I'll be getting back to the LED you (Dave) let me borrow tonight (delayed with plumbing issues, rain, out of town...).

I need to see if my issue was the orientation of the bulb and cut-off and if I had it right, or if it is an issue with the bulb only going in one way with the cut-off oriented wrong, and if so, if the LED will let me change the orientation or if it is fixed in place.

Springman didn't reort any orientation issues, but not seeing pics against a wall or something comparable it's hard to compare what I was getting versus what he was getting.

Hopefully I'll have a follow up report late tonight or tomorrow.

Gary:

I am still working on the LED testing, and so far I have mixed success.  The LED lights I have tested to date are all brighter, and they all spread the light out to the sides very well.  They don't control the vertical light output well enough, and even the best ones I have tried so far allow more light to shine above the vertical cut off for the low beam.  The result is that more light spills up above the horizontal cutoff line - so more light goes into the eyes of the other drivers.  When you aim the light lower to compensate - the high beam isn't shining down the road far enough.  This may be one of the reasons that the LED lights on those cars and trucks coming toward us are so blindingly bright on some cars.

I took some photos that show how well the filament bulb controls the cutoff and how badly some of the LEDs do - but for some reason TINYPIC won't accept these photos very well - it could be that their software interprets the photos that are just "washed out light" as being corrupt.  

Halogen.

These are all on low beam. At this distance (length of driveway, maybe 30 feet) the Halogen looks good. The Daymaker looks the most intense and whitest. The LED is very bright but somewhat scattered.

As Versi said, the pictures do not do justice to reality. The Halogen is actually substantially dimmer and yellower than the other 2 bulbs. The LED is probably as bright as the Daymaker but the light output is scattered and not defined. The Daymaker was just as bright, if not brighter, than the LED but the light pattern was very defined and controlled and at the center it even appeared like if a spot light was being shined there.

In my estimation the Daymaker is by far the best bulb. I have seen a Daymaker knockoff on ebay for around $36.00 that has arms for attaching to the fork and I am considering ordering it to see if it is any good.

I think the white garage door is overwhelming the cameras and that is why we're not seeing the fine detail of the headlight patterns.  While stew's driveway pic's do give us a hint at the variability of the light pattern.

I propose we retake the pics on a non white wall or fence.
A road pic would handy too.  something with bushes on the side so we can see height and depth.

IF it doesn't' rain here again tonight...I will take the bike down to the field and get some Halogen vs LED pics.  I just cleared out a good section of tree line this weekend that I think will offer a good background for the pics so we can see the pattern straight ahead as well as off to the sides while it is not being bounced around off of the white garage.

Can someone do a no-rain dance?

Set 2:

JOG, I dunno.  Dave probably has the best perspective on all of this. One thing to keep in mind is the two different bulb designs.  The standard Halogen is providing more light in an overall direction to go back and hit the reflector and bounce back out. Notice the design of the LED.  There are two LEDs (one high and one low) on each side of the arm.  This likely causes some of the light in certain areas blocked by the arm to be blocked and thus not reflected and emitted out as smoothly as the halogen.  Just my $0.02.