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HID
jjsaul:
Steve - the HID kits sold complete with ballast resistors etc...surely these are HID xenon and not just brighter halogen bulbs? Why else would they need the ballast resistor?
eg:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=004&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=140138938212&rd=1&rd=1
Evilgoat:
Theres a lot of dodgey kit about on ebay atm. A lot of these HID upgrade kits arent what they say they are. Steve is correct anbd you should be looking at at least £80 a bulb! The Audi had them fitted and I removed them and went back to halogen when a bulb failed, couldnt afford the bulb at the time.
Its worth doing bu tit SHOULD be expensive, anything cheaper is going to be trouble, trust me, I've been bitten recently.
They are not drop in replacemens, they will require a substantial amount of wiring. If its a drop-in replacement, then its probobly one of the dogey tinted halogen bulbs.
Sider:
Heh, I seem to remember last time I said the same as Steve has. Get your umbrella ready, mate, heavy showers are most probably on the way.
SteveG:
--- Quote from: "Sider" ---Get your umbrella ready, mate, heavy showers are most probably on the way.
--- End quote ---
After Billing it will be a breeze! :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink:
Steve :D
S188:
They need to be self leaveling AND have headlamp washers for HID lamps used as dipped beams to be legal - its a rule for EU type aproval. It's because they are too dasseling if not corectly alined or clean - obveously you can't expect a BMW driver to look after their car enough to sort out the above so it needs to be automatic or your not aloud it. Are they checked on the MOT I wonder?
Autoexpress did a test of one of these aftermarket kits in a Renult Megane afew months back to see how well they worked. The perticular kit they used didn't align well in the houseing as the bulb was much bigger than a normal H4 halogen and so gave the wrong beam pattern (they seemed to surgest it was a proper HID lamp but with an H4 base to make it fit a normal houseing; obveously it also had the nesisary balast control boxes with it too). It actully made the headlamp more dasseling to oncomming cars and give out less light in the right place. Wether they are all like that I don't know. The conclusion they had was that people were making dangerous kits out of parts not designed for H4 houseings to try and mimik expencive headlamps, in practice a decent set of H4 halogens worked better in the H4 lenses as they designed for them. The HID bulb they used was clearly longer than the halogen so presumably thats where the misalinement came from.
I wonder if the kits work in projector style lamps? Projector lamps seem to come in HID or halogen form (like in the Mazda RX-8 for example, the higher powered 230PS version has HID instead of halogen, you can spot them easilly because they have washers fitted!). I don't think I've seen a car with non projector lamps and HID that left the factory that way - are there any? I'd love to know!
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