All About HID's

[dohcterek]

HID's
Okay Guys first off what is an HID ?
HID --> high intensity discharge, what does this mean.

Basically unlike the standard halogen bulbs which uses a "filament" to output the lights, the HID does not consist withfilaments and contain compact arc tubes, which enclose various gases and metal salts, operating at relatively high pressures and temperatures.


What are the advantages of HIDS consists of standard
Halogen or "super white" bulbs.
HIDS:
Wattage (W): 35W
Lumens (Lm): 3500Lm
Life Expectancy: 3000 hours or more
Light Outpuet: 3x or greater than standard Halogens
Color Temps (K): 4100/4300 (OEM) - 12000K (eww too purplish/blue)

Halogens:
Wattage (W): 50 -55W
Lumens (Lm): 1000 - 1500Lm
Life Expectancy: 350 - 500
Light Output: ~
Color Temps (K): 2400 - 3000K

Q:What Kind of HID Kits can i buy for my car?
A:There are actually two different answers i can give. Lets start with answer (1), and follow with (2)

(1)You can HID Kit such as: Catz, McCulloch, Bohmen, etc. These are rebased HID Kit. which means the the bulbs are made to fit for the "halogen" housing headlights. Also getting all the necessary wires, ignitor(so you dont' screw up) and other necessary parts. Useally the wires are longer. Other thing is by putting an HID Kit into your standard housing that are ment to take 55W halogen, this can mean disaster. Honestly there is not a single kit that will make the glares and "UFO's" disappear. The thing is most people don't comprehend... b/c you are putting a bulb that is 3 times greater light output and into a housing that is not even made to handle HIDs. This is both PROJECTORS & Reflectors


(2)You can buy a "DOT" or "ECE" projectors off BMW, Audi, S2K, Volvo or what not and retrofit them into your car.Valeo a company who makes projectors and few ballistas for Audi are one of the best choice doing a retro. Retro takes a lot of creativness and time and effort to it. It is not just a day job. This can last from anywhere to 2-7days

Q: Can I put HID kit into my TYC/aftermarket Projectors?
A: Yes and No. The thing is the aftermarket "projectors" so called are not high quiality like the Valeo, E55, E46 or what not and the aftermarket projectors for 99% of the Civic's are for halogen only and it's off some fog lights or same materials and stuffs. Either way DO NOT ever put your HID kit in a halogen projectors. It can give off various glares off everywhere, beam pattern will be not so great and sometimes it can melt


Q: Is HID illegal and also how about retrofitting?
A: Yes & No. To begin with HID's were never legal. Companies like BMW, Benz, Lexus, AUdi and etc had them on because it was adapted from Europe and Asia. U.S. Officals never had a problem with it until "ricer" companies begun to bring out rebased HID Kits that was blinding people with blue/purple light and was never a perfect fitment. This now has been a reason why Government officals, NTHS or something like that has been cracking down retailers who sales HID kits. IF they are caught and convicted, they can get jail time and fines. Honestly ONLY best rebased HID kits were teh CATZ. I am going to say NO, because the OEM factory HID kit does meet "D0T" as they foresay. If U.S cracks down and tells car manufactors to do not put HID kits in their car, this will be a dramatic decrease in car indutry, and economy wise. Plus the OEM HID is levled and puts out white light instead of blue or purple. Only the lense and the light bouncing off the "shield" and the lense is making the blue/purple look to it.
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[dohcterek]

Bulbs
The bulbs. The common mistake some people here is that all these high kelvin rated bulbs are the shizzle. Well, they couldn't be more wrong. The higher you go in kelvin, the less light and lumens you'll have. Pratically anything over 6k is really a waste if your at all concerned with your safety and brightness of lighting. So what is the best bulb out there then you ask? 4100-4300k. It has the most lumens out of all the HID bulbs produced. Thats why car manifacturers still use them today. Below is a graph showing you the variances of the light spectrum. As you can see, 4100k would be right where the "sweet spot" is on that chart. It produces near to the suns same kelvin thus giving you daylight-like output. Think of it like this, high kelvin bulbs would be like being out in the sun with sunglasses on vs a 4100k being in the sun w/o glasses on.

Also here is another good thing to know taken from the FAQ:
Yellow:
1500 k Candlelight
2700-2900 k Yellow painted fog halogen bulbs
-------------------------------
Yellowish white:
3200 k Sunrise/sunset
3200 k Premium H7 non painted halogen bulb
3400 k 1 hour from dusk/dawn
-------------------------------
White:
4100 k Philips/Osram OEM HID D2S
5500 k Bright sunny daylight around noon
----------------
Blueish white
5500-5600 k Electronic photo flash
6000 k Philips Ultinon HID D2S
6500-7500 k Overcast sky
-----------------
Blue:
9000-12000 k Blue sky
-----------------
Purple:
28000 Northern sky
12000-30000 k Ultra Violet light (black light)

So know that you know about kelvin and some aspects of the bulbs, you might be wondering why you hear the terms D2R or D2S. Well, to put it very simply to you, D2R is a HID bulb that was designed for HID reflector housings. It has a different base than a D2S and also has a painted portion on the bulb itself. Why is it painted you ask? The paint is there to block certain areas of the bulb that would cause excessive glare in the housing. Does the paint affect bulb performance? Yes. A 4100k D2R has slightly less lumen than a 4100k D2S. Can a D2R be converted to a D2S? Yes. You would have to make a notch in the base of the bulb to match that of a D2S. you would also need to delicatly remove the painted portion of the bulb so that it would be completely visible just like a D2S. So enough about a D2R ehh, lets talk about the D2S for a sec. The D2S was designed only for a HID projector application. They are completely clear and give out the most efficiency of the two. Thats pratically all there is in difference between those two bulbs Below are some pics of both.


Ballasts
Ok, it has come to my attention some people think that if you use 2 different ballasts on the same bulbs, that one will look different than the other. Is this true? No. A ballast is a ballast (performance wise) as long as we are talking about 35W ballasts. As long as each ballast has the same exact style of connectors, they both can be used in conjunction with each other. Such as the rebased ones will have two connectors at end links, male and female as for the OEM ones are just female for the bulb and male for the HID "Plug"So now you may be asking yourself, "so what all does a ballast do in genral"? Well, here is a little bit of info on how flouresent ballast work and their basic simplicity. The same somewhat applies to automotive ballast. Our automotive ballast take in your cars DC power and converts it to AC current.

With that being said, you now know the basics of what all is going on inside a ballast. The DC power from your car is being turned into AC power to supply the charge needed to power up the HID bulbs. The ballast throws out 23k +/-1-2k of volts to the HID bulbs upon start-up often refered to as warm-up. This is when you seeing HID trun on and start to change colors and get brighter as they warm. This usually lasts only around 25 seconds or so on OEM ballast. Cheaper aftermarket ballast tend to warm-up longer thus causing premature bulb life loss. Sometimes when people first get HID, they tend to show boat infront of their friends turning their HID off/on rapidly. Is this good some say? The answer is no. If you've ever seen HID turned off and on you would of noticed a 4100k turns redish-orange for a second. This is the bulbs way of saying OUCH! What happens is the bulbs have already created Xenon gas to for the light but hasn't cooled back into salts and then when the bulbs are turned back on, the ballast are sending out a start-up of 23k volts which IS NOT a good thing. The bulbs already had enough Xenon in them to supply light and didn't need the 23k shot to them. This kills bulb lifespan.

Wiring
So you've learned about ballasts and bulbs now. Lets move on to the wiring now shall we.... Some people out there just aren't aware of the dangers with wiring HID straight off of your existing oem wiring. Should a relay be used to power HID, yes and always needs to be used. Why you ask perhaps? Your oem halogen equiped car was never designed or intended from the manufacturer to use or run high voltage/high current/ high amperage HID ballasts. Ballast draw a imense amount of amps upon start-up and could very seriosuly damage your wiring and not just at where its connected. We are talking serious damage to fuse boxes, ecu's, or worse could short and cause fires on very old cares that even have a hard enough time trying to power halogen. The reason why is, that when the ballast "demand" power, your car has to supply it from somewhere. Lets say its tapped into your oem headlight wire ok. Now you power up the ballasts, the draw current from your wiring, your wiring might not be up to the task so its needs help, t searches for a source and before you know it, you've now weakend not only one source but two now just to try and supply the ballast good clean power. This is why a relay harness is needed. A relay harness gets its power straight from the battery via relays. These relays are then wired to go to your ballasts now.

[dohcterek]

sorry for the long posts

[MzdaSpd_RSNGSUN]

eh who cares how long it is, at least it was informative. ;D

[area1320]

Yeah we need to do a "group buy" on some from hidplace.com and he'll hook me up! Who's in?

[lawdogg]

nice info matt, im looking for some HIDs as soon as I can afford it...

[dohcterek]

scott if you can get us a price i might be interested. let us know.

[MzdaSpd_RSNGSUN]

i got my HID kit for 280$ shipped to my door, it was very easy to install, simple plug-and-play. its a 12000K kit, it's close to UV but it makes the road lines and signs and such almost 'glow' so it's great for rainy nights and fog.

[dohcterek]

nice install and good price. i like the out come

[MzdaSpd_RSNGSUN]

thanks homie, HIDs are a good way to go they are way brighter than any halogen/xenon bulb, and use much less power.

[RoUcKeY21]

McCulloch are boobies. considering thats what i have in my car. they are super bright. almost to bright that you can't see the turn signal. lol but heard some good things about some of the ebay buys.

[Senseless]

I've been thinking about doing some HIDs but i'm not sure how DJ NJ Inspection is gonna like that.

[dohcterek]

yeah I was wondering the same thing do they pass cars with aftermarket HID's?