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I currently have a 2001 Civic LX that is completely stock. The gf has been complaining about the lights on the car as she drives on a lot of country roads. I was thinking of getting the BI-XENON: MORIMOTO MINI H1 STAGE III.
But being a Canadian car it has DRL which runs the high-beams in series. I'm not too sure how that would work with the HID kit installed or if there would be a way to wire an LED or something for DRL.
The man goal is to get more light output while keeping the car as stock looking as possible.
$25 plus shipping, comes with brackets that mount directly onto the morimoto mini H1 projectors.
Here's what they look like (albeit, various colors) in action (hotlinked from TRS's website). The link I posted, you have the choice of white, amber, red, green, blue, or purple. I'm pretty sure you can get away with using those as DRLs
Alternatively, you can go the route I went with my morimoto retrofit on my 2002 and mount some LED halos inside the shroud. Took some creativity on my part to make them fit and work, but they looked cool as hell. Disclaimer: good luck finding those halos anymore though. Theretrofitsource sold them like.. 5 years ago..
DRL will not work with a HID kit as you mentioned it requires the high beam bulb at a lower voltage.
A proper retrofit of HID bulbs and projector lenses in the stock housings are the only way to go but will be $$$.
I had a HID kit years ago and wired the 4 corner lights to the ACC fuse to get past the DRL requirement here in Canada. I ultimately decided that the HID kit was terrible on glare to oncoming drivers and threw the light everywhere. I threw them out and now use the Sylvania ZXE H4 halogens. Clean the lenses once in awhile too. This is the easiest option I see for these cars for best headlight output.
It's only a matter of time that HID kits become illegal here in Canada as some of these blue bulb vehicles driving around are horrible and dangerous.
Since these high-output bulbs have a shorter lifespan than regular bulbs, you may only get a year or so before they burn out.
A proper retrofit of HID bulbs and projector lenses in the stock housings are the only way to go but will be $$$.
The setup OP was referring to (Morimoto Mini H1) is a proper HID retrofit. Easiest retrofit to do in H4/H7 based reflector headlights, and it still retains factory headlight adjustment. Light output from those is absolutely fantastic.