HID Conversion Kits

[carlover143]

I was hoping to buy a new hid conversion kit but I am not sure what colour looks good on my car. Any advice?

[Colin Byrne]

Whilst a bluish light will give almost a 20% increases in overall torque, it will have an negative impact on the performance of your sub woofers.  The other thing to consider is that a pure white light, while having excellent acoustic properties will not improve the dynamic responsive of the vehicle.  I find a 20/80% mix gives the best overall "racing" experience.

[Scott Farquharson]

what's a "hid conversion kit"?

[Gary Pearce]

High Intensity Discharge (Xenon lights) Scott.
The only high intensity discharge we are after Scott is after eating one of those Dagwood Dogs that they sell at the tuck shop down at Phillip Island. Or may be High Intensity Discharge of your competitors down the main straight?
The other thing that is quiet nice about HID in older Alfa Romeo cars is the sweet smell of burning wiring as the 2.5mm wiring strands struggle to carry the extra current to and from the alternator. Or are you still running a generator.

[Southern75]

Apparently they work fine if you re-relay so that the bulk of the current is not drawn though the relatively sub standar nature of alfa headlight electrics. However HID xenon kits apparently drawn less power ... check out the Hella website and all the Wattage and Current draws are less than that of their halogen equivalents.

I personally am not sure how well they perform in older style refractive headlights as most cars that are designed around HID headlights e.g. 156 Gta and Honda S2000 have a specifically focused lense type arrangement with little to no refraction.

[michaelfranti76]

If you go with a set of HID's the HIGHEST color temp that I would go with is around 6000K. The higher the temperature, the less light you will get with automotive HID's. Once you get to the purple ones in the 10K range you have the same amount of light as with a regular halogen bulb!

As far as brand and quality, it is VERY true that you get what you pay for. Cheaper HID bulbs will fail prematurely, run hotter (risk melting things and starting fires) and will have a low light output vs. better bulbs. As well some cheap bulbs can rattle around and move slightly while driving causing other issues.

I personally would get the OSRAM CBI 5000K HID lights. They are some of the brightest bulbs on the market and as well are 5000K with no loss of light output over 4300K bulbs. The second bulb I would suggest is the Philips 81522+ bulbs. They are 4300K but they are a bit brighter than the stock bulbs.

[AikenDrum105]

I put a set of conversion bulbs in the Super,   6000k was still far too blue (however really did wonders for the distance you could see at night)   I bought another set of 4300k  and they are much more acceptable (white/yellow light colour)  but still work a lot better than the old halogens.

The kits usually include a small metal driver box (to provide the high frequency voltages)  that takes only switching current from the existing wiring, and you supply a nice fat feed wire from the alternator / battery to provide the juice.  So you might find the stalk wiring is ok to drive this.

The Conversion kits are made (with the right masking etc for the hi/lo)  to provide the light source in the correct area to reflect and refract correctly from the old glass units - they're not the newer style that require optics in the path of the beam.   You get a very crisp cutoff in low beam to ensure you don't dazzle oncoming cars.  It's more important to adjust your beams to the right height with these bulbs or you'll find folks flashing you after you burn out their retinas - we've all been hit in the face with badly adjusted HID convos I bet....

Overall they draw less current than their equivalent halogen brethren (and seem to run cooler too)  - but I suspect still a little more than the 'stock' wattage bulbs the '60s cars used.  I had fitted relays in the engine bay already prior to giving the HID set a go - so have doubled up on relays perhaps unnecessarily - but then - the existing switch wires up to the stalk and back again is a) old and lets the smoke out a bit already,  and b) has more than likely already been hammered by higher wattage bulbs than stock anyway in it's lifetime.  

I had to make some adapter rings for the inner H1 style (i think)  driving lights on the super - the outer hi/lo bulbs fitted fine as is.   Some of the Hi/Lo housings that come with the kits project too far back from the bulb mount - making it impossible to fit the domed dirt/water protection piece in the wheel arches of the 105 cars (if that's what you're looking at)

It's worth noting that the Hi/Lo bulbs use a canny method to achieve the two beams - instead of two separate 'filaments' as such - when you switch to high beam, the bulb itself is pulled back 5mm or so using an electromagnet to place it in the right area to light the Hi Beam area of the reflector / mask - so you don't run both lo and hi at once.   I went to a bit of trouble with my relay logic to make sure the lo/hi bulb didn't have both filaments lit together - unecessarily it seems.

here's a couple of pics that show the 6000k units on low and high - not the best picture, it's taken through a glass door - showing the blue colour as it refracts through the glass.   also shows the 5W yellow parker as a reference.   I haven't taken a picture of the 4300k units yet, but they look 'right' with the parker light - if that makes sense.

Michael's point about quality is spot on - I bought a very cheap ebay kit to give them a go at the outset - the bulbs wiggled over bumps,  flickered as they warmed up, didn't last long (although that could be more because I didn't weather seal them properly)  and the kits weren't an 'easy' mount to the old reflectors..   I bought another cheap set of bulbs to change the colour temp down,  they're still going - but when the next one fails I'll stump up for a decent kit.

Hope that helps a little - wiser cognoscienti might chip in with more accurate knowledge

Cheers,

[Darryl]

I'm thinking about running HID in the high beam 5 3/4" on the fetta with the low beam left alone purely to (try to) get a decent high beam without sticking a pair of super oscars on the front... But the point re the optics is a good one. The alternative (or maybe the necessary first step) is to fit a pair of hella 100w 5 3/5" driving lamp inserts in place of the std high beams. Which is probably necessary anyway to get a decent beam and if I'm still not happy stick 55w HIDs in them?