Question About HID Kit

[P.Lavers]

Someone please explain to me how the HID kit works, i dont understand if they say low beam only does that mean that if i turn on my brights they will be the factory color lights, what about my driving lights. Sorry I am a noob

[No.11]

If it makes you feel better I'm watching this thread so I can find out too

[deltatechx]

The 8th gen Civics have separate bulbs for the high beams and low beams. When you buy a pnp (plug and play) HID kit it's usually to replace one set of bulbs, you can either replace your low beams or high beams with HID or both if you don't mind paying for two kits. If you replace your high beams with an HID kit you have to remove the DRL fuse from the fuse box under the driver's kick panel or you'll damage the HID kit (unless you use a wiring harness, then your high beams will stay on whenever you drive with your headlights off - which is bad). An HID kit consists of three main components:

1) the bulbs - HID bulbs use an electric arc (like what you see from a welder) instead of a filament (like most household lights) to produce light

2) the ballasts - you need one ballast for each bulb, they convert your cars 12 volt power to the proper voltage/amperage to create a spark inside the bulbs to create the HID (High Intensity Discharge) light

3) the wiring harness - most kits come with this and most everyone on this site swears by them. A wiring harness is basically a relay that is triggered by the factory bulb connector and pulls power directly from the battery instead of going through the factory headlamp wiring harness to prevent complications from energy surges at startup. Even though HID kits use less power (35 watt is most common for HID compared to 55 watt for factory halogen bulbs) it's still a good idea to use a wiring harness to be on the safe side.

My $0.02 -- Stay away from the 55w kits for your low beams, they are too bright (they're great for high beams though ). Try to stay under 6000 Kelvin, the higher the Kelvin temp the more harmful the light is to oncoming traffic and the less brightness you'll have. I believe 5000k is perfect, it projects a perfectly white pattern onto the road and doesn't look rice at all (blue is played out, green and yellow just kills your eyes). I suggest you replace your high beams first, if you just do your low beams they will over power your high beams; your high beams will suck @$$ and will cause problems when your driving alone on a back road with no street lights.

Hope that helps

[P.Lavers]

so how do i separate high beams and low beams??

[dentrecords]

they are already separated.

if you're doing low beam HIDs (the only thing that makes sense in this case) get 9006.

oh, and stick with 4300K as the colour temperature. 6000k causes eye strain and looks pretty silly IMO.

[XenonDepot]

You guys have pretty much covered it all =)

Essentially, if you wanted to upgrade both the low beams and high beams you would need to purchase 2 kits. I personally do not suggest ugprading the high beams for 2 reasons:

1) HID bulbs take a moment to fully ignite and reach their desired light output. In situations where you need to flash someone your HID high beams will not be very functional.

2) It is strenuous on the components to have them turned on/off repeatedly ie: flashing people.

If you have any questions please do not hesistate to email me or send me a PM.

Steve

[deltatechx]

1) HID bulbs take a moment to fully ignite and reach their desired light output. In situations where you need to flash someone your HID high beams will not be very functional.

I like my 55 watt HID high beams for flashing people, they give a quick, bright @$$ flash when first ignited.

2) It is strenuous on the components to have them turned on/off repeatedly ie: flashing people.

I have this kit:

eBay Motors: 55 watt DIGITAL HID kit H8, REAL LIFETIME WARRANTY! (item 180220099148 end time May-29-08 22:34:46 PDT)

they're fully digital and feature "hot-restrike" to protect your HIDs when you shut them off then turn them back on before the bulbs fully cool. Plus this seller is located in the US rather than China like every other kit on ebay, which makes exchanging bad ballasts/bulbs through warranty much easier and quicker, plus you can't beat the lifetime warranty (of course if the company goes belly up the warranty is worthless, but I haven't had any problems with this kit yet and plan to buy 2 more kits for my high beams and fogs)

[XenonDepot]

In OEM HID applications, Bi-Xenon is achieved by a shield within the projector that causes the light to reflect differently depending on whether you are in high or low beam mode. Only one light source is used specifically for the reasons that I mentioned above.

[wing_gundam]

Originally Posted by dentrecords

they are already separated.

if you're doing low beam HIDs (the only thing that makes sense in this case) get 9006.

oh, and stick with 4300K as the colour temperature. 6000k causes eye strain and looks pretty silly IMO.

I have 6000K and I like it


But will be changing it to 85122 4300K bulbs soon!

[dentrecords]

Originally Posted by wing_gundam

I have 6000K and I like it


But will be changing it to 85122 4300K bulbs soon!

that's better