Originally Posted by alcazar

Sigh.

I'll answer this first, if I may.

Any light unit is designed so that it gives a correct beam pattern from it's intended bulb. The bulbs are made to within 0.1mm tolerances to get the filament EXACTLY where it should be, at the focal point of the reflector. If it's all working properly and the bulb is optically accurate, the beam pattern will be correct and the amount of scatter lessened.

Auto Express used to do a yearly "Which bulb is best" article, where they used an artificial road setup, with sensors all over the place, to measure brightness, beam pattern and scatter, all within a high degree of accuracy. Hella and Cibie possess similar.

They found, almost every year, that high quality STANDARD 55W halogens were actually better than even some 100W cheapies, let alone any cheap 55W, simply because of the inaccuracy of the cheap bulbs.

TBH, you van do this yourself if you have a halogen bulb in place. Simply place a tiny piece of something under one corner of the bulb flange so that it doesn't sit quite flat. Now look what's happened to the beam pattern.

This is why projectors are now becoming much more comon, simply because, with an accurate bulb, they control cutoff and beam pattern better than ANY refelector can.

As for HID, my absolute bottom line is DO NOT use H4's. The H4 uses a twein filament design THAT CANNOT YET BE REPLICATED in HID, with the result that poor beam pattern and scatter are going to occur.

Single filament design bulbs are better, but once again, we come to accuracy. The halogen filament is tubular in design, emitting light along a carefully designed tubular length.
HID burners are NOT tubular,they are globular so go outside the design parameters of the halogen, and, if we are being strict, shouldn't be used with a light unit designed for halogen....and that includes projectors so-designed.

Indeed, the UK government only just hung back from including a bulb type/headlight type comparison for MoT, where an HID in a light designed for halogen would have been a fail, but VOSA still strongly warn against it..and it may yet come.

Second point: you will get less scatter with single filament bulbs, but it WILL be there. Have you checked by viewing the cat front-on from distances?

Third point: bulb physical size is irrelevant.

As for blue, why not do a simple trial? replace ONE bulb with a 4300K. Take the ca to a long straight road, put lights on and cover each in turn by standing in front of it.

I can tell you now, that changing from your blue to 4300K will be like daylight for you

Originally Posted by south_scoob

Thanks for explaining that. I think the main reason many people get hid kits is for the blue tint (me included) If they were dimmer then standard / blinded people or looked chavvy id remove them

Oh look trinumpty is back and hes got some kind of degree in lighting what a coincidence

Originally Posted by alcazar

No experience, but fitting them to a halogen light unit will be the same, or worse, than HID.

Originally Posted by alcazar

Nope, wrong again. They will be 4300K, but are behind projectors. It's the design of the lens, (called a fresnel prism), that gives a blu-ish tint at the outer edges. It's due to what are known as "fringes" in diffraction patterns.

Trust me, I've done HOURS of research on this, and have a physics degree to back it up

My own car is fitted with projectors, see my thread on archives. It uses 4300K bulbs. They give a white light, but any one approaching gets the blu-ish tint due to diffraction patterns.

Originally Posted by ronjeramy

But don't Blobeyes have the same headlight lenses on JDM's and UK's yet the JDM's are HID's??

Originally Posted by neil-h

I meant to question this earlier in the week but forgot. You what?!?

Originally Posted by alcazar

I what, what?

Originally Posted by alcazar

Can't see that it matters, if one uses projectors, the clear glass lens becomes moot. It's the reflector that does the focusing now.

Originally Posted by neil-h

Have a physics degree.

Originally Posted by alcazar

Yeah.......so what, no big deal. Never did me any good in my job.

Originally Posted by alcazar

Never seen those before. If they are designed to use an HID burner, the reflectors/lenses must have been designed as such.