HID in TYC setup. With no projector conversion. Video on pg 17.

[gearbox]

well i dont wanna be disappointed again, so im for sure going with 55w. i know the chrome on halogen projectors holds up just fine and they get much hotter than hid projector. i think it will be okay. if not, well i will learn a very expensive lesson lol. technically the "chrome" layer is metallic and should not be affected by heat. ive been running boosted halogens for many hours at a time and the stock reflector is still perfect. those things get really hot too and even warm up the outer lens cover quite a bit.

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[gearbox]

okay im bored so im gonna tear up that link in the first post. first, if anyone here pays more than $100 for a 35w KIT, somethings wrong with you. they are all over ebay for even less than 100 so search around. all comes from the same factory.

Q: If my lights are 3X brighter than they are now, am I going to blind everyone else on the road?
A: O-NEX HID burners (bulbs) were engineered to position the xenon arc-discharge in the place your filament used to be - so your car will maintain the same beam-pattern with a whiter, more intense light output. If your lights didn't glare or blind on-comming traffic before, they won't with your new xenon conversion.

Q:Is it recommended to run extra wiring to my car's battery, or install additional relays when I convert to HID?
A: No. By utilizing the latest in xenon technology, your new lighting will provide significantly increased light output while only drawing 35W from your vehicle's electrical system. That's about 30% less than a stock halogen bulb. The kit draws power from your stock halogen bulb socket, and doesn't require any complicated wiring or relays.

lets address their questions next. 1. lets see, your lights are 3x brighter but they still wont blind traffic? wtf? lets see, halogen bulb housings give off glare, but it is at the maximum allowed by a legal headlight. now assuming their kit is the best ever and puts the arc tube EXACTLY where the filament was before, that means you will have 3x the legal limit of glare. yes. lol. hmm, there is also this crazy assumption that just because your BULBS are 3x brighter, so will be the output on the ground. wrong. depending on the housing they are used in, very little light may actually make it to the ground. aspecially if the housing was not designed for hid. so in some cases, you could actually be losing good light AND increasing glare to other drivers. wow that sounds great.

no extra wiring eh? wow what a magical hid kit. maybe they have the super special ballasts that don't draw the normal 20+ amps during the first few seconds of operation. maybe they actually won't cause the stock wiring to burn and melt due to drawing more than the recommended current. oh but once the bulbs warm up a minute later, they are getting 35w so everything's fine. loool right.

[2005EM2]

damn.. this is a good thread.
Subscribed.
I'm actually looking forward to doing a retrofit during the summer (I hope).
I'd like to try and figure out what projector would be best for the OEM style foglights for 04-05.

[gearbox]

projector fog light retro in those oem housing will be very difficult. i was working with some 01-03 trying to widen the rear housing and its all metal. i went through a whole dremel bit and barely made a dent. and ended up scratching alot of chrome when it slipped lol. it wont be easy to cut. what type of bulb do they use, i might know a brighter version if you just want more light out of em.

[buckshizzo]

I tried retro fitting a projector into the oem style fog lights for an 04-05 and it is no easy task, so I gave up. There isn't that much room in there. I took the yellow projector out of an is300 and it barely fits with cutting. There was no way to mount it and I did not want to use jb weld to hold it in place. The back is plastic and pretty much melts from the frictional heat generated from the dremel.

The bulbs are an H8 (ebay) and H11 (OEM honda)

[2005EM2]

Damn.. sound like a lot of work, well the bulb type .. H11.
I do want some bright ones..

Currently, I'm using the eBay fog lights and the adjuster (the nut that you can use to aim the light) is not accurate at all. So I was thinking about a retrofit.. but as I was thinking about it, just like you've mentioned, it would be hard to retrofit. The fog light's projection of the light isn't crazy, but it could be a lot better.
I'd get some shots of the lighting, but my car is in the body shop.

[2005EM2]

Originally Posted by buckshizzo

I tried retro fitting a projector into the oem style fog lights for an 04-05 and it is no easy task, so I gave up. There isn't that much room in there. I took the yellow projector out of an is300 and it barely fits with cutting. There was no way to mount it and I did not want to use jb weld to hold it in place. The back is plastic and pretty much melts from the frictional heat generated from the dremel.

The bulbs are an H8 (ebay) and H11 (OEM honda)

Ok you beat me to it. lol

But, damn.. yeah, it would be pretty bad ass to get these 04-05 oem style projectors retrofitted.

[buckshizzo]

Believe me, I wanted those is300 projectors in there, but there was no way to do it without completely destroying the fog lights. Good thing ebay fogs are cheap now.

[2005EM2]

yeah.
Have you seen the 04-05 oem style fogs that have the housing blacked out? I should have waited for those before buying the clear ones. lol

But as for the retro, I guess I'll be looking into it. I wished that our year foglight housing was made a bit similar to like the 01-03s.. but with the same triangle shape, just so it is a bit easier to pop in a projector.

[buckshizzo]

I saw the blacked out ones. They look nice. They would match blacked out headlights perfectly.

[briand17a2]

Ok ere'body, I did some research on the whole concept of high intensity discharge lighting, bulbs used, ballast circuit design, current draw, startup, ignition, steady-state operation etc...specifically for automotive applications.

After finding and reading a bunch of whitepapers that were way over my head, I did manage to find a master's thesis very closely related to the subject.

[quotations from page 8 of attachment]
(3) Take-over stage (T3 » 300 ms):
Once the ignition pulse breaks through the lamp, the lamp impedance will drastically drop to a few tens of ohms. The lamp requires a high initial current of 12 A maximum for a short time in order to sustain the arc before the ballast can react to the ignition. This current is referred to as the takeover current and is delivered by discharging some energy storage capacitor into the arc. The required discharge time constant is in the range of a few hundreds of microseconds. The take-over capacitor will pre-charge during turn on and deliver the inrush current immediately after the ignition.

(5) Run-up stage (T5 » 10 s):
The automotive lamp has to be driven in order to meet the SAE specification for the light output vs. time. While the steady state power is 35 W, the transient power needed to achieve the required output characteristics when driving a cold lamp can be as high as 75 W. It is
characterized by a maximum current (2.6 A) and maximum power (75 W) delivered into the lamp for electrode temperature considerations.
[end quote]

While the digital circuit design & theory of the ballast was way beyond the scope of this thread, the paper did a great job of explaining how a bulb+ballast works, the stages of operation, and eventually, why HID systems are so sensitive.

What I got from this was, as each ballast must store up enough energy to dissipate 12A for ignition. Yes, the ballasts do end up drawing 35W at steady-state, but the ignition current draw is the problem.

If the ballasts are hooked up to the stock headlight wiring (designed for 55/65W bulbs and not much higher), trying to pull 12A through a 20-24 gauge wire will either cause such a massive voltage drop that the ballast will fail to charge (and fail to ignite the bulb), or something catches on fire. In the paper, it also discusses how restarting the bulb over and over leads to decreased life. Each failed start means an unnecessary restart.

Either way, I suggest that everyone just hook up each ballast to the battery via a big enough relay; this should take care of the problem. PepBoys sells 30A automotive relays in my area for about $3-4 each.

By using relays to supply power directly from the battery (using decent gauge wire), you should get more on/off cycles out of the bulb(s), longer life, less chance of flicker/extinguishment, and most of all, minimized risk of fire.

Thanks to electric130 for the help on this one earlier in the thread, Mr. Hu for his 105 page thesis, and all youz for putting up with my gibberish. I included pages 1-25 if anyone wants to take a look. Hope this helps.

[gearbox]

good info. more people should be thinking like you instead of assuming the stock wiring can handle it. i know most of us have seen the stock wires and i can say they barely look thick enough to power a turn signal.

for the fogs, if you have h11 app, you can fit H9 bulb in its place by simply shaving off one of the prongs on the bulb. then instead of 1200 lumen, you get 2100 lumen almost double the output per bulb will prolly also glare alot more, so use them as driving lights only (same rules as using hi beams).

[buckshizzo]

I was looking at the 55w hid system and do you have any idea what the lumen rating is on them?

[gearbox]

it says 35-40% right, so that would make it around 4000 lumen maybe a bit more? that seems right based on the pics they show as being noticable. i can def tell the 500 lumen dif with my halogen boost.

[ryox82]

hmmmm heres a though....a lens swap on the tyc projector maybe? or is it the whole projector housing itself that HAS to be swapped out?