HID Headlight conversion

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DemonK9

DemonK9

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I would love to have some bright HID's in the old mopar....I have them in my truck for work and the difference is amazing and will never run without them again.
Has anyone installed a kit like in the link below? And if so, any issues, other than maybe needing to upgrade some old mopar wiring? LOL

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/H6024-7-HEADLIGHTS-CONVERSION-TRUE-HID-8000K-HI-LOW-BI-XENON-BEAM-35W-BALLAST-/400243148405?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&fits=Make%3APlymouth|Year%3A1973|Model%3ADuster&hash=item5d3059c675

Thanks in advance,

Curt
 
There is more to it than just changing the bulbs. Search head light relays here.
 
I've got an hid kit in my barracuda.

It is a good kit and was in a Porsche for years before Going in my car.

It's got the ballasts, igniters, bulbs and lenses.
It was a plug and play unit that plugged directly into my existing connectors.

just make sure, if you can, use shrink wrap around any connections and try to mount and tuck the ballasts away from places that water can splash or flow through.

Lastly it helps if your vehicle has a downward rake as most muscle cars do to keep from blinding the hell out of people so some adjustments may need to be made.

I tweaked mine a bit and followed my brother in law around at night to see of my lights were frying his retinas through his rear view mirror, and tried a few passes on a straight stretch of road driving towards his vehicle head on on an opposed two lane, of course.

Just some minor adjustments and all was fine.

It helps to have new headlight adjustment hardware if you don't already.

These lights actually burn a lot cooler than normal headlights but are much brighter and really make appearance and vision at night a much needed improvement.

Do yourself a favor AMD do some research with product reviews AMD get yourself a good quality kit that lasts a long time instead of some cheap kit that all the Honda punks swear by because they're cheap.

I'm sure some know it all's will chime in with a billion reasons why you and I are insane and will use this as an excuse to pound their chest and tell us how much they know by stating pages of drawn out write up and links to technical specifications of flux capacitors and electron microscopes and the effects of xenon lighting on Barbie dolls but the fact is..they just like to hear themselves talk to stroke their egos.
 
my HID headlights are a plug and play as well. im using my existing connectors into the relays , to the bulbs
 
I had an HID light on my last bike. Don't remember the brand off the top of my head, but I can say it threw a lot of useable light while not being blinding for oncoming traffic. Was able to light a 4 full lanes of road surface, saved me from hitting more than 1 coyote. Will look for the brand of it....it was the XE5r listed here
 
"HID kits" in halogen-bulb headlamps or fog/auxiliary lamps (any kit, any lamp, any vehicle no matter whether it's a car, truck, motorcycle, etc.) are dangerous. They do not work safely or effectively, which is why they are illegal. This applies whether you buy the "HID kit" separately from the headlamp housings, or together with them. The only safe and effective HID headlamps are the ones engineered and built specifically as HID headlamps. See here for details.

There are exactly two legitimate, safe, effective, legal, well-made, good-performing HID headlamps that fit our cars: the ValeoSylvania XE7 and XE7R, see here. Of these two, the XE7 is far superior in performance but will make the car look like it needs a bra. Headlamp bucket and wiring modifications are required. And they cost a lot of money. Update, looks like they're temporarily(?) unavailable.

The other super-premium option is this all-LED headlamp. Also costs a lot of money.

More info on headlamp upgrades: see this post and this one.
 
inkjunkie said:
I had an HID light on my last bike. Don't remember the brand off the top of my head, but I can say it threw a lot of useable light while not being blinding for oncoming traffic. Was able to light a 4 full lanes of road surface, saved me from hitting more than 1 coyote. Will look for the brand of it....it was the XE5r listed here
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If it lights 4 lanes of traffic what does it do on a 2 lane blacktop when oncoming traffic is 3 feet away and looking right at you?
 
mcnoople said:
If it lights 4 lanes of traffic what does it do on a 2 lane blacktop when oncoming traffic is 3 feet away and looking right at you?
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When it was aimed correctly, which it was, it was no worse than looking into any other headlamp. I can say this because I had a friend ride the bike one night while I was driving at him form the opposite direction. I believe it was not about how bright it was, but the color/spectrum of the light. A light does not need to be blindingly bright to be effective. The light I am talking about is in the same family as the one our resident lighting guru mentioned. I am sure Dan can explain it far better than I.......
 
I have these H-4 style bulbs in the Duster. They seem to work pretty good.
They are also legal. Bolt right in and use the seal beam connector.
 

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The link for the xe7 and xe7r is something about UFOs. I guess they must be out of this world for the price!

I also wouldn't go with the HID bulb in the H4 lense w/o the projector to focus the beam. A simple H4 conversion and harness is the way to go for good legal light w/o spending $1000.

although not approved by our annointed leaders, I do like this site:
http://www.theretrofitsource.com/index.php
Seems like a good H4 7" round housing with clear glass and one of these kits would perfrom the same as the xe7 or xe7r at less then 1/2 the price.
 
I wish they would make them with the correct lens dome (not flat) and close to 1970's inside lens cuts (facets). I don't like the flat plain look on the older cars.
 
Hersbird said:
Seems like a good H4 7" round housing with clear glass and one of these kits would perfrom the same as the xe7 or xe7r at less then 1/2 the price.
Click to expand...


You should read dan's tech page again and again. According to our resident lighting super expert there are inherent problems with ALL halogen to HID conversions that retain halogen lenses. Repeating ALL HID CONVERSIONS. It has something to do with the orientation of the lightsource (filament/arc) between radically different between HID and halogen. This causes the optics/reflectors in a halogen lens to not properly and safely focus the light.

You will notice that every product that dan suggest and approves of is a designed from the ground up product. They are parts that are designed to function in one use with one style of bulb. They are not made in china clear lenses with hella hid transformer setups, but quality high dollar stuff. And just because a lighting product says that it is legal doesn't mean that it is.
 
Hersbird said:
The link for the xe7 and xe7r is something about UFOs.
Click to expand...

That's my fault (typo). I'll fix it as soon as I'm done with this post.

I also wouldn't go with the HID bulb in the H4 lense w/o the projector to focus the beam.
Click to expand...

Even halogen projector lamps do not work safely or effectively (or legally) with "HID kits".

A simple H4 conversion and harness is the way to go for good legal light w/o spending $1000.
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True -- or even just a set of GE Night Hawk H6024NH sealed beams (the only ones worth buying) for very cheap money. With H4 or any other headlamp you have to be very picky about what you buy. Most of what's on the market is garbage of one kind or another. There are lots of headlight-shaped toys from China flushing around on the internet.

I do like this site:
http://www.theretrofitsource.com/index.php
Seems like a good H4 7" round housing with clear glass and one of these kits would perfrom the same as the xe7 or xe7r at less then 1/2 the price.
Click to expand...

That's a whole different can of worms. Removing the projector optics from a used headlamp (or buying from retrofitsource) and installing them in another kind of headlight housing can be done, but it is a whole lot harder and more complicated to do correctly than it might seem. Typically the "recipe" goes along the lines of baking the headlight assembly to open it (loosen the adhesive), cut the reflector, paint it black, mount the HID projector, aim it within the headlamp, and use silicone sealant to seal it up. But the devil's in the details and there are all kinds of problems not mentioned in that recipe. Silicone-based sealants produce gases as they cure (and heat up) that attack and degrade the optics. The projector has to be mounted with extreme precision; if you get the center of gravity and load distribution wrong it will shake-rattle-and-roll out of alignment and eventually off its mounts. It's difficult to get a good and durable seal after the lamp's been baked...there's always a bunch of light bouncing around inside the housing and without very careful cut-and-try/cut-and-try-again masking you stand excellent chances of creating streaks and washes of stray light that will bug the crap out of you when driving at night (and cause dangerous and illegal levels of glare to other drivers), etc.

But yeah, if you're doing homemade headlamps, something along this line at least stands you a chance of winding up with a usable, safe result. An "HID kit" in a halogen optic never does.
 
briankaplan said:
I have these H-4 style bulbs in the Duster. They seem to work pretty good.
Click to expand...

Maybe they do and probably they don't; our human eyes are rotten judges of how well we can see. It's really easy (and very common) in headlighting to create a situation where we think/feel we have terrific seeing at night but in fact we have dangerously poor seeing, and vice versa.

They are also legal
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Maybe they are and likely they aren't; there's an awful lot of crap on the market with phony/counterfeit DOT markings or other fraudulent claims of legality. What are they exactly? Brand, model, source...
 
Dan I think you should get your own lighting sticky at the top of the elctrical forum. Make it one of the locked no new post threads. I just reread your linked tech page again and learned some new stuff again.
 
mcnoople said:
Dan I think you should get your own lighting sticky at the top of the elctrical forum. Make it one of the locked no new post threads. I just reread your linked tech page again and learned some new stuff again.
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Thanks, McN, I'll work on it -- subject to whether the moderators/administrators think it should be there. There are only two things really standing in the way:

1. I have a big backlog of stickies and FAQs and info dumps to write for a dozen different websites, that is in addition to getting/keeping the tech articles on my own site up to date and, um, oh yeah, doing my actual paycheque job as General Editor of the automotive lighting and driver vision/assistance industry journal

2. There's a very short road from "worthwhile effort" to "wasted effort" in trying to educate people about the lights they should and shouldn't put on their cars. I'm one man armed with the correct info on the topic versus dozens or hundreds of marketers with advertising budgets to push sexy (but dangerous/illegal) lights with BS and hype. I cannot possibly "win" (whatever that would look like); a lot of guys just say "Eff you, I want da bling and I can see at night, they work fine, so eff you!". Nobody elected me the world's headlight cop, and it's not a job I'd want anyhow.

I've thought of becoming a sponsor vendor on here, maybe I oughtta pull the trigger and do that.
 
Just so yall know, I cannot recommend Dan's Cibie E code conversion enough. It is awesome. I have first hand experience. He knows what he's talkin about.
 
i like them, and on the backroads at night when im traveling home, where anything can jump out in from of me, its nice to be able see more than 6 feet in front of me and with more lighting than any sylvania garbage. it doesnt matter to me what anyone says about my headlights, at my age, they are a clear advantage over any dim lit headlight. i will keep them, use them and enjoy them.

let the debate carry on.....
 
73AbodEE said:
i like them, and on the backroads at night when im traveling home, where anything can jump out in from of me, its nice to be able see more than 6 feet in front of me and with more lighting than any sylvania garbage. it doesnt matter to me what anyone says about my headlights, at my age, they are a clear advantage over any dim lit headlight. i will keep them, use them and enjoy them.
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My father taught me to find something nice to say no matter how hard it might be when faced with thoughtless, willful ignorance.

You're right that Sylvania's entire line of headlamps is garbage.
 
slantsixdan said:
My father taught me to find something nice to say no matter how hard it might be when faced with thoughtless, willful ignorance.

You're right that Sylvania's entire line of headlamps is garbage.
Click to expand...

well , now that i am thoughtless and ignorant , i will still thank you for sparing me a personal attack. :D
 
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