Q-DawgVFR

OK, so I like a lot of light when I drive and did some upgrading. I wanted LOTS of light under low beam conditions, as I found the light immediately in front of the truck was lacking quite a bit in intensity.

Looking back, I wish I had spent the money a little differently......

But I thought I would share my experience as I learned a few things the hard way and I would like to prevent others from making the same mistakes.

Mistake #1- I needed to replace one of my housings. I chose to buy 1 96-98 style lamp from a forum member. I wish I had gone with the '99-02 type housing with the crystal clear lens, as it would have been more HID friendly.

Mistake #2- choosing an HID "plug n play" kit, instead of doing it the right way. I chose a bi-xenon kit with a movable shield (I was worried about blinding people and you should be) because I knew the fluted lenses of my housings were a poor choice for proper HID retrofitting and I was too cheap to buy new housings. I rationalized this by telling myself that I could always yank them out and put them in my motorcycle (for daytime visibility- I almost NEVER ride in the dark.) The aftermarket kit has lots of light output, but the light is not even, and there are a couple of hot spots. The hot spots were not too bad when my lamps are in the low setting. My H4 kit was wired backwards for the solenoids initially; low beam setting had shields retracted and they were absolutely blinding. Had to drive with high beams on to not blind people until I got wiring reversed. I'm glad I chose 4300K kit as the light is pure white with no blue or yellow hue to it. Using the shielded kit made the headlights tolerable to meet as the low setting (corrected after wire reversal) gave a definate cut-off to the beam and prevented most of the hot spots from hitting oncoming drivers. As soon as I hit the high beams, you can see terrible hot spots. This retrofit kit will stay in the truck as the wife refuses to let me remove it now, but I adjusted the lamps down somewhat for other driver's consideration and I tested it by sitting in front of the 4Runner in my Mazda Protege. I figure if it doesn't bother me too much, it won't bug others, either. Lesson learned on the HID "ghetto" kits, though. And the biggest reason to do HID the right way is't even for the sake of other drivers, but because you are not even getting even close to the light output of real HID with its careful optics that turn night into day!

Mistake #3 was spending money on my offroad Hella 1000 and Pilot lights before dealing with headlights. Perhaps if I did it the other way around, I would have found the money to do it right. If I keep the truck long term, I probably will correct the ghetto HID kit, but our plans are when the wife gets out of school we want a 4th gen 4Runner.......

Mistake #4 was to order a 2nd HID ghetto kit before setting up the 1st one and trying it out, but the backorder for 4300K ghetto kits was long. (Apparently, EVERYONE likes blue lights but me. I guess that should have been a warning to me......)


Soooooo........


Going forward, I've decided that my 2003 Protege sedan will get real HID with bixenon projectors (I'm thinking I will use RS6 ones as they are decent size and affordable, and I don't think they are the 3 wire solenoid type, but please correct me if I am wrong.)

I plan on using the ballasts and the H4 wiring system from my ghetto kit. I will order some new high tension lines to run from ballast to capsule, some quality (philips) D2S bulbs (4300K-ish temp), and the above mentioned projectors. I'll scrounge for some bezels to hide the ugly mounting hardware.

I have a question for the HID retrofitting gurus: how do you guys seal the lens to the reflector when you are done the retrofit? Is it a special kind of glue or tape? Is the seam visible once assembled?

Just wondering.

THanks for reading!

(I'll try to get some pictures of my setup whenever I get the truck back from the wife, who is back in school again. Pictures really do explain things better...)

superjoe83

the rs6 projectors are a 2 wire solenoid
the lens is sealed to the reflector by a sealer/adhesive that softens with heat

Q-DawgVFR

Thanks for confirming.

So do you scrape that goop off and apply new stuff when you do this mod? If so, where do you get the adhesive from and what is it called?

Q-DawgVFR

Oh, and I thought I would just mention this: I tried H4 Silverstar bulbs in my car.

Impressions so far is that it is whiter light, but doesn't seem much brighter than stock bulbs. I certainly don't see any further down the road at night....

Just so you know.

pdyebrasil

When I did my retro I just reused the adhesive that's already on there. I just threw the lens and housing back into the oven and then stuck them back together. Works great. If you wanted to use new stuff I'm not sure where you'd get it.

Elton

read this http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...good/good.html

aviator

interesting link elton...