This article was taken from Daniel Stern's website:

CONVERSIONS

So you've read about HID headlamps and have it in mind to convert your car. A few mouse clicks on the web, and you've found a couple of outfits offering to sell you a "conversion" that will fit any car with a given type of halogen bulb, for between $900 and $1300. STOP! Put away that credit card. Trying to "convert" halogen headlamps to HID is an unsafe thing to do. There are *NO* legitimate or safe HID retrofits for the headlamps of any car which didn't have HID lamps as a factory option. Here's why:

HID (High Intensity Discharge) headlamps use an arc capsule where an arc jumps between two electrodes. This arc is used as the light source, instead of a glowing filament. Not only is it very important to have the light source (filament or arc) at exactly the right spot in the reflector for the lamp to produce a proper beam, but the source (filament or arc) must also be oriented correctly--either fore-and-aft, or side-to-side, depending on the design of the lamp. In addition, headlamps that produce both a high and a low beam must have a bulb with not one, but TWO filaments, each of which must be very precisely located and, in the case of some low beam filaments, shielded. In this game, fractions of a millimeter count! The only way to assure the correct placement of the source in the lamp is to use the correct bulb type. Most people don't realize this, however, and there are some unscrupulous types, placing their wallets before your safety, who make a buck off of your NOT knowing how crucial it is to use the correct source in your headlamp.

These "conversions" generally consist of a headlamp bulb base that has been drilled-out, with an HID arc capsule crammed in and glued. Sometimes instead, there's a semipermanent adaptor plate that fits where the bulb would go, with the HID arc capsule fitting inside of the plate.

There are no HID arc capsules that have more than one arc (i.e. high beam and low beam in one capsule, as found in 9004, 9007, H4, HB2, and most all sealed-beam headlamps.

There are no HID arc capsules that have a transverse (side-to-side) arc path. 9004 headlamps and most all sealed beams use transverse filaments.

Even if we consider replacing a single-axial-filament bulb with a single-axial-arc capsule, these so-called conversions are unsafe. The quantity and nature of the light put out by the arc is quite different from that of the filament, and the reflector and optics of a halogen headlamp are not designed to produce a proper headlamp beam with anything but a halogen bulb. Even assuming the arc position were perfectly matched-up with the filament position, the nature of the light from an HID capsule is such that the resultant beam pattern will usually produce very much excessive glare to oncoming drivers and backdazzle to the driver in bad weather, and will fail to illuminate properly the places in the driver's field of vision that really need to be illuminated.

The folks pushing these "conversions" assure their customers that it's not particularly crucial to get the source position exactly right. I'd like to think that's because they simply don't know any better, that they consider any piece of glass with light coming out a "headlamp"...rather than to think that they're simply placing their personal profit over your highway safety.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, these "conversion" pushers casually dismiss the fact that if you install one of their "conversions" in a system where the original headlamps produce both a high and a low beam, you will not have a high beam after the "conversion"! The pushers claim that a high beam is "not necessary" with HID headlamps. This is certainly quite wrong both from a legal perspective and a safety perspective. A low beam headlamp, no matter how bright, is a low beam headlamp, and cannot substitute for high beam.

Now for the technical nuts 'n' bolts for those who want to know exactly why it won't work:

In a nutshell, it is sometimes possible to physically adapt an arc capsule to go where a filament lamp was meant to go. It is really NOT possible to attain an acceptable (let alone compliant) beam pattern this way. Some of the "retrofits" get kind of close with regard to cutoff gradient and relative light levels within the beam, but most all of them have beam problems...improperly placed hot spot, dark spots in the center of the beam, excessive foreground illumination, excessive stray (glare) light, improper cutoff placement, etc.

It is, as I say, sometimes possible to place the arc in the headlamp exactly where the filament was located before. However, an arc is a fundamentally different *kind* of light source than a glowing filament. The reflector and/or lens optics in a headlamp meant to take a filament lamp are designed specifically for the characteristics of a glowing filament.

Many optic designs rely on the edges of the filament to shape the beam pattern, for instance, and there is no reason for chromatic correction to be worried about, because in most filament-lamp headlamps, chromatic aberration is not a problem. (Some polyellipsoidal optics do exhibit substantial prism effects at the cutoff.) The boundaries of the arc in an automotive HID capsule are much "fuzzier" (to use a technical term!) than the edges of the filament in a filament bulb. There are substantial color differences at different points in the arc (the edges, the ends, etc.), while the color of a glowing filament is relatively uniform. The arc is usually not the same length as the filament. For all these reasons, it is not reasonable to expect an acceptable beam pattern just because the arc is placed in the same location as the filament was.

Note that this does not even address the issues raised in lamp designs in which the filament is not coaxial with the bulb base (9007, NDF/9008) or in which the filament is transverse rather than axial (H3) or transverse AND non-coaxial (9004). All arc capsules (D1, D1S, D1R, D2, D2S, D2R, 9500) have axial arc paths that are coaxial with the base. This does not stop "headlamp mercenaries" selling "conversions" for such headlamps. The resultant mess cannot be called a beam pattern, but as long as the "converted" lamps spray-out lots of purplish light, the purchasers of such "conversions" tend to be happy, not knowing and/or not caring that they are driving with dangerous, overly-glaring, inadequately-performing headlamps. ESPECIALLY if the seller of the "retrofit" has given ill-informed (or just plain fraudulent) assurances that the kit is "beam pattern corrected". There's flatly just no such a thing!

Most people do not have the expertise (let alone the equipment) to judge the acceptability of a headlamp beam pattern. Most people can tell the difference between arc light (purplish) and halogen light (not purplish). It is certainly possible to physically place an arc capsule into a halogen headlamp. But for all real purposes, it is NOT possible to make an acceptable headlamp this way. For some cars, legitimate HID retrofit kits are available. These consist of complete new headlamp lens-reflector units to go with HID capsules and ballasts. This is the *ONLY* safe and proper way to put HID headlamps on a car not originally so equipped.

DISADVANTAGES

There are physiological disadvantages to HID auto headlamps that do not exist with glowing-filament lamps.

Probably the biggest issue is HID headlamps' significantly worse color rendering index (CRI), which is in the high-60s to low-70s range. Halogen headlamps' CRI tends to be around 90 to 97 or so. In English, this means that the human eye's color perception and differentiation is much, much better under halogen light than under the light produced by automotive HID headlamps.

Now, how do we reconcile this with the ad copy that seems universally to talk about how HID headlamps' light is closer to daylight? Well, from a color temperature standpoint, that's generally true. However, that's not the whole story. Color temperature is only one factor that goes into describing the quality of light from such a thing as a headlamp. But here's the tricky part: There's no evidence that "closer to daylight" is the right stuff to drive with at night. Sure, an easy case can be made by just assuming that because daylight is what we have during the day, daylight is what we ought to have at night, too. But it isn't that simple at all. The eye has a very different set of jobs to do, using a different box of tools, at night compared to the job and tools during the day. The extent to which this influences your safety behind HID headlamps is not currently known. The full extent of the current knowledge on the topic as relates to current HID headlamps is "You can probably see colors well enough to be safe". But that's it! (Note that it's from the same researchers who say that you can see well enough to be safe when driving e.g. a '93-'97 Camaro with those miniature oblong sealed beams...) So all the hype about "closer to daylight" is really meaningless in the real world, and may in fact be misleading; there is research showing improved distance perception with headlight of *lower* color temperature, for any given intensity. Certainly any kind of shift towards the blue (as with HID headlamps) is a step in the wrong direction in inclement weather (fog, rain, snow, etc.).

As an illustration of the fact that color temperature does not automatically bear on headlamp quality, consider this: The selective-yellow headlamps required for so many decades in France were shown, in a couple of studies, to improve (or at least not to reduce) driver performance at night. There are some color issues with this light color (it's hard to tell a yellow road lane marking from a white one, for instance), these are easy to deal with by changing the lane marking color or using only one color. BUT, a sodium lamp, which is a kind of HID lamp, would make a *lousy* headlamp even though its color temperature is not far from that of a selective-yellow headlamp. That's because sodium lamps have EXTREMELY low color rendering indices. Many sodium lamps suck almost ALL of the color from whatever they illuminate, creating a black-and-yellow world. There are sodium safelights for use in photo darkrooms, and the monochromatic-world effect you perceive in such a darkroom is very eery until you get used to it. In a driving task, this would be a disaster! Color is a very important information carrier in our task to see what we're seeing.

Now, HID headlamps do have a big technical advantage over most current glowing-filament headlamps in that the efficiency of the light source (measured in a straightforward, easy-to-understand way: Lumens per Watt) is quite high. As a result, an arc capsule that consumes only 35 watts can produce double to triple the *amount* of light (around 3200 Lm) as can a typical halogen bulb (around 1500 Lm in the better designs, e.g. H7). So that's good, right? Well, it gives the designer of the headlamp a couple of options: He can keep the same performance, but have a much smaller headlamp, or he can keep the same size headlamp, and have the potential for higher performance. But now we hit another "it's not quite that simple".

A headlamp isn't a flood lamp. With a flood lamp, we put electricity in one end, and we get light out the other end, and we don't really care where the light is, as long as it's in a big ("flood") beam. A headlamp is a much more complex animal, 'cause it has a much harder job to do. It has to maximize your distance vision while minimizing glare to other drivers. It has to light up everything that you need to see, BUT not light up areas that would detract from your ability to see what you need to see. The first point makes it very difficult to improve low-beam headlamps, because increases in seeing distance almost always bring with them higher glare.

The second point is even more crucial. You remember from above my statement that the eye has a different job to do at night than during the day; here's where that comes into play. During the day, pretty much everything is illuminated relatively evenly. If it's sunny out, everything's bright. If it's cloudy out, contrast is reduced and colors are muted. If it's foggy out, everything's fuzzy. But at night, your world consists not of "everything", but of that which is illuminated by your headlamps. Everything outside of that "world" is dark. Which is fine, except that your "world" moves with you! The extreme contrast between your "world" (that which is illuminated) and everything else (not illuminated) creates the difficulty. That's why we have headlamp glare at night, why we squint when we come out of a movie theatre after watching a perfectly bright screen for 3 hours, why we hold our hand in front of our eyes when looking in the direction of the sunset and trying to read a road sign. It happens on that big scale (inside/outside your "world") and it also happens *within* that "world".

If you illuminate the foreground very strongly, your eyes will adapt to that big area of strong illumination, your pupils will become smaller, and your distance vision will be reduced. (On the other hand, if you take the route prescribed for so long by US headlamp regulations and have very LITTLE foreground illumination, you'll have a "black hole" in front of the car, and you'll be straining to see what you're about to run over...)

So how does this relate to HID headlamps? Well, suddenly we have all this extra light to work with, because we're using an HID arc capsule instead of a bulb. Where are we going to put the extra light? We can put some of it into the high-intensity zone of the beam (the "hot spot") to improve distance vision, but we can't put too much of it there, 'cause we'll glare other drivers (and exceed regulated maximum intensities). We can spread some of it around in the rest of the beam, but there are often even stricter maxima outside of the hot spot or zone, and too much "generalized" light causes veiling glare and backdazzle in bad weather. So we put a lot of it in the foreground. To an extent, that's a good thing, because US headlamps have typically had too little foreground light (see above). But over a certain level, which is quite easy to exceed with an HID headlamp, undesireable things start to happen. We sacrifice distance vision, we get high levels of reflected-light glare on wet roads, that sort of thing. But what about all the rave reviews you read in magazines and on Usenet about how marvelous HID headlamps are? Well, here's the double whammy of high levels of foreground light: When you can see every last pebble in the road, all the way across, it's very comforting. You don't have to strain to see what's immediately in front of the vehicle. And the most recent research seems to be suggesting that this, to an extent, improves driver performance at night, possibly because with the foreground adequately illuminated, we tend to trust our peripheral vision to handle the foreground, and keep focussed out in the distance where we should be looking. It's very, very easy to judge a headlamp "good" because of very strong foreground light, when in fact the distance vision isn't so grand. In short (finally!) an HID headlamp has a strong tendency to create a false sense of security.

There's (even) more to it than all of this, but I think it's time to stop for now. HID headlamps can be an improvement over halogen ones, but it's not automatically the case, hype notwithstanding. Beam design is much more crucial than light source.

There are new, extremely efficient halogen bulbs coming on the market that offer increased intensity without CRI problems or excessive-light problems. The glowing filament is going to be around for a long time. It's also reasonable to expect that HID headlamps will also develop.

 

bro is there a cliff notes version of this?!?!
sheesh!
Dan

 

Yeah, it means, "Get HID!"

 

Thanks for all the info MOM.......

 

up,I went ahead and bit the bullet and did it anyways and could not have been happier probably my best mod yeat.Theres no problems with blinding anyone and I can see atleast twice as good now.Only thing that you loose is your highbeams and I do not mind at all.

 

<a href="http://www.cyberhosts.net/~gotrice/products/misc/MVC-821W.MPG">click here</a> for a video.

whenever I read that stuff, it all looks to the same to me: blah blah blah and blah blah HID blah blah PIAA blah blah halogen blah blah blah. All the dude has to do is see a HID kit in person for himself and get his own damn answer, rather than typing a 48 page report.

 

whenever I read that stuff, it all looks to the same to me: blah blah blah and blah blah HID blah blah PIAA blah blah halogen blah blah blah. All the dude has to do is see a HID kit in person for himself and get his own damn answer, rather than typing a 48 page report.

AMEN!!!

 

get a life. you wasted your time to type your boring long pages. I don't think maxima drivers would buy it. save your time and stalk hookers.

John

 

if u read.. he's just posting something that he took from somsone else's website...

 

phoung, what was the purpose of the video? the HIDs sure do look bright...but I noticed that there is a "dark spot / ring" created...versus the "spotted beam" from the regular halogen blub...in anycase...I could use a set of HIDs...see the results myself..!

 

John...you make me laugh...hahahahaha

 

The purpose? I takes tons of pics and videos of everything I install.. you never know when it comes in handy down the road.

When the driver side HID bulb/ballast is installed, it takes care of the dark spot that is on the passenger side. Take notice that the pass side has hot spots down and away from the original hotspot. I noticed this on my 300ZX and Miata, too. From the factory, they generate one center location where the light is concentrated (not fully utilizing the beam pattern). The European beam pattern is MUCH different than the North American beam patterns -> they disperse their light wider, so there is no single hot spot.

Like I've said before, pictures don't do the HIDs justice. You gotta see them in action at night to fully realize how much brighter and efficient they are.

 

How could you know that youa re not blinding people? You can't, cause you are not the on coming traffic. Often there are people that I'd like to flash, but I susually just drive by and not do anytyhing. Plus you can't argue with the fact that you lose high beams...

-Shing

 

Hey it's the loser again... Instead of telling someone to get a life when they are doing research for the Maxima group as a whole... do you know how to say thank you? Moron.

 

First off I did not Argue with loosing high beams but rather said I don't mind not having them,And in the case of being able to tell if I blind on coming traffic or not it is quite easy to create a scenerio which I have done,just walk back a good 100 ft or so and stand about 5ft to the right of my car a slouch down to the height of being in a oncomming car and walk forward 10FT and reapeat the sloching act and tada now you know if you are blinding on comming traffic or not,and the results like I have said way to many times now is NOW!! you don't blind on comming traffic at all.Also on a another note I just got back from the Natick MA meet which was pretty cool except for getting lost for a 1 1/2 untill the New York Maxima gang came to the rescue and showed me the way thanks alot guys,well anyways I met Albert there and he seemed to and everybody e else thought the lights looked really nice and white to bad we could not inspect the view pattern because it was daytime.

 

All you that are in favor of HIDs. I have a set of headlights off a '00 Benz C500, the assemblies have the balasts mounted right on them. Is it possible to convert those into my max? I have the 97-99 headlights.

 

if the hid were made for the maxima it would of been a option, so what i am saying is buy at your own risk.

DEBO

 

you've got chrome side panels, you shouldn't be allowed to speak.

 

who has got chrome side panels?

DEBO

 

The December Road and Track has a good article on your eyes and why HID lights are causing a controversy. It is a nice long article for those of you who can read more than a paragraph.

 

If you want to know how an aftermarket conversion look like compare to the OEM ones, the ONLY REAL way is to park you car next to a car with OEM Xenon and take the picture.
The stand alone pic is always misleading, I mean sheesh, my old Maxima with Plasma blubs looked way better at night in pic than the real HID on the GS400, it really don't mean anything, because no one knows how the real thing should look like, as long as it looks blue and cooler than stock lights, people think it's cool.

 

until you get a Maxima,anyways who the hell are you to say I can't speak cause I got stainless steal side panels you discriminating *****.

 

I was just supplying some info. I copy-pasted this article...didn't write it. I thought it would be informative.

Maximaisokay: You're a jerk. But you're funny.

 

Albertt, contrary to most, I appreciate you posting this info...i am consider HID as a future mod and was just beginning my research..

in any case, the 2000/2001 inifity i30 has HIDs...has anyone thought about removing the headlight assembly on these (including ballast, etc.) and installing on a 4th gen??

 

personally, I think HIDs are safest and most effective with housings that are meant for HID. Don't all HID systems have a housing that circular?

If HID was put into a dual filament headlight housing lamp, then light would be emitting in directions not really meant for HID to shine in.

Hehe, I got a glimpse of medic's HIDs...they're damn bright!

 

somebody brought a post from the dead. It was painfull reading my old posts. What a ***** a was last November, hell I did not even know how to use commas or anything, haha. I have to admit that maxima.org has not only tought me about cars, but with grammer too. I know I am far from perfect now, but look at last Novemeber, LOL.

Jese, although you are probably long gone by now, I did remove my side panels off my max . So, can I talk now?

 

I second the request for the cliff notes version... The last book I read was smaller than that.


But it was informative.