The Ultimate HID Headlight Upgrade the easy way!

[bens1088]

Oh I see your in SF. I'm from Marin. I can show you the harness if you want. I'll be back in Marin the 24th for a few days. Let me know if that would help.

[azn_wrx]

Yikes. I guess none of you are too familiar with HID's. I would recommend visiting www.hidplanet.com

 

Despite being a long time lurker I feel that I should comment. For starters, the Lexus IS300 uses a D2R based bulb in their reflector headlight. This is also used in the Prius and all non projector type housings. The bulb actually has a black film around it to correctly direct the light without blinding other motorists. Do a google search to see the bulb. The actual reflector is shaped differently than a hallogen reflector would be also to correctly direct light into the road.

 

D2S bases have a clear bulb but are used in projectors which have cutoffs.

 

http://forums.justcommodores.com.au/attachments/vz-holden-commodore-2004-2006/42424d1195174066-hid-xenon-conversion-pix103ej.jpg

 

A forum member from HID planet retro'd a set of projectors from another vehicle. The quote below is referenced in the learning section on HID planet's forum. Most members there use their forums to learn more about how to correctly retro fit projectors from other vehicles into their own. I would not recommend any of you to use HID kits, including the bi-xenon ones with those reflective shields in front of the H4 bulb. The posts from Battman clearly show how much glare other drivers will see when you are driving. The correct way would be to do what rb26 did and retrofit a set of bixenon projectors into a 7" headlight. This way you would have the function of highs and lows and have a proper cutoff.

 

Hopefully that will get the ball rolling for proper retrofit projects and not the typical easy way out blinding hid kits. I will probably do this once I have more time to research the different housing options and find one with a clear lens without any fluting. I still need to finish my LS430 retro on another vehicle as well.

 

I'm not trying to start anything here, but this guy sure has a firm belief against using HID in a non HID housing. Thoughts/comments??

 

(quoted from above link)

 

"

Now, what about those "retrofit" jobs in which the beam cutoff still appears sharp? Don't be fooled; it's an error to judge a beam pattern solely by its cutoff. In many lamps, especially the projector types, the cutoff will remain the same regardless of what light source is behind it. Halogen bulb, HID capsule, cigarette lighter, firefly, hold it up to the sun—whatever. That's because of the way a projector lamp works. The cutoff is simply the projected image of a piece of metal running side-to-side behind the lens. Where the optics come in is in distributing the light under the cutoff. And, as with all other automotive lamps (and, in fact, all optical instruments), the optics are calculated based not just on where the light source is within the lamp (focal length) but also the specific photometric characteristics of the light source...which parts of it are brighter, which parts of it are darker, where the boundaries of the light source are, whether the boundaries are sharp or fuzzy, the shape of the light source, and so forth.

 

As if the optical mismatch weren't reason enough to drop the idea of "retrofitting" an HID bulb where a halogen one belongs—and it is!—there are even more reasons why not to do it. Here are some of them:

 

The only available arc capsules have a longitudinal arc (arc path runs front to back) on the axis of the bulb, but many popular halogen headlamp bulbs, such as 9004, 9007, H3 and H12, use a filament that is transverse (side-to-side) and/or offset (not on the axis of the bulb) central axis of the headlamp reflector). In this case, it is impossible even to roughly approximate the position and orientation of the filament with a "retrofit" HID capsule. Just because your headlamp might use an axial-filament bulb, though, doesn't mean you've jumped the hurdles—the laws of optical physics don't bend even for the cleverest marketing department, nor for the catchiest HID "retrofit" kit box.

 

*** A relatively new gimmick is HID arc capsules set in an electromagnetic base so that they shift up and down or back and forth. These are being marketed as "dual beam" kits that claim to address the loss of high beam with fixed-base "retrofits" in place of dual-filament halogen bulbs like 9004, 9007, H4, and H13. A cheaper variant of this is one that uses a fixed HID bulb with a halogen bulb strapped or glued to the side of it...yikes! What you wind up with is two poorly-formed beams, at best. The reason the original equipment market has not adopted the movable-capsule designs they've been playing with since the mid 1990s is because it is impossible to control the arc position accurately so it winds up in the same position each and every time.

 

In the original-equipment field, there are single-capsule dual-beam systems appearing ("BiXenon", etc.), but these all rely on a movable optical shield, or movable reflector—the arc capsule stays in one place. The Original Equipment engineers have a great deal of money and resources at their disposal, and if a movable capsule were a practical way to do the job, they'd do it. The "retrofit" kits certainly don't address this problem anywhere near satisfaction. And even if they did, remember: Whether a fixed or moving-capsule "retrofit" is contemplated, solving the arc-position problem and calling it good is like going to a hospital with two broken ribs, a sprained ankle and a crushed toe and having the nurse say "Well, you're free to go home now, we've put your ankle in a sling!" Focal length (arc/filament positioning) is only just ONE issue out of several.

 

*** The most dangerous part of the attempt to "retrofit" Xenon headlamps is that sometimes you get a deceptive and illusory "improvement" in the performance of the headlamp. The performance of the headlamp is perceived to be "better" because of the much higher level of foreground lighting (on the road immediately in front of the car). However, the beam patterns produced by this kind of "conversion" virtually always give less distance light, and often an alarming lack of light where there's meant to be a relative maximum in light intensity. The result is the illusion that you can see better than you actually can, and that's not safe.

 

It's tricky to judge headlamp beam performance without a lot of knowledge, a lot of training and a lot of special equipment, because subjective perceptions are very misleading. Having a lot of strong light in the foreground, that is on the road close to the car and out to the sides, is very comforting and reliably produces a strong impression of "good headlights". The problem is that not only is foreground lighting of decidedly secondary importance when travelling much above 30 mph, but having a very strong pool of light close to the car causes your pupils to close down, worsening your distance vision...all the while giving you this false sense of security. This is to say nothing of the massive amounts of glare to other road users and backdazzle to you, the driver, that results from these "retrofits".

 

HID headlamps also require careful weatherproofing and electrical shielding because of the high voltages involved. These unsafe "retrofits" make it physically possible to insert an HID bulb where a halogen bulb belongs, but this practice is illegal and dangerous, regardless of claims by these marketers that their systems are "beam pattern corrected" or the fraudulent use of established brand names to try to trick you into thinking the product is legitimate. In order to work correctly and safely, HID headlamps must be designed from the start as HID headlamps.

 

What about the law, what does it have to say on the matter? In virtually every first-world country, HID "retrofits" into halogen headlamps are illegal. They're illegal clear across Europe and in all of the many countries that use European ECE headlight regulations. They're illegal in the US and Canada. Some people dismiss this because North American regulations, in particular, are written in such a manner as to reject a great many genuinely good headlamps. Nevertheless, on the particular count of HID "retrofits" into halogen headlamps, the world's regulators and engineers all say DON'T!

 

The only safe and legitimate HID retrofit is one that replaces the entire headlamp—that is lens, reflector, bulb...the whole system—with optics designed for HID usage. In the aftermarket, it is possible to get clever with the growing number of available products, such as Hella's modular projectors available in HID or halogen, and fabricate your own brackets and bezels, or to modify an original-equipment halogen headlamp housing to contain optical "guts" designed for HID usage (though it should be noted that "cooking" the lens off a composite headlamp, installing HID optics and re-sealing the lens creates major problems of its own, and does not result in a legal headlamp).

 

Please note: From time to time, I am asked to comment on what are marketed as "new developments" in HID kits, and those asking sometimes point out to me that these "new developments" might render this article out-of-date, since the copyright date on the article is older than the date of these "new developments". Please understand, marketeers will always be coming up with dazzling new pseudoscience, tempting new hype and sneaky new ways of trying to convince you to buy their stuff. It's what they do. This article will never go out of date, because the problems with HID kits are conceptual problems, not problems of implementation. Therefore, they cannot be overcome by additional research and development, any more than someone could develop a way for you to put on somebody else's eyeglasses and see correctly.

 

Daniel Stern Lighting (Daniel J. Stern, Proprietor) "

[gvincent]

Bringing up a 3 year old thread here hoping there has been some updates on lighting since then.

Well I just read this whole thread and was all ready to go ahead and cobble an HID headlight together from an H4 housing until I read the last post.

Went to the HIDplanet website ( www.hidplanet.com) and got totally lost.

I just want to upgrade those dim 280Z headlights so I can drive at night and wanted to go the brightest and see the furthest distance possible, especially since I have the smoked headlight covers.

[bens1088]

Bringing up a 3 year old thread here hoping there has been some updates on lighting since then.

Well I just read this whole thread and was all ready to go ahead and cobble an HID headlight together from an H4 housing until I read the last post.

Went to the HIDplanet website ( www.hidplanet.com) and got totally lost.

I just want to upgrade those dim 280Z headlights so I can drive at night and wanted to go the brightest and see the furthest distance possible, especially since I have the smoked headlight covers.

 

I can help point you in the right direction. We've sold over 400 HID projector headlight kits to Z owners over the last few years. If you want, send me an email at ben@dapperlighting.com and I can give you the various options for a sealed beam replacement.