ahhh. thanks for the clarification jdmvette. will read up on it for my knowledge.

leaktye: BlingLights sells a set of those 50watt VHO (very high output) hid kits in an 8000K version only. i have a set of those... and they are BRIGHT! a lot better lighting then my 4300K in my benz, or 6000K kit in my suburban. granted, the cost about 1.5x more then the normal kits, i feel they are worth it!
Aj

 

This topic is so old, it's new again.

Go back about five (5) years to 2001 and start your forum search from there.

To get you started here's an old thread tiltled Headlamp/fog lights for DUMMIES!!!!

Then read about HIDs that catch fire, headlights (with HID) that don't work, HIDs that stop working, HIDs that fall off, HIDs without a high beam, etc., etc. Once again, here, did some work for you: HIDs That Don't Work

Here's the only thing that's legal, and that works: http://www.tbyrne.com/c5catalog.html

 

EHS, I wasn't on the forum 5 years, ago, but I've read the threads. Maybe you haven't been following my threads. There's a lot I don't know, but I do know a few things about our lights.

I know:
- that I won't have high beams, but I could've, and choose to go without
- I seriously doubt they'll catch fire when I was able to run 130/100w halogens in the southwest (NM) for 2 years, and most of my driving (30k miles) was at night. I even did a 700 mile stretch in non-stop rain. Now that was risky to do on stock wiring, and I knew it, but my curiousity wanted to find out if claims like yours were true or BS.

As far as the HIDs falling off or not working after a while, time will tell.

If I ever find the time and initiative, I'll cut up one of my stock or OEM housings to install projectors and a clear front lens, or upgrade the wiring and install good relays and go back to a high wattage halogen. Will it be legal? Nope, but then again neither is my ***, or *******, or ***** ***, or **********, or ******, and neither is my **** *****. I've gone thru enough checkpoints and followed around enough cops on a Friday night with my 100w low beams to know my lights aren't bad enough to get tagged.

As we all know, this thread is useless without pics, so I'll get mine new HIDs installed and pics put up as soon as possible. For comparison, I'll do pics with 60/55w halogens, 85/80w Osram halogens, and 35w HIDs (low only).

 

and then you can add this pic of real, legal projector HIDs to you list.



I've been there, all the lights you mentioned will be better than the one before it, and these are the next step on that list.

 

EHS: you seem to have a very bitter taste in your mouth regarding HIDs... i can tell you, i have been researching HIDs since 02'. i bought a kit when it first came out, and i still have that kit today in working order. has not caused me a problem (other then the occasional flickering which i think is due to my switch).
To answer some of your accusations:
-No, they do not catch fire. lights that catch fire are those mentioned by leaftye, 130watt bulbs, that are NOT suppose to be used in stock application, but some get away with it.
-Fall Apart, no, i have NEVER seen that, please show me an instance.
-illegal: tru, but how many have been ticketed for this? not i, nor have i heard of anyone in my state. the german imports get more complaints about the HIDs b/c of the auto leveling features... not ours!
-HIDs without highbeams: no again, if you have a dual H4, they have dual HID H4 kits. and in our stock application, i have NEVER used my high beams, EVER. low beam is sooo much brighter then high beam, it looks like the highs are not even on.
HIDs not working: either you installed incorrectly, or at the very slight chance, the bulb is broken, in which case, im sure the seller will warranty the part. an easily fixable problem.

do some research on HIDs with TODAYS standards, not 5 yrs ago when the FIRST came out to the public... technology changes my friend... first yr productions always have problems...we all know this..

NOW, BACK TO TOPIC
4u2nvc5: if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. i'd be morethen happy to help you out!
Aj

 

Beautiful! Eventually I'll get there. I was in a pinch and needed lights on a rush, and I can reuse my HIDs on my motorcycle if I don't like them anyway. Eventually I'll step up to projectors with HIDs. I'm really liking the flush nonpopup dual bixenon thread going on right now. Some people, and we know who they are, won't approve because the lens is not DOT approved and running more than one pair of driving lights is illegal (at least in CA).....and then there are the folks that disapprove of all npu's unless they're on a C5-R!

 

Your car's entire technology is at least five years old -- first upgrade your twenty year old Cadillac Cimarron headlight shells (that's where they're from, you know), but don't screw around putting bulbs into 1988 reflectors that weren't designed for them.

There's a reason that the complete HID replacement is approved, and the the other "solutions" are not. Because they don't work.

 

EHS: in my case, i don't have stock pop ups. i have the C5Rs, so for me, they work great... but, i do have experience (and many of my friends) who have HIDs in their stock housings. yes, they are a halogen housing, i understand. yes, they are not meant to have HIDs in them... but the ultimate point here, is that though they are not DOT approved, they are still a huge improvement over stock... that was question, not whether its legal or not. so, im not trying to argue with you, just pointing out, that they are indeed a better option then stock lighting IF your not willing to spend 1300 on a VETTEHID setup. normal HIDs will still work.
Aj

 

$1300 for the HID projector kit Check out the corvettegarage sale price going on. $999 is the normal price now, the sale price is lower, there is/was an upgraded kit that was more, but the price keeps dropping

 

Last post -- from an expert on the subject:

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...s/Hid/HID.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.

Please note: From time to time, I am asked to comment on what are marketed as "new developments" in HID kits, and those asking sometimes point out to me that these "new developments" might render this article out-of-date, since the copyright date on the article is older than the date of these "new developments". Please understand, marketeers will always be coming up with dazzling new pseudoscience, tempting new hype and sneaky new ways of trying to convince you to buy their stuff. It's what they do. This article will never go out of date, because the problems with HID kits are conceptual problems, not problems of implementation. Therefore, they cannot be overcome by additional research and development, any more than someone could develop a way for you to put on somebody else's eyeglasses and see correctly.

_______________________

Again from someone who's been around awhile.

All the best.

 

I bought a set of HID's from blinglights last June. Now one works and one doesn't. It just won't light. I suspect the ballast is bad. So that was 300 bucks for 15 months of HID's.


I think this time I'm going to buy the projector lamps from T Byrne.
The whole time I had the HID's in I only got flashed 1 time. I passed several cops, and not one of them ever turned around.

 

EHS, I'm familiar with Daniel Stern. I've been linking to his site for years, and actually just ordered a spare set of halogens from him yesterday....Osram 85/80w bulbs. Here's what he suggested when I asked for another set of 130/100w bulbs:

I haven't done the wiring/relay upgrades to my electrical system, so I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't getting full power anyway, so I took his suggestion for the 85/80's. Like I'd argue with Daniel anyway.

One thing I don't believe he posted in that specific article you linked to was that having bright lighting close to the car reduces the ability to see things further away, but I believe it's in another one of his articles. That is a good article though. I haven't seen the "filiment" issue explained so well before, so kudos to him for a great job on doing that.

 

and that's exactly what my H4 "bulb swap" HID's looked like, lots of light in front of the car, not enough down the road.
my pic is a good example of that.

H4 HID kit


Projector HID housings (Vette HID)

 

And Tbyrne is using Phillips ballasts.

 

all the kits by ACA use phillips ballasts.

here's where I mounted mine:

 

Just an FYI that my set from Vette HID's uses Sylvania OSRAM ballasts.

 

ask forum member yo-el what ballasts his vette-hid set came with.

 

New guy here,

Is there a place that sells just the proj housings and not the other items like the T Byrne link above? Or maybe a housing that has a clear lens? I do retrofits on my other cars and would like to try my hand at a C5. Thanks.

chris

 

phillips gen4 ballasts

 

Okay, you guys win. HIDs in euro housings have a terrible cutoff and put lots of light down directly in front of the car. All that said, no one flashed me, and I still had much improved visibility, so unless I start getting unwanted attention from the po-po's, I'll stick with this until I get around to making the npu hid lights I've been wanting for a couple years.

Strangely enough, the 130/100w bulbs I had in them before had a great cutoff, but the stock bulbs and some no-name 85/80w bulbs had no apparent cutoff...