Re: Anyone fitted H.I.D. headlights to a 60s Alfa?

["." <maxid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wonder if HID is short for hideous. Comparative tests that I have seen of OEM HID lamps vs. halogens on the same car don't show any advantage of HID lights in distance of vision. I am not sure where I saw this, but it was in a serious magazine like Consumer Reports, C/D, or Automobile. 

What's more, the HID lamps are often annoying. From what I have read this is partly due to US regulations that limit how much light can be thrown forward. Since the HID assembly produces a lot of light, and the light must go somewhere, a large proportion of the light is deflected to the sides where it blinds other motorists. 

But also, the sharp upper cutoff of HID lights sometimes causes short bright bursts of light above the cutoff line when a car is hitting irregularities in the road. It has happened to me a few times that I have seen a few quick flashes in my mirrors, wondered whether a police car was coming up from behind, only to find that it was a car with HID lights hitting some bumps. The lamp auto-leveling feature on some cars is intended to amned this problem, but it doesn't always work. Retrofits generally don't have auto-leveling.

If you absolutely have to have HID lights, get complete assemblies including reflectors. Not the retrofit kits that include an HID discharge capsule to fit in place of a halogen bulb in a reflector designed for a halogen bulb. It is illegal to sell these in the US because the resulting combination is likely to create severe glare to oncoming motorists.

Cheers,
Sonny '91 164S Baltimore
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided