Lots of new cars these days come with HID headlights. And like many things that are now becoming standard fare, the aftermarket is bringing conversion kits to add them onto older models. But are they worth the time and expense to install them?

You can pick up a “conversion” kit for pretty much any late model car. But the quality will vary dramatically. The best ones, in my opinion, are the ones that are factory made for your car or truck. In some cases they were an option, in others they simply weren’t available in the US, but you can get them from non-US market cars.

Customizers of European cars have had great luck sourcing non-US market HID lights for their US market cars for years. These work just as the factory intended, although in most cases they aren’t technically DOT approved – which is the case with most any HID conversion. I’ve had non-DOT lights on three of my cars and have yet to have a problem. But as always, your mileage may vary.

Many kits simply put an HID bulb into your regular halogen light housing. The problem is that it wasn’t designed to work like this, so you end up getting a LOT more light than a halogen, but that light’s diffused incorrectly because of the incorrect placement of the bulb relative to the reflectors. The result is that you might (emphasis on the word MIGHT) be able to see better because there’s more light, but you’ll blind other drivers on the road, creating a hazard to yourself and others.

Additionally, it’s just as likely that you’ll not see any better because the light isn’t being reflected where it needs to be. If you’ve ever used a mag-lite, imagine that you’re using it with the reflector piece in the front completely removed. It’ll give you a bit of light up close, and it’s ok for general illumination. But if you want to see anything more than a few feet away, you need to have the reflector in place to focus the light where you need it. The same theory applies here.

Finally there’s another class of HID conversions emerging where you don’t just replace the bulb – you fit an entire projector assembly into your stock housing somehow. These tend to work a bit better, but I don’t know if you’re really getting enough benefit from them to justify hacking up your stock lights.

Personally, I really like the European standard lights because, be they HID or halogen, they have a clean, sharp cutoff that angles up at the right side to illuminate the side of the road (pictured above). Above the cutoff it’s pitch black, meaning you don’t blind anyone, while below the cutoff it’s as bright as day allowing you to see the road very clearly.

Compounded with this is the fact that the factory assemblies are designed to be used together by very well paid lighting engineers which means that you’re probably going to have a better built, and more effective design than one put together by some eBay seller.

But what do you think? Let us knowin the comments. (Remember, you can win a Pioneer AVIC-D3 by just commenting.)

(Thanks to The Wong Family Pictures for this great CC-licensed photo.)

Street Prices [Google Products]
HID Conversion Gear Via Amazon [What’s this?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Lighting, Electrical, Appearance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.