HID Light setup
 

H4 conversion HID light I'm working on.

Bright source HID kit from PIAA Canada $370.00
http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/.../lights001.jpg

Glass Lens Light assemblies from Cork motorsports not arrived yet. $570.00
Last set that Cork motorsports had in stock did not ask if they would order sets for other customers.
Ray has new Mazda assemblies plastic lens $288.00 + shipping +/-

Started fitting components
http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/.../lights002.jpg

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/.../lights004.jpg

Ran into 2 problems

1) Need to order a longer wiring harness or modify the one in the kit. To clean up the look from drivers side to passenger side

2) Have to cut out pop up housing to clear new bulb (miner prob)

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/.../lights005.jpg

Unfortunately that's not really a great solution. Will it be brighter than stock? Absolutely. Will it blind oncoming traffic? Most likely. You'll still end up with a scattered light pattern. Ideally you'd want to use a projector as opposed to a reflector, in conjunction with a clear headlight lens. You'd end up with a much more concentrated beam pattern.

I hope the kit you bought has both low and hi beam functionality.


Below is an example of what I was talking about above :)

http://sakebombgarage.com/wp-content.../rDSCF4828.jpg
RE-Mamamia's car with SakeBomb Garage Bi-xenon headlights

-Dan

Also HID's in a reflective aka non projector housing is now illegal in the US by order of the DOT. If your state is anything like Texas or Georgia they will rape you a fucking new one lol. The projectors are easy enough to make and look amazing when theyre done. I've made a couple sets now.

Gotta echo what has been said about the light dispersion and blinding oncoming traffic. You are going to end up with really bright lights at the expense of other drivers. You need to think about a projector based solution and one that is bi-xenon for the lows and highs.

If you are into doing it yourself, then the The Retrofit Source online: headlight upgrades for all applications is your friend. Pick up a set of projector housings and bulbs and you will have a much improved lighting system. If you don't want to do it yourself, then the SBG kit pictured above is nice. Another option is this: https://www.rx7club.com/group-buy-ce...trofit-951630/

Not sure if he is still doing these but if so, the price is great. Of course I am biased here and believe you should go "sleepy eye" : https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generati...ersion-879394/

Superdan is just about ready to offer this thru a GB.

I vote for retrofit as well, made one for my MX-6 with some E55 Bi-Xenon and it worked out great. Just order some clear lens headlight for the FD, gonna retrofit it with SC430 projectors with E30 lens :D

Agreed on all the post about retrofitting. Also the hit kit you bought is the same you see on ebay for 30usd just because of the high price tag does not mean it is quality.

lets start this over
 

This is a direct replacement H4 headlight kit designed to be plug and play in a H4 housing no mods to the housing nessary.
I was given this this info by PIAA USA even though they could not sell this kit in the US you can order it.

And You can see below they are drop in and shrouded lights to work with the H4 housing reflector

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/...ights001-1.jpg

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/.../lights003.jpg

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/...ights002-1.jpg

once the install is complete and my local headlight shop resets the aim we will see if PIAA are correct in saying this is a good upgrade for the H4 halogen

If this works as advertised its a far better price and a lot less work.

You have completely ignored what every intelligent person has contributed here and for what purpose?

Dude, rgould, why are you ignoring the important information in this thread. What you are doing is illegal unless you change your plans.

Lol theres a reason they couldnt sell it here in america. ITS ILLEGAL. It might be the easier and cheaper solution for now til you get hit with a $1200 ticket.

you dont have listen to them, just have the most expensive headlights on the market! one thousand every time you see red and blue lights! thats the cheaper route than doing:

googly this thing called youtube
youtuby this thing called projector how to
watch for a few minutes
profit.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1341806085

rgould, do you see what you are getting yourself into?

It doesn't matter how you aim them, the lighting is worse than stock. Here is why:

-Your beam pattern does not change much versus stock, but you increase the lighting intensity. This is akin to shining a really bright flashlight directly in front of your feet. What happens? You can see that spot really well, but the intensity causes your pupils to close to adjust to the foreground light. When your pupils close the rest of the visual scene becomes much much darker. Basically you ruin your night vision, and you cant see any better than before so you're actually worse off.

-You ruin everyone elses night vision by sending intense light (scattered incorrectly off the reflector) into their eyes. HID's are 3-4x brighter (lumen output) than halogens, which is why it's imperative that HID's are aimed so that the cutoff is below the line of sight of oncoming drivers. It's plain old dangerous for everyone (especially drivers over 40) to be exposed to this light scatter. I did a 2 year research experiment on the topic, which is now pending publication. It's flat out dangerous (younger drivers also show driving deficiencies but older drivers simply cant see where they are going with these lights shot at them).

-You spent a ton of money on cheap knockoff stuff. Not your fault, it happens, but a quick search on this forum would have saved you all of that money. Those lights are worth about $50 dollars, and as far as "lighting upgrade" goes they're worth $0. Again, not your fault... companies pray on ignorance with the whole HID lighting subject. Just because it says "HID" doesn't mean it's going to light the road well, its just stating the bulb type (which are very low quality HID capsules as well). It's like putting steak in a McDonald's burger... total mismatch... No matter how you slice it you're still eating micky-d's ;)


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BWbxmFV_VM...blackboard.jpg

HID Lighting 101:

Click here for a more detailed explanation ----> https://www.rx7club.com/group-buy-pr.../#post10792208

Well, I would like to say to all of the doubting Thomas’ out there:
Initial test of the shielded HID bulb in the 19 year old OEM plastic head light housing with no mods to the housing or the bulb resulted in a near perfect Halogen beam pattern and no stray light rays. We used the standard distance of 25ft to see the pattern. We also did a side by side test at the same distance of 25ft with Sheryl’s 2001 Subaru Impreza which has H4 Halogen inserts at almost the same height as the RX7’s head lights. The patterns between the 2 cars were almost identical distance up from the ground to the cut off line and the diagonal up line in the center of the beam on both the left and right head lights and yes you can see a ton further down the road.
Will this be the same with new glass lens headlight housing? Don’t know yet – still waiting on delivery.
Then we will do some more test and then let the local light shop have final the say.

Someone should ban this guy for being an idiot. Missing two points entirely. Yeah i'm sure you can see farther down the road and at 25ft the pattern isnt bad, but you dont have that nice clean cut off do you? That is what keeps High Intensity light from blinding on coming traffic. Yeah youre throwing light farther down the road while also blinding everybody coming at you. Also still doesnt change the fact that its ILLEGAL still. I hope you blind a cop with these lights and he swerves into your lane and hits you head on.

failed :facepalm1:

-AzEKnightz

Pictures?

^ Pics would tell the whole story. You state the pattern is "near perfect Halogen beam". Did you mean to say "HID" instead of halogen? If not, then that is what we've been trying to tell you - your retrofit will use a halogen reflector pattern to splash way more light on oncoming traffic without the safety of a proper cutoff. Others will be at risk from this as you will blind them and you will be at risk because the brighter light won't be directed down the road properly, fooling your eyes.

From http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...versions.html:

Halogen headlamps and HID headlamps require very different optics to produce a safe and effective—not to mention legal—beam pattern. How come? Because of the very different characteristics of the two kinds of light source.

A halogen bulb has a cylindrical light source: the glowing filament. The space immediately surrounding the cylinder of light is completely dark, and so the sharpest contrast between bright and dark is along the edges of the cylinder of light. The ends of the filament cylinder fade from bright to dark. An HID bulb, on the other hand, has a crescent-shaped light source -- the arc. It's crescent-shaped because as it passes through the space between the two electrodes, its heat causes it to try to rise. The space immediately surrounding the crescent of light glows in layers...the closer to the crescent of light, the brighter the glow. The ends of the arc crescent are the brightest points, and immediately beyond these points is completely dark, so the sharpest contrast between bright and dark is at the ends of the crescent of light.

When designing the optics (lens and/or reflector) for a lamp, the characteristics of the light source are the driving factor around which everything else must be engineered. If you go and change the light source, you've done the equivalent of putting on somebody else's eyeglasses: You can probably make them fit on your face OK, but you won't see properly.

And finally, from the same website, DOT statements on HID conversion kits like yours:

http://dsl.torque.net/images/techdoc..._Crackdown.jpg

So the short of it is, what you are doing is not legal and most importantly, not safe for you or oncoming drivers. Sell the kit and go to The Retrofit Source online: headlight upgrades for all applications and order some projector HIDs and retrofit them in. What you get from that website is also not legal (the component parts made into a kit require NHTSA testing before being legal) but at least you'll have proper technology that will greatly improve your lighting without binding others.

^ Good points, but IIRC, only self-certification is required.

Found this on another government site:

You don't have to send parts to the government for testing - you just have to self-certify that they meet the government's requirements.

Also from what I understand, NHTSA mainly does whole-vehicle crash testing. They don't waste their time with testing of every little OEM and aftermarket part unless there are already cases of accidents/injuries/death blamed on said part.

Back to the OP, I'm pretty sure this guy is just hard trollin' us. LOL

^ You are right and also wrong :)

It is all self testing and certification as you state. Anyone that manufactures and sells headlights (or tail lights) in the US is required to meet DOT standards (should have said DOT on my above post versus NHTSA) and they must state the product(s) they offer do pass the requirements. As you indicate, it is up to them to do the testing (this is expensive) and to then certify the product as passing the standards. That is what the "DOT" stamp on the lights designates. There are a whole bunch of overseas manufacturers that will not do the testing and simply put the DOT label on the product and sell in the US until they get caught.

Where you are wrong is with the NHTSA side in that it does more than mainly whole crash testing. NHTSA has divisions that are dedicated to just light testing and that is all they do. Remember our issue last year? That division was responsible for headlight and tail light testing but you are correct that it usually takes complaints against the manufacturer to have them open up a case.

What I meant in the above post, however, about retrofits being illegal (even projector-based HID kits) was referring to putting together a kit from a vendor like The Retrofit Source online: headlight upgrades for all applications and marketing it as DOT legal. It's not, without the self-testing and certification like you point out. And the likelihood that, even with testing, the kit would be legal, is about zero. Spend a lot of time speaking to Mike Cole of NHTSA on the subject and he stated they've tested 100s of "kits' including some from the retrofit source.com and that none of them passed testing.

As the OP is not selling a kit, he'd be much better off retrofitting a projector-based solution than his H4 HID stuff and I think on that, we can all agree.

500 bucks for some glass lens??? ouch

Normally I would give teh OP crap on suc a conversion, but since i trust PIAA as one if not the worlds best performace lighting source I went to their site to read up on this stuff.

They claims it is all in the positioning of the filament, makes sense if you can hold the alignment close enough.

What they do:

"The bulb function is to illuminate the road. Sounds simple. However, the HID bulb captures the electrical stimulus from the ballast and igniter and translates this into light output. This occurs when the electrical current passes through terminal plates positioned on either side of a gas filled glass bubble, igniting that gas in the bulb. The key difference between the HID bulb and a Halogen bulb is the absence of a metal filament wire.

The excellence of light output is achieved by exactly matching the arc point of the HID bulb with the filament positioning in a standard halogen bulb. This ensures the best use of the design of the headlight. If this positioning is off by a micron, the light scatters as it (insert) is out of synchronicity with the reflector and lens which help to control light output. This is highly annoying when you are driving towards a vehicle with ineffective HID's as it can be ‘blinding’. Behind the wheel looking forward, it is inefficient as the light is not on the road in front of the vehicle, improving your night vision.

PIAA’s HID Headlight Conversion Bulbs:

All PIAA HID Headlight Conversion Bulbs have arc points which match identically with the filament placement parameters on halogen bulbs. The placement of the arc point in the bulb is critical to the ongoing performance and durability of the bulbs.






This exacting arc placement ensures focused, effective and bright light output.

PIAA bulbs have a consistent gas configuration that ensures output color is identical between bulbs. So, you don’t have two different looking headlights.

PIAA’s HID bulbs, after that initial 25,000v arc to power up, run at 35w, which is significantly cooler than the halogen bulbs they replace. The output rating is closer to 150 watts.

PIAA bulbs were reduced in size, to accommodate better installation range, in the past couple of years. However, this reduction in size did not compromise inner components. One key component relating to bulb effectiveness is the length of the Molybdenum terminal plate, which conducts the electricity. PIAA’s plates are 8mm on both sides of the arc point. This size is critical because shorter plates we tested on competing products resulted in bulbs that failed in 200 hours or less. PIAA bulbs should light up your world in excess of 2000 hours."

^ While that is good info, the PIAA conversion kits are illegal in the US. The info you quote above is for PIAA Canada where the bulbs can be purchased. Any H4 HID conversion into a reflector unit is not allowed in the US for the reasons that have been stated in this thread, too much light output in a reflector package not designed for the light. There just is no way around it.

I would be interested in seeing pics from the OP.

I remember reading on another site...

So, seems to me, it's illegal in the eyes of the NHTSA to install ANY aftermarket HID kit (projector or not) on a car that did not come with HIDs in the first place, because even the wiring harness was not designed/tested/approved to work with HID components.

Truthfully I've never spoken to this Mr. Cole guy - every voicemail I left him went unanswered, and when he did email me back (after I sent him several messages) he told me he was "busy with more important things." :scratch:

Anyway, I think legality is irrelevant - let's be real: we're all driving heavily modified cars (most of them without factory emissions controllers, lowered ride-heights, loud exhausts, etc.) - so the real issue with the non-projector kits is that you simply cannot get a SAFE light output/pattern (i.e. one that won't blind oncoming drivers).