Saw a few HID conversion kits on ebay. Has anyone here installed one of these? Any advice?

Thanks

I've got one. Lots of light, hard to aim it. I got the zenonrider kit.

You will end up overall seeing worse at night. I would save your money and upgrade the wiring to your existing headlamps or replace the entire housing with something that has a better lighting pattern.

 

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/conversions/conversions.html

The problem with putting HID lights in our stock headlamp housing is the fact that our housing uses a mirror as a backing plate. This mirror will throw super bright HID light all over the road and blind on coming drivers, and drivers in front of you. THIS is why they are illegal.

 

To do it properly you have to retrofit a projector lens into our housing in order to maintain the scattering of the light. This is why manufacturers that produce vehicles with HID standar use projector lenses. It controls the beam. Even if you do retrofit a projector lens in your housing it still has to be adjusted correctly.

 

So, I ask everyone to please not throw HID bulbs into regular mirrored housings. It is illegal, and more importantly extremly dangerous.

How would HID light reflect any differently than halogen light? A projector with halogens can "blind" drivers (EDM pattern vs. JDM pattern).

 

Anyway, off topic... sorry. HID kits work very well. I have used them w/o trouble in the past.

The mirrored housing throws Super bright HID light all over the place. It's about aim and pattern....not the light. hence the reason JDM housings don't work in the US

It's about aim and pattern....

 

"15 under the O. That's 15 under the O"

 

...not the light.

 

Bingo.

Maybe I wasn't clear. The HID light is brighter and will travel farther and this will blind people. The halogen doesn't travel as far and therefore the mirrored housing is sufficent.

There is nothing really to argue about here on the USMB. None of us have the equipment necessary to actually MEASURE the light coming out of a headlamp with certain bulbs. Photomagraphy (or whatever the field is called) has researched this stuff for decades and has figured out what intensities and spread patterns are acceptable for human night vision.

 

The link I provided above explains what happens when you put a HID bulb in one not meant for it.

 

Here's just one example cited in that link: http://dastern.torque.net/techdocs/HID/HB1_HID_Retro.pdf

 

HID kits put light where it does not belong, period. End of discussion. Having too much light in the wrong spot can be just as bad as not enough. Read the link I provided above for more explanation.

 

Subjective reviews of how well kits work or don't work are worth the paper they are written on.

 

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that despite possibly decreasing long distance vision they also glare the crap out of anybody coming the other way. Not to mention that they really suck in bad weather, too.

they reflect almost no light in the rain from the road, just from the rain itself.

 

There is a hell of a lot of research and development that goes into HID lights, including the lense and reflectors. It may look good in dry weather, but in bad weather they are down right dangerous.

 

nipper