Are HID conversion kits worth anything?

[Christ]

Originally Posted by tjts1

Nothing you say makes any sense at all. But I'm sure that won't stop. Keep it up.

Odd, I understood it perfectly. Must be a redneck thing...

[tasdrouille]

Originally Posted by Christ

Speek fer yerself, buddie!

I like the idea of brighter lights, mostly because I live/drive in rural areas. It's nice to see the deer with enough time to stop.

You just need wider beams for that, not more light. It takes very little light to notice the reflection in an animal's eyes, especially when the background is pitch black. Actually, even with more light, what would be most noticeable is still the eyes, because animals usually blend in with their environment.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by tasdrouille

You just need wider beams for that, not more light. It takes very little light to notice the reflection in an animal's eyes, especially when the background is pitch black. Actually, even with more light, what would be most noticeable is still the eyes, because animals usually blend in with their environment.

At 55-60 MPH on local roads, I want to see further as well.

In some cases, though, I think people confuse headlight bulb quality with headlight lamp crappiness. If the lamp is cloudy, the bulb won't make a difference. I see people with crappy lenses going and getting these $20 a bulb headlights, and expecting a major change with them... Yup - Keep spending it, buddy!

[tjts1]

My Hella H9 halogen projectors.

If you can't see with these, you shouldn't be driving.

9005 halogen bulb in 20 year old 9006 factory bmw projector.

Nobody needs HIDs.

Natural sunlight.


Incandescent lamp. Very similar spectrum output to regular halogen bulb.


HID light


http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/spectra.htm

HID bulbs fool the brain into thinking that the light is brighter when in fact the narrow spectrum reduces your ability to see contrast. The worst part about HID bulbs is the glare from a wet road surface to oncoming drivers. I would have no problem if HID headlights were banned in this country.

[bikeracer]

These graphs are probably deceptive because of their normalization: the peak output of the light seems to be rescaled so that it ends up at ~4000 "intensity counts". If we consider that for a given power, an HID bulb will produce a whole lot more lumens, and in the specific situation that we're talking about, the claims are something like 2.5x the output of halogen bulbs using less power, the graph starts to smell funny.

Here's a quote from wikipedia that might shed some light (sorry) on the issue at hand:

"[...] luminous flux is adjusted to reflect the varying sensitivity of the human eye to different wavelengths of light."

and then

"The lumen can be thought of casually as a measure of the total "amount" of visible light in some defined beam or angle, or emitted from some source. The number of candelas or lumens from a source also depends on its spectrum, via the nominal response of the human eye as represented in the luminosity function."

both from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(unit)

so if we made generated graphs of the different headlight options in question and did not normalize for output, they would look look very different.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

christ, i try not to drive when i dont have to, but unfortunately my job is driving trash trucks. Itd be nice if the city would let us start later on foggy days, but thats just not gonna happen. Even worse is when they switched to cng, they bought cheap junk trucks. There rediculously, dangerously slow, pulling out scares the crap out of me.

Every 2 years theres usually a big pileup on the freeways, 50 cars or more.

[zjrog]

I agree that more light in rural areas is a boon. As well as a wider beam. I replaced my stock Neon headlamps with some aftermarket units that have separate H7 bulbs for the projector low beam and reflector high. While a VAST improvement in both low and high, I still would like more. The projectors give a very defined cutoff that takes some getting used to. The bulbs that came with the headlamps are really crappy and give the highbeams a sort of "flashlighty" appearance. I swapped to some Osram H7s and that improved. And were still just 55W.

I still want more light, I drive in the desert...

[wdb]

Originally Posted by tasdrouille

You just need wider beams for that, not more light. It takes very little light to notice the reflection in an animal's eyes, especially when the background is pitch black. Actually, even with more light, what would be most noticeable is still the eyes, because animals usually blend in with their environment.

Would you please drive ahead of me on my nightly commute and make sure all the deer are looking my way? ;-)

Originally Posted by tjts1

My Hella H9 halogen projectors.

H9's are very nice bulbs.

HID bulbs fool the brain into thinking that the light is brighter when in fact the narrow spectrum reduces your ability to see contrast.

Having driven a very considerable number of miles in rural countrysides behind both kinds of light (HID and halogen), I agree. Halogen lit landscapes have more contrast and color.

Speaking of upgraded bulbs: anyone with 9005/HB3 or 9006/HB4 bulbs should look into. HIR 9011/9012 bulbs. They produce a tremendous amount of light at the same wattage as stockers, do not add glare to oncoming drivers, and can be popped right into stock lights with only a slight modification to the base. They're expensive but worth every penny IMO. And they really last, unlike a lot of aftermarket bulbs; I have been running the same 9011's for almost 100K miles in two of my cars.

The fine folks at rallylights.com sell 9011's: Susquehanna MotorSports - Auto Performance Product