Buying Hid's...questions

[Savtraxx]

Ok so I've read that anything over 6k is illegal as it emits a blue light? ive had my fearshare of high grade torches and 6000 limens is a pretty bright torch...I also read that 33 (what I have) the headlights in them are designed for halogen bulbs not hid so the light may scatter , I know 0 about this and just wondering what I need to know before I buy...also wheres the best place to buy and what ones I should get..sorry new to hid ...any info appreciated ,cheers

[pfcr33]

I got mine from delonixradar, there is a bit of info on the site you can read up on, looks like they even have a Xmas special. This is the kit I got, they work really nice, but they are a little slow to come up to full brightness which can be a problem if you don't use the duel high beam mod.

http://www.delonixradar.com.au/hid-xenon/car-hid-lights/h1/dlx/35w/

Fitting was not easy but it can be done. I should have taken some pics when I did mine

[warps]

6000 is not the lumens, but the temperature rating, or colour of the light it emits (equivalent to a 6000K light source). 4300K is about the closest to natural sunlight, which is what our eyes see best. Hence the best light output will be in the 4000-5000K range. Anything higher will look bluer and "crisper", but won't offer as much useable light.

You're right - being made for a halogen filament bulb, your reflectors and lenses will scatter the light more with a HID globe, since the position of the discharge arc will be different to where the filament normally is located. You can get different types of globes with the arc in different positions, so some will be better than others.

Just in case you care, retro fitting HID lights into an OEM halogen housing is illegal for this very reason. Many people here don't seem to care about legalities, and usually come back with the same old argument that most of the mods on imports are illegal anyway, so what's it matter whether the lights are legal or not?

[pfcr33]

That's interesting, lots of kits I looked at said they were not legal for road use, but the one thing those kits had in common was 7000k plus globes. I thought i was tring to keep my legal as possilbe. Was there ever a hid option for a R33 GTST SII? My r33 had hid in it when it was imported and passed for use in Australia.

[pfcr33]

The hid mine had when I got it were not H1, I'm unsure what they were. Was not till one of them started to flicker I deiceded to get a new hid kit. I was rather horrified when I took the old ones out, the globes were held in with tape and cut off beer cans. The H1 globe mounts were ground out to make these unknown globes fit. I ended up getting an old set of headlights and getting the globe mounts out of them and put every back to factory setup then put the new H1 kit in from there.

[warps]

Yeh that's probably one of the things they don't look at when they compliance a car, and to be honest, it's probably not something that cops look at too closely unless you happen to blind one at night.

There are a few different styles of HID globe, so you might find something close to what you had originally. I retro fitted some HID's to my Light Force spotties for rallying, and ended up finding a globe very close in size and configuration to the original globe (IIRC the filament of the original was even oriented the same way as the arc in the HID). Also, you can focus the Light Force lights by moving the globe relative to the reflector to fine tune them. Despite all this, I still couldn't get a decent light output from them, so have shelved the lights for the time being. Will try 50W, 4300K lights in it and if that's no good will convert them back to 100W halogen (the other pair of 100W halogen's put out far more usable light than the HID's do)

[Savtraxx]

So should I just buy a kit and run it?

[pfcr33]

That would be for you to decide…if they are illegal then I would not recommend it, even if they help you see better which may make it safer to drive at night, who makes these laws???

From what I have seen a fully legal merc or bmw with factory HID blind me morethen the ones I have fitted... not sure what the problem is to make them illegal

I didn't even try the 55 watt halogen to comparebut with the 35 watt kit above and 6000 k Phillips globes will give a very nicebeam that seamed to be nice and focused. I had to wind them down about 1/2 aturn. One day or night I might try the 55 watt and 100 watt halogen v's 6000 kHID and test the difference.

If you got them you would need a dremel and a stepper drill bit to fit them, also i found it easier to remove the whole light from the car as the globe holders needed to be adjusted to fit the HID globe.

Edited December 8, 2011 by pfcr33

[Spunky Munky]

Basically, go 6000K if you want pure white look and 8000K if you want a bluer tinge. Both are illegal so don't kid yourself about saying 6K is legal. However, I personally find that 6K is fine for me.

[pfcr33]

Found what I was looking for

Interesting reading

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/topic/301146-r33-headlight-bulbs/