Anyone ever upgrade to HID car headlights?

[bob haller]

prices have dropped dramatically

[clare]

Unless theoptique is designed for the HID bulb being used it is illegal and the results are not good. All kinds of glare and scatter problems. If there is a headlamp assembly made for and approved by the DOT for the vehicle, that upgrade would be good. I'd stay away from anything else, because the light source has to be at exactly the right location in the reflector to work properly.

[Don Y]

I'd be leary of trying to retrofit that technology to an older vehicle. You can't just arbitrarily "put a big, bright light" on the front of your vehicle to help YOU see better; there are other folks on the road! About half of them are coming from the opposite direction!

The HID's also run off a high voltage supply. For the unwary, you can get a good kick from it if unaware. You wouldn't grab a *plug* wire, would you?

We looked at a few vehicles with HID but the vehicle we chose has LED (array) headlights. We have been very pleased with them and the coverage they provide. Feels like you're driving with your "high beams" on all the time!

[Ed Pawlowski]

The price looks good, but I wonder how good the lights are? I've seen a couple of upgrades that look great, but I've seen others that have a blue color to them. That was a couple of years ago and maybe they are al better now.

I got a factory upgrade and it cost tens of thousands of dollars.

[bob haller]

you can pick your prefered color, all the way from yellow to blue. lights are plug in to existing sockets so no rewiring necessary, and they use less power too

[clare]

Hid plug in to your existing socket?? I think not. They require a high voltage ballast power supply - and virtually all are blue-white

- Halogen headlamps and HID headlamps require very different optics to produce a safe and effective?not to mention legal?beam pattern. How come? Because of the very different characteristics of the two kinds of light source.

A halogen bulb has a cylindrical light source: the glowing filament. The space immediately surrounding the cylinder of light is completely dark, and so the sharpest contrast between bright and dark is along the edges of the cylinder of light. The ends of the filament cylinder fade from bright to dark. An HID bulb, on the other hand, has a crescent-shaped light source -- the arc. It's crescent-shaped because as it passes through the space between the two electrodes, its heat causes it to try to rise. The space immediately surrounding the crescent of light glows in layers...the closer to the crescent of light, the brighter the glow. The ends of the arc crescent are the brightest points, and immediately beyond these points is completely dark, so the sharpest contrast between bright and dark is at the ends of the crescent of light. (from Daniel Stern)

[burfordTjustice]

Cite? Federal or State?

[clare]

both. look it up for yourself. Any modification to the headlight that changes it's beam pattern or output (beyond a certain limit which virtually all HID conversions excede) is against the DOT rules and modt highway safety acts.

[bob haller]

the ballasts plug into the existing light sockets and has a output plug to the HID lights.

its plug and play, and can be converted back in minutes

[Ashton Crusher]

FWIW... One of the selling points of HID is that they are "brighter". I have tried "brighter" bulbs in a couple of cars, up to nearly twice as bright as the OEM bulbs. From what I could see it didn't make any meaningful difference in "lighting up the road in front of me". My conclusion was that if you have crappy optics, which a great many US cars have, no amount of "brighter" is going to fix that. And since the HID are likely to not be in the correct optical location they are even less likely to improve the "lighting up the road in front of me" goal. So I personally would not bother with retrofitting HID bulbs/systems into existing optics. I have found adding GOOD driving lights produces a far better "lighting up the road in front of me" result then trying to fiddle with the existing optics bulbs.

The only time retrofitting improved things was when I replaced my high beam sealed beam round SAE "old fashioned" bulbs on my 69 Pontiac with "hella" style reflectors with halogen bulbs. But those weren't well sealed and after a few years the reflective surface deteriorated/got dirty to the point where they were noticeably not as good as when I first installed them.

And if you are trying to "fix" a 5 year old plastic OEM that's starting to haze over by putting in brighter bulbs that's a lost cause too. Most of the increased light will just be scattered into uselessness and glare by the fogged up plastic.

[burfordTjustice]

Nonsense.

[Dean Hoffman]

There's commentary here

at Findlaw agreeing with Clare. There's an article here at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) talking about customs agents seizing imports of them.

One paragraph from SEMA:

"U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is impounding illegal imports of noncompliant high-intensity discharge (HID) conversion kits, light sources and ballasts. The CBP is working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to pursue enforcement. As reported by SEMA for a number of years, the NHTSA has determined that it is impossible to produce HID conversion kits (converting a halogen system to HID) that would be compliant with the federal lighting standard, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 108. The NHTSA is specifically concerned that HID conversion kits can produce excessive glare to oncoming motorists."

[rbowman]

There are some very high output LED setups for motorcycles but they are sold as driving lights, not a headlight conversion for the same reason, and have disclaimers about only for off road use etc. If they weren't so damn expensive I'd get a pair. On a bike, more light is more better when you live where the deer and the antelope play.

[Dean Hoffman]

I mounted a set of these on my windshield.

or I have a switch mounted on the tank so I can easily shut them off. I leave them on during the day. I read somewhere that it's best to have lights in a triangle formation. They're supposedly more noticeable that way. That's one strike against traditional light bars. I have a headlight modulator and wear yellow when riding. Helmets are required here in Nebraska so I'll look pretty for my funeral.

[rbowman]

They claim more lumens than the Denali DR2 LEDs and are cheaper. The one advantage of the LEDs is they are 10w rather than 55. some bikes aren't exactly powerhouses.