Did you lose anything by giving up a true high beam or do you feel that these lights are stronger in high beam mode (even though it is just a solenoid moving up the light) than stock headlights. I just want to be sure I am not giving anything up on either end. I know some aftermarket projector assemblies allow for a low beam HID and regular highbeam via seperate bulb, but I assume there would be wiring mods needed and don't want to get into a modification mess.

 

That's not how the bi-xenon works in a projector, what you're thinking of is a plug n play bulb. In a projector there is a shield that blocks light above a certain point. What the bi-xenon means is that the shield that is blocking the light above the cutoff is moved out of the way leaving the light below the cutoff untouched and adding more light above the cutoff. You can see that in the video. These lights are in every way better than the stock halogens.

 

im going to point out that while you dont give up much, it does seem that you give up some of the flood effect by switching to HIDs, its a minor thing, and visibility is still improved by having the distance.

I hope im explaining what im seeing (based on that video) correctly, if im unclear let me know and ill try again.

 

what exactly do you mean by flood effect?

 

look at the bottom of the screen, you dont see much of the road, you only see what is above the road, this means that you will miss out on seeing and reacting to any hazzards that are laying in the road, or that roll/cross into the road (think a dog/cat/squirrel/groundhog). turning the fogs on will fill that gap in to some extent, however not very well since they are aimed very low to the road.

it is also possible that it is a bad video.

its also possible(likely) that guy in the video has them installed/aimed wrong (actually likely, there should be nice straight line across the wall, no step in the middle)

 

It probably looks like that either because of the way he has them aimed, or because of the incline of his vehicle, and that's even they're even in a vehicle; he might just have the projector sitting on something to demonstrate it.

That step is supposed to be there too. It's so that the light shines further down the road on your side of the road without shining into the eyes of opposing traffic, I know it doesn't seem like much but it really works. Just google "headlight projector output" and you'll see that pretty much all projectors have this same type of output.


You don't want too much light right in front of you anyway because that hurts your distance vision, which is why you're not supposed to use your fog lights all of the time, and why they shut off when you turn your high beams on.

Here's what my hids look like. When looking at this picture keep in mind that my truck is on the level (with respect to front to back, side to side isn't level) and the road ahead is uphill as is the yard to the left. Also the step in the cutoff on the drivers side light was aimed too far over to the right:



Compared to the oem halogens (yes the picture is underexposed):



You can see that the light begins in pretty much the same place with both the halogens and the HIDs. I held the camera right at my eye level in both pictures.


Here's the HIDs compared the the oem halogens on the garage door. Keep in mind that the truck is pointing up a steeply inclined driveway. My truck was parked in the same place for both pictures, only difference was where I was when I took the pictures. You can see that the HIDs cover much more area on the garage door, and are much much wider. (When driving down the freeway at night these things light up more than 3 lanes on each side of me.)

HIDs:



oem halogens:

 

I bought the Depo 1pc Chome housings with plan for a future retrofit to HID, seeing all this only makes me wish I did it now.

 

trust me, you won't regret it once you do.

 

From what I read, it's not extremely difficult to do, however I would probably be the most afraid of the whole baking my headlight housings. That seems pretty risky to me.

 

It's not that bad. Just leaving it in long enough to soften the glue not cooking dinner and just need it hot enough to soften the glue. I was lucky enough this past summer it was hot enough I didnt have to bake them after being in the sun and heat half the day. But then again I am currently using cheap ebay Taiwan junk til I can afford to do the HID thing.