J-Protege

OK, well, we cluttered up the 'what have you done today' thread with some of this info, but I think it'll be a good idea to keep this all together for easy refference, and pool our knowledge on HID kits.

Kansei, I know you have been working hard on getting your HIDs just right, with out too much glare overkill, so your advice should really help us out

So, mainly, there are a few questions we should focus on, but any tips or tidbits are of course welcome!

1) Which housing projects HID light better, the sedan housing or the P5 housing?
-This is assuming just for low beam performance. High beam on either can be handled by halogen, so it shouldn't be a factor.

2) What kit performs best in our cars?
-From long lasting, to best warranty. Any special or good deals should be mentioned too!

3) Glare reduction!
-Tips, tricks, aiming help, eyelid design or anything else to avoid blinding everyone else on the road!

4) Anything else.
-From cool facts, to legal issues, and anything else you think may be impotantant to note.

If this goes well, we may have one great little guide here for people looking into going HID, or modifying their current setup.

_Kansei_

*joins the thread*

1. I haven't seen the light output from sedan housing HID retrofits in person. I know halogen vs halogen the sedan headlights have a much more crisp beam cutoff, but the Protege5 low and high beam light output is superior (H4s are old tech really.. )

2. Plenty of kits offer lifetime warranties, but I only have experience with my own Helios kit and I'm quite happy with it. Only downside to at least my kit (a couple years old) is that the ballasts are kinda large and they have separate igniters. It can all be hidden below the headlamp if you take off the bumper and remove the headlights for the install.

3. Eyelids that span the full headlamp (all the way to the corner light) will help a lot. The sedan headlights might be different in this regard, you tell me. Can you directly view the bulb in your headlamp when it is on, standing at some angle? This is the angle on the P5 headlight that does the trick:


It can't be eliminated unless you get an eyelid that is the full width of the headlamp. As you can see from this pic of the eyelid I own, it doesn't do enough:


Other ways of reducing glare and changing the beam pattern: One is to aim the headlights a bit lower than they were when you used halogens. As much as they try to position the HID capsule right where the halogen filament was, a capsule is much larger than a teeny filament and will change the beam pattern. Your once crisp cutoff might suddenly be just a glob of light. You can adjust the position of the capsule by using really large washers, or if you want to do a lot of trial and error you can modify the cap reflector that sits in front of the bulb to get a better cutoff. Since it's not a simple smooth reflector, doing a ray diagram to engineer reflector mods would be really difficult. I've only taken University Physics 1-3, it's past my level I know that much haha. One additional measure for Protege5 headlamps it to get the Canadian black housing headlamps or bake and paint the USDM housing (I have one of each haha)

4. Legal issues.. they are completely illegal on our car, no matter what route you take! You can take bi-xenon projectors out of an Infiniti or Audi and retrofit them into your Protege headlamp housings, giving you amazing light distribution, a sharp, very proper cutoff, even auto leveling, but if you take a close look at your headlamps you will see some text molded onto them. It's DOT code stuff, and it says that they are halogen H4 or H7 headlamps. Also molded into the lens is a little dot that is kinda the focal point of where light should be coming through. It's very difficult to see in that pic I posted of my headlamp because it's a bit dirty (most of that isn't pitting, that's my less than 10k mile Canadian headlamp), but I can see it.. you can also see the text right at the bottom of the headlamp lens.

Basically with those DOT codes if you are using anything that isn't what that text prescribes, it isn't legal, even if you meet all the other requirements and have stuff that far exceeds what is required by law in North America.

There are OEM HID headlamps available for our cars, from the mainland Europe 323F. They are auto-leveling and over $800 per headlamp (not including the HID capsules, ballasts, etc). They look like Protege5 headlamps with the separate high beam and such.

_Kansei_

obligatory picture of a beautiful HID system from the Subaru Impreza STi



vs what you get with our cars (hot spots)



I really need a better photo to compare to that STi photo.. you can sorta tell from this one that the light output really isn't very blotchy, it's all over the place. You can also see that the sorta defined beam pattern becomes much less obvious at a distance, unlike that STi:

J-Protege

Good stuff! Now, someone with a retrofitted sedan post some comparision pics so we can see how the bigger sedan lens throws the light.

My guess is that it would be more random and less focused, but since it does have a good cut off and beam pattern, I may be wrong.

JoshP5

Nope, only on the P5. Unless you get auxiliary halogen lighting for your sedan. I'm a halogen guy, so that's all I have to contribute. Carry on!

_Kansei_

Could always replace the OEM sedan foglights with some 'driving lights' --doubt you'll find any that shape though, maybe some round ones might look ok in place of them?

J-Protege

I believe that there are some H4 dual beam kits that have HID low beams and halogen high beams. I think Gary sells those.

Can anyone confirm that?

_Kansei_

Correct. I wouldn't want to deal with that though, that'll REALLY screw with your beam pattern as it just has a halogen bulb chillin next to the HID capsule, messing with the HID light output.

Raverx17

Maybe you guys can help me out.
So I purchased a plug and play kit

I double checked myself to make sure all the wires were properly connected. I went to turn the car and and switch on the lights and nothing.The only light that turned on were the smaller bulb but not main HID bulb. Which is odd becuase those are suppose to turn on as my highs not my lows. I also tried the highs to see if the main bulb would light up and nothing they just completely truned off. I changed the fuses for the headlight up to 25 from 15 and also just purchased a new optima battery, so should be getting enough kuice or maybe the ballast are just dead. But its a brand new system.By the way I got the H4 bulb with Hi/Lo built in so there are actually two bulbs, the main HID Bulb and a second smaller bulb (its the second one in the first row in the picture below.

Well if anyone out there can help me out I really would appreciate it.

_Kansei_

Can you let us know roughly what the wiring situation is like? Don't need a diagram, a description would work.

Raverx17

Ok well here goes nothing.

It's pretty much a plug and play kit Comes with
2x HID Xenon Bulbs
2x Ballasts
2x Mounting brackets wiring

Each ballast has one wire that splits into a positive and negative into the bulb connectore and the bulb has the main wire that connects into the ballast. The bulb also has the connection that plugs into your factory harness. here are some pictures I just took. Its getting late so hope it came out good also there installed on the car so bare with me. Hope you guys can help me out. Already contacted the manufacturer but wont get a response until monday.










Notice how only my high beams come on while the swicth is set on low. And if I set it on high the lights turn off completely leaving only the parking lights on.

kargoboy

The low beam goes off when the highs are on.

J-Protege

Heh, I bet it looks darker with the high beam on, once you're used to driving with the HID lows on.

_Kansei_

I meant in the "it's sitting there obstructing the light coming from the HID capsule" sense.

Buy HIDs from this dude guys!

J-Protege

^^^ I think the HID can use some light reduction, haha. I went for a drive in the Sierra last night, man those things are bright for low beams!

They glare like crazy though.