HID's FTW!!!!

[12secondv6]

SWEET!!!!

For my b day mr juice bought me an H4 conversion and an HID head light kit!

I had xenon headlights on the SEXYNESS and since I no longer have that car I soooo miss them!

So, the project this sunday is to install the H4 conversion and HID kit in the Trans Am! I'll take pic's

HID's FTW!!!

[Tru2Chevy]

You got the projector housings for them, right?

- Justin

[oh one ls1 SS]

ahh.. i miss my HID's in my last car too.

[Ian]

take lots of pics of the install!

[Blackbirdws6]

You got the projector housings for them, right?

- Justin

They don't make projector housings for the 93-97 TA's. They have to be a retrofit design....and even that is very involved and difficult.

What color temp, conversion housings, and kit did you go with? Make sure the adapters for the plug ends are long enough.

Get some cutoff pics as well. I'm curious to see how they compare to my housings. Always looking to go better. You will love the HIDs

-brian

[12secondv6]

You got the projector housings for them, right?

- Justin

:shrug: I think so.

It has new head lights, ballasts, ignitors, wires, etc. All the needed parts are there.

Sooooo can't wait!

[Tru2Chevy]

They don't make projector housings for the 93-97 TA's. They have to be a retrofit design....and even that is very involved and difficult.

Yea, I meant projectors for the housings.....

I hope so, otherwise he'll be blinding everyone in site.

- Justin

[12secondv6]

Color Temp (k) = 4300K

H4 1/2

The new housings are made by DLAA

[12secondv6]

I hope so, otherwise he'll be blinding everyone in site.

- Justin

:rofl: Screw everyone else..... at least I will be able to see :)

[misterjuice]

I got him the regular diamond cut reflector housing for now....just to see how they fit and in case we have to make modifications somehow....I'm gonna get him the projector housing at a later date once we install everything. the HID kit has a halogen high beam as well so it's decent. And i wanted maximum light output...not those blue 12000K which are dimmer significantly

[Teds89IROC]

are those 4x6?

[misterjuice]

yeah they are

[Teds89IROC]

o0o0o, take lots of pics! Any links for this stuff?

[ryanfx]

blinding everyone else with no projectors FTL..

[Iroc-z86]

very nice.

i have projector hids 8k for my iroc. love them. ill post some pics soon

[maroman88]

yes pics !

[ar0ck]

Must be nice... Must be nice...

[Blackbirdws6]

blinding everyone else with no projectors FTL..

Not necessarily. Granted reflector housings do not perform as good as quality projectors, some have fairly decent optics. Ask me how I know.

Hella Free-form 165mm, H4 Hi/Low 6500K

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/10/web/766000-766999/766177_50_full.jpg

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/10/web/766000-766999/766177_47_full.jpg


-Brian

[misterjuice]

Hey Brian, what did you do to convert the original wiring for the H4666 sealed beam to accept the H4 bulb? Is there an adapter we can buy? or is it just a matter of connecting 3 wires and soldering them?

[Blackbirdws6]

I picked up an adapter from rallylights.com when I bought my new headlight housings. These guys are located in PA and it's easier to call them and order than go through their website. Shipping was quick too.

Only mild PIA was I had to extend the adapter harness wires because the one end of the connector would get in the way when the headlight housing was closing. Not hard to extend 3 wires per harness but it wasn't just that easy lol.

-Brian

[ryanfx]

Not necessarily. Granted reflector housings do not perform as good as quality projectors, some have fairly decent optics. Ask me how I know.

Hella Free-form 165mm, H4 Hi/Low 6500K

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/10/web/766000-766999/766177_50_full.jpg

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/10/web/766000-766999/766177_47_full.jpg

-Brian


Using HID's without projectors is just dangerous. Case closed. Show me your "cut off" with a sealed housing against your garage door and I will retract my statement. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to run cars off the road with "aimed" hids in regular housings because I litterally could not see in front of me from the glare.

[Blackbirdws6]

First pic is close to the wall. Aside from the hotspots its controlled fairly well.

http://thumb11.webshots.net/t/18/18/1/18/44/2513118440044099631mPgWUs_th.jpg (http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2513118440044099631mPgWUs)

Farther out shot. They still needed a little needed adjusting after this shot but the only glare you should get would be if your on the side of the road.
http://thumb11.webshots.net/t/26/27/4/12/11/2493412110044099631GVFqno_th.jpg (http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2493412110044099631GVFqno)

Tough to get a shot at night with the HIDs with the simple camera but there you go. Not as good as projectors but not half bad either.

-Brian

[WS SIKZ]

who sells a fairly cheap kit for hids including lenses ballasts and bulbs for a 00 trans am? some one pm me

[Tru2Chevy]

Here's what HID's should look like in proper housings:

http://www.skafia.com/itr/hid/full/cutoff.jpg

No hotspots, sharp cutoff. Very different from HID bulbs in a halogen housing.

- Justin

[j0n]

The HIDs in the SEXYNESS are AWESOME!!!!!

[Blackbirdws6]

Here's what HID's should look like in proper housings:

http://www.skafia.com/itr/hid/full/cutoff.jpg

No hotspots, sharp cutoff. Very different from HID bulbs in a halogen housing.

- Justin

Different indeed but it's just better light distribution which would be better and more even lighting. I was simply refuting the argument that HIDs in halogen housings are super dangerous. They are indeed....depending on the housing.

Eventually I will work something out with a bixenon projector (I have extra buckets) but thats a winter project.

[Tru2Chevy]

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

Thinking of converting to HID?

So you've read about HID headlamps and have it in mind to convert your car. A few mouse clicks on the web, and you've found a couple of outfits offering to sell you a "conversion" that will fit any car with a given type of halogen bulb. STOP! Put away that credit card.

An HID kit consists of HID ballasts and bulbs for "retrofitting" into a halogen headlamp. Often, these products are advertised using the name of a reputable lighting company ("Real Philips kit! Real Osram kit! Real Hella kit!") to try to give the potential buyer the illusion of legitimacy. Fact: While some of the components in these kits are sometimes manufactured by the companies mentioned, the components aren't being put to their designed or intended use. Reputable companies like Philips, Osram, Hella, etc. NEVER endorse this kind of "retrofit" usage of their products.

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.

This diagram shows the very different characteristics of the filament vs. the arc:

When designing the optics (lens and/or reflector) for a lamp, the characteristics of the light source are *the* driving factor around which everything else must be engineered. If you go and change the light source, you've done the equivalent of putting on somebody else's eyeglasses: You can probably make them fit on your face OK, but you won't see properly.

Now, what about those "retrofit" jobs in which the beam cutoff still appears sharp? Don't be fooled; it's an error to judge a beam pattern solely by its cutoff. In many lamps, especially the projector types, the cutoff will remain the same regardless of what light source is behind it. Halogen bulb, HID capsule, cigarette lighter, firefly, hold it up to the sun—whatever. That's because of the way a projector lamp works. The cutoff is simply the projected image of a piece of metal running side-to-side behind the lens. Where the optics come in is in distributing the light under the cutoff. And, as with all other automotive lamps (and, in fact, all optical instruments), the optics are calculated based not just on where the light source is within the lamp (focal length) but also the specific photometric characteristics of the light source...which parts of it are brighter, which parts of it are darker, where the boundaries of the light source are, whether the boundaries are sharp or fuzzy, the shape of the light source, and so forth.

As if the optical mismatch weren't reason enough to drop the idea of "retrofitting" an HID bulb where a halogen one belongs—and it is reason enough!—there are even more reasons why not to do it. Here are some of them:

The only available arc capsules have a longitudinal arc (arc path runs front to back) on the axis of the bulb, but many popular halogen headlamp bulbs, such as 9004, 9007, H3 and H12, use a filament that is transverse (side-to-side) and/or offset (not on the axis of the bulb) central axis of the headlamp reflector). In this case, it is impossible even to roughly approximate the position and orientation of the filament with a "retrofit" HID capsule. Just because your headlamp might use an axial-filament bulb, though, doesn't mean you've jumped the hurdles—the laws of optical physics don't bend even for the cleverest marketing department, nor for the catchiest HID "retrofit" kit box.

The latest gimmick is HID arc capsules set in an electromagnetic base so that they shift up and down or back and forth. These are being marketed as "dual beam" kits that claim to address the loss of high beam with fixed-base "retrofits" in place of dual-filament halogen bulbs. (A cheaper variant of this is one that uses a fixed HID bulb with a halogen bulb strapped or glued to the side of it...yikes!) What you wind up with is two poorly-formed beams, at best. The reason the original equipment market has not adopted the movable-capsule designs they've been playing with since the mid 1990s is because it is impossible to control the arc position accurately so it winds up in the same position each and every time.

In the original-equipment field, there are single-capsule dual-beam systems appearing ("BiXenon", etc.), but these all rely on a movable optical shield, or movable reflector—the arc capsule stays in one place. The Original Equipment engineers have a great deal of money and resources at their disposal, and if a movable capsule were a practical way to do the job, they'd do it. The "retrofit" kits certainly don't address this problem anywhere near satisfaction. And even if they did, remember: Whether a fixed or moving-capsule "retrofit" is contemplated, solving the arc-position problem and calling it good is like going to a hospital with two broken ribs, a sprained ankle and a crushed toe and having the nurse say "Well, you're free to go home now, we've put your ankle in a sling!" Focal length (arc/filament positioning) is only just ONE issue out of several.

The most dangerous part of the attempt to "retrofit" Xenon headlamps is that sometimes you get a deceptive and illusory "improvement" in the performance of the headlamp. The performance of the headlamp is perceived to be "better" because of the much higher level of foreground lighting (on the road immediately in front of the car). However, the beam patterns produced by this kind of "conversion" virtually always give less distance light, and often an alarming lack of light where there's meant to be a relative maximum in light intensity. The result is the illusion that you can see better than you actually can, and that's not safe.

It's tricky to judge headlamp beam performance without a lot of knowledge, a lot of training and a lot of special equipment, because subjective perceptions are very misleading. Having a lot of strong light in the foreground, that is on the road close to the car and out to the sides, is very comforting and reliably produces a strong impression of "good headlights". The problem is that not only is foreground lighting of decidedly secondary importance when travelling much above 30 mph, but having a very strong pool of light close to the car causes your pupils to close down, worsening your distance vision...all the while giving you this false sense of security. This is to say nothing of the massive amounts of glare to other road users and backdazzle to you, the driver, that results from these "retrofits".

HID headlamps also require careful weatherproofing and electrical shielding because of the high voltages involved. These unsafe "retrofits" make it physically possible to insert an HID bulb where a halogen bulb belongs, but this practice is illegal and dangerous, regardless of claims by these marketers that their systems are "beam pattern corrected" or the fraudulent use of established brand names to try to trick you into thinking the product is legitimate. In order to work correctly and safely, HID headlamps must be designed from the start as HID headlamps.

What about the law, what does it have to say on the matter? In virtually every first-world country, HID "retrofits" into halogen headlamps are illegal. They're illegal clear across Europe and in all of the many countries that use European ECE headlight regulations. They're illegal in the US and Canada. Some people dismiss this because North American regulations, in particular, are written in such a manner as to reject a great many genuinely good headlamps. Nevertheless, on the particular count of HID "retrofits" into halogen headlamps, the world's regulators and engineers agree: DON'T!

The only safe and legitimate HID retrofit is one that replaces the entire headlamp—that is lens, reflector, bulb...the WHOLE shemozzle—with optics designed for HID usage. In the aftermarket, it is possible to get clever with the growing number of available products, such as Hella's modular projectors available in HID or halogen, and fabricate your own brackets and bezels, or to modify an original-equipment halogen headlamp housing to contain optical "guts" designed for HID usage. But just putting an HID bulb where a halogen one belongs is bad news all around.

- Justin

[j0n]

I went through State inspection in the neon and they didn't say a thing about the HIDs, and I have never been pulled over for them.

[Blackbirdws6]

thanks for the copy/paste job justin but it doesn't really bother me to read it. I've seen that before and in most cases, HID kits shouldnt find their way into halogen housings. The kits sold on LS1tech come to mind. Retrofitting the stock fbody housing with their kits put out ridiculous glare. However, there are occasions where I find it permissible....regardless of what the law has to say. No one is going to spend the time to say this kit and this housing are legal for HIDs where another isn't. It's simply easier to say its all illegal.

Have you seen the stock light output of a 4th gen firebird housing? It's horrendous and barely lights the road. I first went to these Hella housings with higher wattage lamps which produced much better results. Then I switched to a "quality" (as far as HID kits go) kit and I have nearly identical output pattern with greater color rendition and greater light output.

I will be working on a bixenon projector retrofit this winter if time and $ allow but until then...I'm happy with my output and no one ever flashes me on the road from glare.

-Brian