning system, but not only does this work with most vehicles plug and play, but it also has a six volt compatible DRL circuit. That means if your vehicle has a DRL that runs a standard six volts without pulse with modulation, this will dim the light down to 10%. That's totally crazy. No other bulb on the market has that built-in. The next thing about these bulbs that are completely revolutionary is the heat sink.
Unmatched Cooling Technology
These work like nothing ever in the past. The previous Morimoto 2Stroke had a heat sink on the bottom of the bulb like you'd expect in the fan was inside. But when you installed the bulb into the headlight, the fan is what circulates all the air on the outside of the headlight. Now this works fine, but it leaves the fan susceptible to getting damaged from dust, water, snow, mud, any kind of debris that might make its way inside. It's also sitting in your engine compartment in most cases, and you're working with a lot of hot air from your engine that's hotter than sometimes what the LED bulb itself can create. So this isn't necessarily the ideal scenario, the new 2Stroke 3.0 has a completely sealed heat sink. And so you're wondering, "Well, how does that cool anything?" It's crazy. Check this out. When you install the bulb into the assembly, it's completely sealed, but there is a fan inside.
So you see all these fins around the outside of the heat sink. There's some on the orange part and they're on the gray part here. Those will radiate heat away, but the fan circulates air like this. Air goes in on this side and out on this side. Check out this animation from the Morimoto promo video to get a better idea of what's going on. So think of it like this. You have this bulb installed into your assembly and the air inside the assembly it's surrounding is being circulated inside this duct back here to the heat sink, where the fan is. A lot of the heat temperature gets sucked away from these fins on the heat sink. And it comes around this side and it blows out. This heat dissipation method works really well just because of how much moving air you have inside the assembly and the effectiveness of the heat sink fins.
Do You Live In A Cold Climate?
But it has a secondary effect that's really interesting, especially if you ever drive in colder climates. What happens if all that hot air is floating around inside the assembly? A lot of people ask us, "Well, will these bulbs work in colder climates? I don't want to be completely covered in snow and ice. And the LED bulbs can't melt that." Because a halogen bulb is hotter. Well, problem solved. This is going to heat up and warm the front lens of the assembly so that whatever happens, whether it's snow or ice, you're going to get a real similar heating effect to the original halogen bulb, problem solved. This bulb is an H10 and it fits a lot of different applications. If you're not sure which one you need, find out which halogen bulb you have now, and then call or email our team and we'll point you in the right direction.
Twist The Bulbs Right Into Place
The interesting thing about the way Morimoto designed these bulbs is the mounting collar. This H10 mounting collar has three tabs around the perimeter and they are designed to fit any H10 style bulb. So regardless if it's an H10, a 9145 a 9140, anything like this, they're going to fit perfectly. But unlike other LED bulbs on the market, this is not a cheap plastic color. The Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0, went above and beyond to make the world's greatest LED bulb. Not only is it perfectly precision machined aluminum, but it also has an ingenious rotating mechanism. So step one is you insert the bulb into the housing. You press and turn it into place. And then to get the perfect beam pattern, you press again, and you can twist the bulb. Do you see how this top tab is not moving? It has a really cool system that uses tabs and slots that when you put pressure on the collar, it disengages, and you can spin it.
Now, if you have to push it in all the way, there is a stopper that allows you to twist it even further. And then you can rotate backward to get it in the exact perfect position that you need. There are no special tools required. Everything's totally done by hand here. Now, if we look at the H4 version, which is really common on a lot of older vehicles, off-road vehicles, European and Japanese vehicles, it works a little bit differently. These bulbs, you don't insert and twist and turn, these bulbs go in and they are held on with a clip. If you have an H4 type application, you already know what I'm talking about. Take out your old bulbs, install these ones. Now, the interesting thing about the H4 LED bulb that nobody else has is the specific design of this reflector cup.
H4 Bulb Patented Technology
Your original H4 halogen bulb has something like that underneath one of the filaments. So the H4 LED from Morimoto has the same thing, but it's designed with a special purpose. This cup is not just a randomly shaped dish for the sake of shielding. This is actually engineered to help spread the beam pattern wider than your normal bulbs do. So, even though it might look like other H4 LED bulbs, I assure you, this is going to give you a different driving experience than anything else. And again, even the H4 bulb has the same type of proprietary adjustment for clocking the bulbs. Simply put pressure on the mounting collar and twist. When you're done twisting, let go and it locks into place.
Find The Right Morimoto Bulbs
The Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 LED bulbs are not designed for any one specific application or vehicle type. All they're designed to do is replace a halogen light bulb. Now, these halogen light bulbs are found in many different applications, and the way they work is you get the bulb that corresponds to your halogen bulb. This is a 9140 halogen bulb, and you can see the mounting tabs around the base of each bulb are very similar. They each have a rubber O-ring. The diameter of the shaft is the same, and they've got mounting tabs that are cross referenceable. This LED isn't designed just to replace this one 9140, the LED bulb will replace any bulb in the 9140 family of light bulbs. Now you're going to find this bulb in a lot of different applications. And before you pull the trigger, it's important that you know what you're getting yourself into. Yes, the 2Stroke will be brighter and have the same beam pattern as your old halogen bulb and it's going to be a better color.
However, there are regulations in place that dictate where you have to use a halogen bulb and where you can use an LED replacement bulb. For informational purposes, I'm going to show you this bulb's output in a Polaris off-road headlight, a truck headlight, and a fog light. These LED bulbs may not be compliant for on-road use in certain applications. So make sure you understand your local and federal laws before making your purchase to make sure you remain compliant.
The first step is to figure out which bulb you have now, and then ordering the correct LED that corresponds with what's already on your vehicle. You can either just pull the bulb out of the housing and read it. The name of the bulb will be on there, then you've ordered the corresponding LED version. Or you can go to our website, DynamicAppearance.com, enter your year, make, and model, and we'll show you what fits your vehicle. Of course, you can always call or email, and our expert staff will help guide you. When you get your bulbs, the install is super easy. They're designed to be a plug and play drop-in replacement for your halogen bulb. So get to the backside of your assembly, find the bulb, twist it out.
And then your new LED bulb should have corresponding mounting points. Line it up so that it goes in exactly the same way that your old bulb came out and twist. Now you can see due to the way the Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0 adjusts you actually have the base of the bulb twisting, and it's not until you get into the absolute end of the rotation, does it catch and you can fully see the mounting tabs of the bulb. I'll show you on the front side too. You can see that the bulb is secure, but when I push and turn, I can actually twist the top stock of the LED bulb. Now, this is an important step, because generally speaking, you want the LEDs on either side of the bulb to be facing left and right. They should be oriented or clocked horizontally. If you get your bulb in and you look inside the assembly and you see that they're at an angle or something like that, normally that's not correct.
What I recommend doing is start with an orientation like this, where they're perfectly facing left and right. And then see what the beam pattern looks like. If your beam pattern doesn't look perfect, play around with tweaking it just a little bit one way or a little bit the other way until you have the beam pattern looking just right. This is super important because if you don't have the bulb aligned correctly, you're going to create a lot of glare, a lot of light scatter, and overall, it won't be as bright because the beam won't be focused. If you want to learn more about how to aim and adjust your headlights, go check out our other video that we'll link in the description below.
Comparison Tests
The moment you've been waiting for. Now, we're going to show you beam pattern comparisons in the different assemblies to show you how much better these are than your old halogen light bulbs. But there's something really important that we've discovered over years of testing LED bulbs is that beam pattern matters. It's not just what's about on the wall in front of you. We prefer to test that way because when we're comparing halogen to LED or halogen to HID or HID to LED any type of comparison, we believe that what's shown on the wall, accurately represents what's shown on the field. So if the LED bulb mimics the beam pattern on the wall, it will mimic the beam pattern of your halogen on the road. It's a great test and shows exactly how much better and brighter LED bulbs are to your originals. The first example of why you'd want the Morimoto 2Stroke is seen very clearly with this Polaris headlight. This thing is from an ATV that's only a couple of years old and the headlight is pathetically dim.
This thing only comes in at 150 maximum lux at 25 feet. You're going to run into a tree it's so dim. I don't know why they let this thing leave the factory with headlights like this, but it's no problem because that's where the 2Stroke comes in. Check this out. Now we've got 210 maximum lux. Going from 150 to 210 is an increase in brightness of 40% just by swapping out the bulb on your four Wheeler. Now let's look at a headlight from a Ranger. This thing came in at 530 maximum lux in the same test. It's not bad. You've got that discernible hot spot in the middle, but the 2Stroke 3.0 is a big improvement. This thing replacing the original light bulb comes in at 94% brighter. That's a huge increase in light output, and it maintains the same shape and beam pattern.
These bulbs even given increase in light up, put on high beam. Here's your stock Ranger headlight high beam coming in at 950 maximum lux and the 2Stroke 3.0 coming in at 1,410 for a 48% increase in brightness over the stock halogen high beam. Where these bulbs really do a good job is with your stock incandescent halogen fog lights. First here's a normal halogen fog light. They're not very bright. And honestly, that's kind of how they're designed. The original fog light beam pattern light output leaves a lot to be desired coming in at only 100 maximum lux. There's definitely room for improvement here. When we swap out the bulb for the Morimoto 2Stroke 3.0, we get an increase of 80% in brightness, coming in at 180 maximum lux. I just can't get over how cool these bulbs look, check out this footage directly from the Morimoto promo video. They show the patented closed-loop cooling system where the heat sink is water and dustproof.
That is an industry first. Nobody has that. They show the patented shade cup on the H4 bulbs and how it utilizes light different than anything else in the market. There's no wasted light on this thing because of how they designed that shade cup. You've also got that patented spring clip that adds positive pressure into the locking mechanism on the collar of some of the bulbs. These things are full of features that nobody else has. These LED bulbs will be an awesome headlight upgrade if you had a strictly off-road vehicle. Remember the rules are different for fog lights and many international applications, so make sure you use them the right way. These bulbs are not DOT compliant for use on public roads in America. The thing that's really important about the Morimoto 2Stroke 3 that no other bulb does is focusing on light distribution.
Optimized Light Output
Remember at the beginning of the video I talked about it's designed to a new standard. The optical focal point is different than anything else and these chips are different. Here's the reason why that's important. A lot of bulbs are brighter, but they actually change the 3D shape of the beam pattern. You can't see that on the wall because it's flat, but if you could get a bird's eye view of this beam pattern, what you would see is a lot of LED bulbs that are brighter, but pull that beam pattern closer to the front of your vehicle. You're going to experience that same type of night blindness sensation. You're going to be able to see great immediately in front of your vehicle, but your long-distance vision will be sacrificed. That's why Morimoto designed this bulb the way they did. They don't want all that extra light immediately in front of the vehicle.
They want the same distribution of light, the same brightness ratio from the tip of your headlights to the farthest point that your halogen bulbs have, just brighter. What that engineered distribution of light does is allow you to see further down the road with this bulb using less light. It's an incredible feat of optical engineering, which makes these bulbs a great option for your next project.
You got to hand it to Morimoto, they've done it again. Not only is this arguably the coolest looking bulb in the world, but it's also going to be a guaranteed upgrade in light output and performance in any application you put it in. I don't know how they keep doing it, but Morimoto's got some of the best looking products out there. Have you seen their XB LED headlights and taillights and fog lights? Now, this? I mean, come on. Nothing really compares in terms of style, performance, and quality.
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