Finally installed my Catz HIDs
 

Bought them on ebay last summer while hanging out in Baghdad, and they (along with the rest of my FD) had been collecting dust until recently. Mine is the 4500K Rising White low beam only kit, was ~$400.

The install was a breeze, by far the most uneventful install of anything on the rex in a long time. I am very happy with them, bright as hell, beams extend quite a bit further to the front and on the sides, really makes night driving safer. I still have to fine tune the aiming of the beams and will post pics once I do :).

I just installed the same thing on my FD, except mine are the hi/lo beam kit. Took a little more time to install due to the extra wiring necessary for the hi/lo beam setup. The low beams are very good, although not quite as good as an HID with the proper reflector; high beams leave a bit to be desired, IMO, due to the reflector not quite focusing the beam correctly at that height/distance. Still a huge improvement over the stock halogens or the PIAA/Sylvania Silverstars bulbs that I had before.

The good part is that the reflector on the stock H4 light has a fairly sharp cutoff, which is a necessity with HIDs to prevent blinding oncoming traffic. You have to be pretty careful how high you aim the beams. There is also a bit of bleed-off reflection to the right side on my setup, so although the beam is positioned correctly to the front, someone a car length ahead in the lane to my right will catch a bit of glare. I'll be interested to see pics of your beam pattern.

Pics?

I noticed this right-biased pattern with the (completely) stock lighting too. I guess it's a DOT approved deal to light up roadsigns.

The lighting on my stock Miata is admittedly better. :/: The somewhat gay-looking barn-door lights really turn night into day. It lights signs at the top of the freeway for a good 1/3 mi. ;)

hey kento how much did you pay for the hi/low beam hid kit??
and would you happen to know if the kit will work for the knight sport 4 beam headlight kit?
thanx

I bought them off a private party from this forum. I don't think the retrofit kits are available anymore, as the DOT ruled them illegal a while back due to oncoming traffic glare concerns.

This kit was a retrofit made specifically for the H4 halogen housing, so I'm not sure if they'll work with the Knightsports kit.

Hey Rich, I thought you painted your car blue? Is that the same FD in your sig?

"This thread is worthless without pics."

Please post pics!!

"All human errors are impatience..."

where did you purchase this kit? and will it work with the r.e projection headlight kit if anyone knows?

I actually found the kit on ebay over a year ago. No, it only works with the stock pop-up headlights.

Pic1
 

For this comparison pic, my fd with the hids is on the left and my dad's fd with sylvania silverstars is on the right. This is before my lights were adjusted.....they were quite a bit too high.

Pic2
 

My FD on the right, my dad's on the right. Pretty big difference seen in this pic.

Pic3
 

HIDs on the right, Silverstars on the left. Somehow the auto-focus got turned off for this one, but you still get the effect.

Pic4
 

Another view. The difference is more pronounced in person.

Pic5
 

Another blurry one. Damn auto-focus.

Pic6
 

Last one, from the side. You can really see the difference right in front the car, really helps for around-town night driving, esp here in NJ with all the damn deer. As a matter of fact, when we were merging on the highway to take these shots, three deer ran onto the on-ramp in front of me. Good thing I wasn't wide-open throttle :D

Nice and bright but a terrible cutoff. I understand why they made it illegal to modify stock housings with HID's.

Unfortunately, my Nikon 3100 isn't the easiest digital camera to use in MANUAL mode, therefore the image quality isn't quite 100%. No excuses.... just a victum of not RTFMing before using it in a low-light condition. Operator-Error!!

The "Cutoff" or "Beam Scatter" on the perimeter of the beam, while obvious to the human eye, proved to be difficult to capture on the digital..... For you old camera buffs, .... the difference in illumination brillance between the two sets of lights was like 16 f-stops apart... it was that dramatic.... Also, these HIDs, IMO, had remarkable perimeter coverage.

The beam color and kelvin-range of these lights, as seen from my rear-view-mirror, appeared to be easier on the eyes as opposed to some other OEM equipped vehicles I've been in front of... I suspect that's a lensing or parabolic-flairing effect difference caused by the focussing lense. You see this when viewed at different angles. Typically this creates sharp color shifts (rainbow effect) of the light beam, especially when viewed at different quartering angles (like when the vehicle is on-coming & approaches you on a turn) at night. That effect didn't occur as much with this setup.... Definitely easier on your night-vision overall.... Just my opinion..

Are you not blinding on comming traffic, if you look at the beam it looks like it would, I want to do these to my lights too but I dont want to blind people with them and have them flash their lights at me always.

Where did you mount the ballasts?

:)

That's what I was thinking. They look great Rich, and I'm sure are like night and day compared to stock...but I bet the camera's autofocus is failing cuz it's going blind like everyone else on the road seeing those lights haha :p:

Kai, I'd rather have ppl flash their lights at me cuz my lights are bright, as opposed to why the flash their lights at me right now...:rlaugh:

None of those photos show the true cutoff line (no offense, Rich and Dad, but you really can't see anything against that brick wall :) ). It's actually very good with the FD lenses; the only problem, as I posted previously, is a slight bleedoff onto the upper right side, and even then the glare doesn't even come close to the type you encounter if you are looking directly at an OEM projector-style HID. As with any HID, however, proper aiming is critical to lighting performance.

I've been too damn busy to take pics of my beams, and I don't have a stock headlight FD for a side-by-side comparison, but I'll try and get something together in the future. :)

I mounted my ballasts on the body ledge just beneath the headlight assembly. Fit fine, is close enough to the ignitor to avoid any problems, and doesn't have any clearance issues with the headlight when it retracts.

If you have them aimed properly, you'll still get far superior lighting to the stock halogens without blinding anyone. I've checked it out from another car's rear view mirror perspective, and it's nowhere near offensive. I've been driving mine for over a month in the city, and not one oncoming car has flashed their lights to complain.