HID bulbs in Halogen lamps fail govt test

[mcrews]

I ran the hir bulb in the Infniti Q45 high beam.(low beam was factory hid) the hir is considered to be a direct designed replacement.
That's why I had to search and see about the tip.
If I remember the issue w/ the hir was much shorter life span. There also may have been some quality issues. It is a very good bulb for high beams.

[Superfuelgero]

Would this be another reason why LED bulb retrofits produce such poor results?

[mcrews]

Originally Posted by xntrx

Would this be another reason why LED bulb retrofits produce such poor results?

Yep.

[Baltothewolf]

Tbh, when someone drives at me with their 4k/8k+ bulbs, I take my 4100 lumen flashlight and shine it right in their face until they pass me. I'm so sick and tired of getting blinded at night because people think it's 'cool' to have these headlights.

[RedDevil]

That's bad.

I have an aftermarket HID kit in my car. It has been tested and properly aligned by my Honda dealer. And nobody has flashed their lights at me so far, in over 10.000 km of use.

Because I knew what I did and why, and made sure it worked.

First of all, my car has projector lenses. I bet they use the same lenses whether you get them with OEM HIDs or not. I had halogens and they produced very little stray light, to the extent that other road users seemed to overlook me at night. One lady almost slammed her car into me, driving along a long line of slow moving traffic and apparently my car was the 'hole' in the line!

I chose the color carefully; 5000K which appears plain white.
When I got the HID kit I carefully measured the position of the electrodes (they were at the exact same position as the middle part of the filament of my halogens) and when I fitted them I made sure they were positioned right, though my Honda dealer readjusted thenm all the same afterwards.

I am very happy with my HID kit and although I see a lot of badly aligned HIDs around, I am pretty certain that mine is not among them.

[California98Civic]

Originally Posted by Baltothewolf

Tbh, when someone drives at me with their 4k/8k+ bulbs, I take my 4100 lumen flashlight and shine it right in their face until they pass me. I'm so sick and tired of getting blinded at night because people think it's 'cool' to have these headlights.

Respectfully, that's not a good strategy. It seems like road rage. I hope you're not really doing that. Or if you have, that you'll stop. Just because someone else does something stupid or inconsiderate, or illegal, does not mean you should try to temporarily blind them on the road. Peace.

[Cobb]

My parents tell me back in the day you use to have to get your head lamp aligned and proper alignment was required to pass state inspection, at least in VA.

I too have seen blue, pink, purple and other off white colored lamps I think should be for car shows or off road only.

Having said that, we have a lot of people who have no consideration for others and drive with their high beams on. Those cars I slow up on purpose so they can shine on without me in their way.

[nemo]

Originally Posted by Cobb

My parents tell me back in the day you use to have to get your head lamp aligned and proper alignment was required to pass state inspection, at least in VA.

Florida also had vehicle inspections and head lamp aim was included.

[topcat]

First off, I have an MSc in optics - but I don't work in auto headlight industry. While there are good and bad HID kits (I have had both), I have to take issue with quite a lot of the information on the Daniel Stern website. This makes me wonder that there may be some bias because of some vested interest of the author.
Firstly and fundamentally, the diagram here comparing arc and filament:- http://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/filamentarc.jpg
Assuming the arc and the filament are the same or similar lengths, in the same position, on the same axis, then it seems to me that the arc shown will be a fine replacement for the filament (in a projector style headlamp). The 10,000 cd/cm2 bright spots on the ends of the arc are such a small volume of the rest of the 6,000 cd/cm2 arc they should not cause great concern.

Next, I quote from Daniel Stern: "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". I disagree with this also. I repeat, if the arc is the same dimensions as the filament in the same place as the filament, then in a "projector" style headlamp the arc will project in a similar way to the filament. Hell, the lumps and bumps in illumination in a modern filament headlight are still obvious, and the filament has all those gaps betwen the wires.

Also, I quote: "Probably the biggest issue is HID headlamps' significantly worse color rendering index (CRI), which is in the high-60s to low-70s range. Halogen headlamps' CRI tends to be around 90 to 97 or so."
That 60-70 CRI doesn't fit with the info I can find. HID, being an arc lamp, can give a much flatter spectrum of illumination than a filament. From wikipedia: "The output of a pure xenon short-arc lamp offers fairly continuous spectral power distribution with a color temperature of about 6200K and color rendering index close to 100." EDIT: Turns out automotive HID uses metal halide arc lamps which have a more spiky spectrum- so the CRI could be worse.

I would add that my own experience of a cheap HID kit shows that there are some bad kits out there, and it's not as easy to get it right as the vendors would have you believe. The most important thing is that HID conversion should be done in a projector style lamp, not a reflector style, because the metalised end of the filament contributes to the shutoff in a reflector lamp. But there's no fundamental reason (I can see) which would stop an arc replacing a filament in a projector lamp, if an arc of the same size is situated where the filament would have been (and on the same axis as the filament).

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

That's bad.

I have an aftermarket HID kit in my car. It has been tested and properly aligned by my Honda dealer. And nobody has flashed their lights at me so far, in over 10.000 km of use.

Because I knew what I did and why, and made sure it worked.

First of all, my car has projector lenses. I bet they use the same lenses whether you get them with OEM HIDs or not. I had halogens and they produced very little stray light, to the extent that other road users seemed to overlook me at night. One lady almost slammed her car into me, driving along a long line of slow moving traffic and apparently my car was the 'hole' in the line!

I chose the color carefully; 5000K which appears plain white.
When I got the HID kit I carefully measured the position of the electrodes (they were at the exact same position as the middle part of the filament of my halogens) and when I fitted them I made sure they were positioned right, though my Honda dealer readjusted thenm all the same afterwards.

I am very happy with my HID kit and although I see a lot of badly aligned HIDs around, I am pretty certain that mine is not among them.

I think you misunderstood my post. I was only pertaining to the people who have horrible, HORRIBLE aligned HID's. Ever since my mom totaled our van because she got blinded by an idiot with mis-aligned HID's I have resented people who don't do it right with a passion. I see properly aligned HID's all the time and I don't complain because it does look nice when it's done properly.