HID headlights

[DaveInDenver]

Scott wrote this in his arctic trip report:

some good aux. lights (I would recommend HID)

This has been mentioned that before (about the HID). I'd like to explore that some more. I'm not disagreeing, largely because I don't have HID automotive experience to even remotely draw on. I do have HID lights for the bike and a ton of experience with those, particularly comparing halogen to HID.

There are reasons that HID is preferred in a bike light, which are less important in a car. The main one is light output per energy used. A HID is around twice to four times more efficient at giving useful light per watt. A 4 A-hr battery will provide about 500 lumens for about 4 hours (at 13.2V). This is roughly the same light as a 35 watt halogen and that will deplete a 12v, 4 A-hr battery in about an hour. So that alone is what makes HID a very attractive alternative for cycling. We typically get about 2 to 2.5 hours between laps to get a charge on the battery and my laps (at Moab for an example) run around roughly 1:15 to 1:35. So I'm only using up 30% of the capacity per lap and so I can do back-to-back laps on one charge with 1000 lumens of light (I have two HIDs for racing) and get both charged in about 3 hours on a fast charger. It's a matter of logistics for endurance racing.

But the downside to having all that light is that you have kill your night vision and your color perception is shifted. An HID light is around 6000*K, which is bad because it ruins your eye's interpretation of color at night. It turns out that your eye likes a more yellow shift rather than a blue one, which is the HID shift. It seems brighter, but your ability to pick out details actually goes down. It's more obvious at the fringes. I personally wear yellow lenses in my glasses when I ride at night, which helps me pick out details in the trail.

Truck-wise, I like my Hella Vision Plus housings with Osram 60/55 bulbs. These are the standard bulbs, 3200*K, about 1600 lumens. I run them with a direct-to-battery harness (I use Roger Brown's) and get about 13.3V at the bulb. This is a little higher than I would like, but I still get usually about a year or two from the filaments.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what others have to say. What color temp shift is the breaking point for you? Daniel Stern wrote this, just as a starting point:

Disadvantages of HID

 

[asteffes]

I agree completely. HID lighting definitely affects my color perception in a very negative way. I prefer a very bright halogen lamp, however inefficient they may be, to an HID lamp assuming the focus and beam patterns are the same. If someone could design a 250 watt halogen bulb that wouldn't melt my lamp housings I would put those bulbs in my off-road lamps in a heartbeat. For now, though, I'm very pleased with my Hella 80/100 watt H4 bulbs in my Tacoma's excellent lamp housings. The beam is every bit as well-focused as an OEM HID lamp but with a much softer color temperature.

 

[slooowr6]

The 4300k color used in my wife's IS300 is very close (color wise) to what I have in my Taco with Hella 80/85 but much brighter. The HID is just a tad whiter but not much. One of the things I notice is that with projector type of lens on my friend's s2000 is that the cut off is too sharp. When I drove his car at night I can't see anything outside of the cut off (think stage spot light), it's kind of like day and night. In the IS300 it still uses reflector so the light is more spread out and it's just like a Halogen headlight but much brighter. I don't like the bluish HID anything higher that 5000k does not work for me. I like to have HID with 4300k as color temp.

 

[Colorado Ron]

I personally like HIDs. For those that may want more info, Heres an article explaining HIDs:

http://www.offroad-adventure-travel.com/lighting-HID.html

 

[DaveInDenver]

I personally like HIDs.

OK, but why? What makes them better for you?

 

[vengeful]

I can understand the reasoning behind HID lighting, but for off-road travel, I don't think they serve a good function. As stated before, the blue shift of the HID lights tends to skew the color perception of the eyes, and tends to hinder the ability to pick out fine details. They're great in the rain on pavement, because they, at least to me, don't reflect off the pavement as badly as a standard halogen bulb. True HID anyways, not those cheap imitation HID Look-A-Like bulbs that sell on eBay for $9-15. The cheap imitation HID bulbs are actually far worse than standard halogen bulbs. Even the so-called high-output bulbs, like the cheaper, lesser quality Sylvania Silverstars that are available in the US aren't as good as a regular halogen bulb in my experience.

I've run pretty much every kind of plug-in bulb available, from the $100/pair PIAA Xtreme White bulbs, the Sylvania Silverstars, the imitation HID bulbs, to regular old $3.99/pair halogens. While the PIAAs performed the best of of them all, the cost-to-life ratio was HORRIBLE. (I got about 4 months out of a set, and PIAA wouldn't honor the warranty because they suspected that I subjected the vehicle to "excessive vibration by taking it off of paved roads.") The filaments are extremely sensitive to vibrations, and blow out at the drop of a hat. They're definitely not the bulbs to use on an off-road vehicle.

I also do NOT like the use of the Aftermarket HID kits that are available online, because, usually, they are used in the incorrect style light housings, and the light just scatters willy-nilly all over the place, blinding on-coming drivers. I don't see the point in spending $350+ (for a DOT approved kit), to not get that much better lighting. Sure it looks brighter, but that might be your eyes playing tricks on you due to the color shift of the Kelvin Temperature of the light being emitted from the bulbs. To me, it's just not worth it to add HID lighting to a vehicle that does not already have it, and I certainly would not use HID lighting on an off-road vehicle.

My $0.43. Gotta make up for these gas prices somehow!

 

[DaveInDenver]

I can understand the reasoning behind HID lighting, but for off-road travel, I don't think they serve a good function. As stated before, the blue shift of the HID lights tends to skew the color perception of the eyes, and tends to hinder the ability to pick out fine details. They're great in the rain on pavement, because they, at least to me, don't reflect off the pavement as badly as a standard halogen bulb.

Interesting, I'd heard that HID had worse glare than halogen. Your experience is that on glazed pavement (be that rain or ice) you get less glare than halogen? That's cool, but also explains why Scott liked them in the arctic. I would have thought that the snow packed roads would be a bad combination for the HID color and shear brightness. Like you'd get too much reflection.

 

[vengeful]

I've never actually driven a vehicle with True HID lighting on snow-covered road, or in snow. I've driven in snow so heavy that I couldn't even run my headlights because the glare was too blinding, so I had to turn on my KC Long-Range "Yellow glow" lights mounted beneath my front bumper so I could actually see where I was going. They worked great, and since they were below the bumper, I didn't get a whole lot of glare back in my face.

I think the whole reasoning behind HIDs apprearing to reflect less off of glazed pavement, is that, at least in OE applications, the light housings are properly designed to focus the light in a very specific way, and there are more lumens of light behing shone on a certain spot on the road than with a standard Halogen bulb, and this may cause the appearance that the light isn't reflecting as badly.

Again, these are just personal observations and inferences/theories, and I do not claim any scientific merit to them as I have done no empirical testing.

 

[devinsixtyseven]

Well, Dave I'm with you on this one...I too wear yellows at night (and anything other than sun), and my "daily" glasses are actually yellowed as well for the same reason.

I had an aftermarket HID kit. Like previously posted, the pattern was hideous and blinded everyone, and the overall effect was somewhere between OEM lows and highs.

You can get white HIDs as opposed to the blue, purple, etc. that are available. The best OEMs only show that purple shift at the perimeter anyway, they're white in the center of the pattern.

I've also run yellows in the fogs and main beam, and liked them better overall than the blue HIDs...color temp does matter as you already know.

If I could afford them I wouldn't hesitate to switch the headlights and add driving lamps in a quality, white-temp HID...but I'd keep fogs yellow. Dunno if anyone makes a yellow HID beam offhand.

-Sean

 

[vengeful]

I seem to recall you being able to find 3200K HIDs around, but I don't know where or how much.

I had run the "Yellow" headlight bulbs in my headlights for a while, and they were FANTASTIC. They had about the same longevity as the PIAAs I ran in the past, and at $20/set they were too expensive to keep replacing every 3-6 months.

 

[Scott Brady]

Nearly all of my HID experience was in the Arctic, which is essentially a B&W environment. That could explain the lack of color issues. I also have 15/20 vision, so detail at distance has never been an issue for me.

I have driven at speed with Hella 500's and 4000's and HID's (fog and driving), Lightforce 170's and 240's, and IPF 9000 HID's and 9000 standard spots. The 9000 HID's are the most impressive light I have used for brightness, clarity, distance and road surface detail.

All three of us (Chris, Pasquale and I) noticed an exceptional improvement in night driving safety and speed with the IPF HID's. Chris and Pasquale both run standard Lightforce 240's.

No question about the night vision affect. Once the HID's are off, you can barely see the factory headlights on the road.

I will be racing the Baja with HID's (like nearly all of the teams), so that will be a good test in the desert environment.