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Arro wrote:He's looking to see if you have hot spots or an even spread.

You're not gonna get an even spread with Ebay lights, fine, but Opi's lights are reasonably wel spread out, and still way good for the price he's prolly shelled out for everything, kit and light housing.

Given I had an '03+ car, I'd still go the Ebay route based on what I see of Opi's lighting.

Bright lights, big controversy

By James R. Healey, USA TODAY

You're driving at night, 'round a bend and — ouch! — you're staring down the barrel of high-caliber headlights boring right at you. Some creep left on the high beams, you grumble. But no, those are too bright, too white, almost blue, like an iceberg. What the heck are those lights? Can that much glare be legal? Isn't it unsafe? The lights are xenon-gas-ignited, high-intensity-discharge (HID) headlights, often known simply (and incorrectly) as xenon (ZEE-non) headlights. They are wildly popular with some motorists, and, if properly aimed, they are quite legal.


06/07/2001 - Updated 01:24 PM ET


PHOTO: Xenon lights. (Tim Dillon, USA TODAY)

Bright lights, big controversy

By James R. Healey, USA TODAY

You're driving at night, 'round a bend and — ouch! — you're staring down the barrel of high-caliber headlights boring right at you. Some creep left on the high beams, you grumble. But no, those are too bright, too white, almost blue, like an iceberg. What the heck are those lights? Can that much glare be legal? Isn't it unsafe? The lights are xenon-gas-ignited, high-intensity-discharge (HID) headlights, often known simply (and incorrectly) as xenon (ZEE-non) headlights. They are wildly popular with some motorists, and, if properly aimed, they are quite legal.


But they are not bening: The glare they produce is real, and its effects measurable in scientific studies. HID headlights pour out more illumination than conventional tungsten-halogen headlights do, especially to the sides. And they do it at the blue end of the color spectrum where the eye's sensitive at night. The result: Oncoming drivers are often surprised by the light and frequently say it hurts.

"They're too bright," says motorist Michelle Massey of St. Louis, who often drives her sport-utility vehicle on secondary roads at night. She's afraid that the glare's bad enough, and the vehicles close enough to each other on winding two-lane roads, that a collision is likely.

What'll make this tough to resolve is that both sides are right: HID lights provide better lighting, and they also produce more glare. Headlights have to meet federal minimum and maximum illumination standards, measured at a variety of points around the light beam. But within those standards, there's enough room — physically and legally — for light to shine where oncoming drivers think it shouldn't.

Despite complaints from oncoming drivers, the glare from HID lights doesn't seem to cause accidents, hard as that might be to swallow. NHTSA knows of no injuries or deaths caused by HID glare. And University of Michigan studies of HID glare found that, while it annoys oncoming drivers, it doesn't disable them.

"Discomfort glare is not always related to disability glare. Our result is about discomfort," says Michael Flannagan, research scientist at the university's Transportation Research Institute.

The university has spent at least 10 years trying to quantify the problem, and thinks it has done so. The short version: Oncoming drivers are bothered by HID glare because of its harsher, blue light. Light from conventional tungsten-halogen headlights is toward the softer, red end of the spectrum. Halogens have to put out 1.5 times as much light as HID lights do to cause the same wincing, squinting and looking away. "We think there is some problem with glare, but we think it's a good trade-off," Flannagan says. "Our overall opinion of HIDs is that they are good things. HID lamps can be, and normally are, better for seeing."

A recent Society of Automotive Engineers technical paper agrees. It notes that HID lights' wider beam and greater output makes them dramatically better than tungsten-halogen lights "in detecting edge-of-roadway hazards, such as pedestrians and animals." But the same factors also "may produce more glare," acknowledge the authors, John Van Derlofske, John Bullough and Claudia Hunter of the lighting research center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Opi wrote:Actually, the cheapest with a HID kit is $800

So, ebay.

but, FYI. If I could afford it, I'd rather have retros.

VampOfVegas wrote:NEON EBAY W/ HID

(clearly its pointed high up to make up for the crap projection and in turn you're glaring people)

NEON TRUE RETROFIT W/ HID

Perfect output, You can see the side walk and everything around and far away while keeping a very nice cut off.

I also sell these on the SRTforums. Just check out the group buy section there. I have a guy that makes them.

nineball wrote:

VampOfVegas wrote:NEON EBAY W/ HID

(clearly its pointed high up to make up for the crap projection and in turn you're glaring people)

NEON TRUE RETROFIT W/ HID

Perfect output, You can see the side walk and everything around and far away while keeping a very nice cut off.

those seem like completely different temp bulbs. if i was to guess, the top is around the 8k mark (or more) and the bottoms are about 4300. while one is definately better spread out that the other the amount of light produced is drastically different due to the temps