xenon or HID convertion

[brightspark]

A mate of mine fitted 100watt bulbs. The extra heat they produce ruined the reflectors & the extra current damaged the relays. He needed new headlamp units eventually, as they reached a point where they were worse than standard bulbs !

the extra 20 watts doesnt make hardly any diffrence to the heat or the amperage for the cable or relays. i used them in all of my vehicles with no bother for years all the taxi drivers fit em round our way

 

[Wedg1e]

I must be one of those waste of skin cretinous whankas then, I put twin HIDs on my bike
Perhaps by complete fluke the beamspread isn't all over the shop causing widespread global warming and death to kittens, I think only one person has ever flashed me which is hugely out of proportion to the number of chavved shopping cars I've flashed that had them fitted. That said my pet tactic at the moment is to flash idiots who have their fog lights on, usually givng them an invitation to some coffee beans as well
My bike has electric headlamp levelling so if it does look as though the beam top is a bit high (usually with a pillion) I wind them down a tad.
Mr MOT has never so much as muttered about them.
Edited to add: Mine are 35W, 4300K, not the chavvy 6000K 1,000,000W things. They're H4 fit (so I have two dipped or two main beams) with a solenoid that retracts a shield around the lamp to move the light fall on the mirror. So none of the problems of waiting for a main beam to come up to full brightness. The one drawback is that you can't use the old 'flash' dodge to get both beams lit at the same time.
One bonus is that HIDs, whilst drawing a high-current spike at start-up, actually take less current than halogens once lit.

 

[drivewasher]

,Here's how we do it at our MoT bay.
A car can't fail MoT for having aftermarket HID's fitted instead of origonal halogens. There was talk about it bein a fail last year during all the changes that came in but it never materialised to our horror!
Vehicles with factory fitted hid's must have auto leveling devices on suspension fitted and working. IF headlamp washer are fitted they MUST work.
The reason we are given is the lens is specific to hid bulbs in how it disperses the light and any road grime /dirt affects the light dispersall thats why washers must work.

ALL dipped headlights must be tested for beam aim on a beam aim tester and must produce an image when viewed in the tester that conforms to paramiters marked on the screen that the image is projected onto. In all modern cars in uk that consists of an horizontal line with with with the ligh below it and an angled cut up to the left that has to fall in between 2 vertical lines. If it doesn't then it fails for too high/low, too far right/left etc etc.
If when we look at the projected image there is no definite lines visible but just a white mess then thats a fail for "Projected beam image obviously incorrect"

"Projected beam image obviously incorrect" is where aftermarket hid's usually fail.
If you do your homework, you can usually get an hid set up to fit. there are a number of different fittings/types of bulbs. If your headlamps have a metal hat shield over the bulb it's a different type of bulb to lamps that dont have any shield in them. The hid's that look like a tiny strip lamp sticking out are useless in lamps with no shield.
The bees knees hid lights have only 1 bulb that stays lit for both dip & main beam, they are projector lamps and have a solenoid that lifts a flap up to cover half of the light to give a crisp horizontal line on dip.

To be honest it's a knightmare, most aftermarket hid's fail on incorrect image and the only way to get a ticket is to put the old halogens (usually found in glove box) back in!

PS brightness or wattage doesn't come into the MoT as we cant check that, just the beam aim/image

 

[BrokenBiker]

so what about these? Will they affect the beam or will it blind everyone?

http://item.ebay.com/130727131944

 

[hotrodder]

They won't effect beam aim/focus as they're normal filament bulbs. Based on the 'xenon gas filled for that impressive HID look' they may well annoy/dazzle other road users because that's often marketing BS for blue tinted chavvy tat that actually puts out less light than normal bulbs (it's been filtered out to make them appear blueish). Note that in amongst all the BS marketing claims about massive improvements they actually state...

upto 50% more light

If you want some 'better' H7 bulbs then the two suspects that virtually always win when these things are tested by autoexpress etc are Osram Nightbreakers or Phillips Xtreme vision. Marketing BS still abounds, everything is 'upto more...' with the exception of life which is always lower than standard as the filament is run hotter to produce more lumens from the same wattage with some of the light filtered to make them appear 'whiter' than filament bulbs really are.
In reality they produce a couple of hundred more lumen than regular halogen bulb but appear to be better than that due to the 'whiter' appearance. Don't expect a night and day (sorry!) difference but they do appear to be better and so are worthwhile provided you don't have to take half the car apart to change a bulb

Read these... http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/blue/blue.html

and then whichever way you go get a multimeter out and check the headlight connectors... a voltage drop from dodgy connections/French wiring won't be fixed by posh bulbs

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/blue/blue.html

 

[Wendelspanswick]

A common upgrade on VW T4 vans is to run a cable straight from the battery to a relay next to the headlamps and then use the original headlamp feeds to trigger the relay.
This then gives full battery voltage to the headlamps rather than the 10 point something volts achieved by the original setup, caused by the voltage drop in the circuitous route of the loom.

 

[lshigham]

A common upgrade on VW T4 vans is to run a cable straight from the battery to a relay next to the headlamps and then use the original headlamp feeds to trigger the relay.
This then gives full battery voltage to the headlamps rather than the 10 point something volts achieved by the original setup, caused by the voltage drop in the circuitous route of the loom.

Make sure you use separate relays for each side, definetly worth doing though

 

[Wedg1e]

A common upgrade on VW T4 vans is to run a cable straight from the battery to a relay next to the headlamps and then use the original headlamp feeds to trigger the relay.
This then gives full battery voltage to the headlamps rather than the 10 point something volts achieved by the original setup, caused by the voltage drop in the circuitous route of the loom.

The same issue afflicted my TVR so I created a sub-loom just for the headlights; two relays, two fuses, some heavy(ish) cable connected directly to the battery. The improvement wasn't limited to the lights: before I did the mod. the stereo used to switch itself off at high volume, it hasn't done it since as there's more juice available inside the cabin!

 

[voipio]

I've fitted higher output standard wattage (nightbreaker etc.) bulbs to both our cars and they certainly make a difference, reflective road signs stand out a lot more.

Got them from Autobulbs

When I saw started to see reflective road signs standing out a lot more I changed the headlamp units as it was a sign of too much light spilling out. The headlamp outer covers had started to go "off" and lose their transparency, so scattering more light. I was causing too much glare!!

 

[Wozzaaah]

Handbags down please ladies!
No need for bickering, everyone's entitled to their opinion and there's nothing being aimed specifically at anyone so have a group cuddle and agree to get along eh?

 

[BrokenBiker]

i think my lights go through the engine multiplex module. Will still get a meter on them and see whats happening.

 

[Robotstar5]

When I saw started to see reflective road signs standing out a lot more I changed the headlamp units as it was a sign of too much light spilling out. The headlamp outer covers had started to go "off" and lose their transparency, so scattering more light. I was causing too much glare!!

Maybe I should have made it more clearer, when on main beam the road signs stood out more, the cutoff on dip beam is fine, no scatter, just brighter.

 

[BrokenBiker]

right, as it happens i am now quite confused. My front left indicator stopped working while driving back from a shoot today so ive just been playing with it. Turns out it was a dodgy connection. Anyway while reading up on the easiest way to remove the light unit Renault claim that my lights are already xenon, however they don't give off the same white light as the xenons on my mates Leon. Am i right in thinking they are just xenon filled bulbs, as this would make a conversion pointless if they are as that is what id be replacing them with anyway

 

[FranV8]

The easy way to tell is if your car has headlamp washers, and does not have a manual lamp level adjuster in the car (normally next to the dimmer control for the instrument lights)

Like I said before, xenons do fade over time, so it may be a change to new bulbs will restore their performance. There are only two types of bulb, ones for projector type headlights and ones for reflector type. Hope this helps

 

[BrokenBiker]

my car has no head lamp washers, i can manually adjust the height from inside the car and the dipped beam bulbs have a little tin hat on them, the main beam don't but obviously it doesn't matter where that light goes

 

[hotrodder]

Headlamp washers/levelling doesn't really work as a tell tale... my daily driver has both, whoever bought it new paid more for 'xenon' headlights (posh H4 bulbs) and yet it was never offered with HID headlights, i don't think they even existed when it was made. Some cars with OEM HIDs got type approval without washers/levelling- something to do with the lumen output IIRC

If the fitment is H7 like you said earlier then the headlights are designed for filament bulbs. HID/gas discharge use a completely different designation system with a D prefix for example D1R and D1S where the R is for a reflector system and S for projector. Full list here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_light_bulb_types
Obviously due to retrofit HID kits that mess up focal lengths while blinding every other road user and cause arguments on the internetz HID bulbs do exist with H fitments but if the headlamp is H7 it was designed for filament bulbs regardless of the gas used in them

ALL bulbs get dimmer/fade over time regardless of flavour which can be compounded by voltage drop, plastic lenses going cloudy and dirt/dust build up on the reflector and inside of the lens as nothing is perfectly sealed.

 

[BrokenBiker]

right, that info sort of clears things up. I am not happy with the light they are producing, so i think i will take one out (ad i noticed earlier i have a sidelight out too) and then buy replacements that match and see what happens. If its still then same then so be it

 

[AndyStobbs]

No one has mentioned projector vs reflector lights. Beam pattern in a projector (even one intended for halogen) is still quite good with HID retro fitted. It's hopeless in a reflector, granted.

 

[BrokenBiker]

am i right in thinking projector lights beam is governed by the glass at front and a reflector is governed but the reflectors behind?

ive never taken any notice ti car lights except changing bulbs like for like

 

[AndyStobbs]

Not so much by the glass, as by the metal plate inside the unit that dictates the beam pattern.