Fueler's HID thread with night time shots ( 8 photos )

[fueler]

Sup Nico,

Got a hi/low plug-n-play HID kit installed, 6000k color. My camera doesn't do a good job capturing the actual brightness - it holds the shutter open too long and makes the lights look ridiculously bright in photos.

Anyways here are the pics i took





Got my new corner light delivered today, from "Pinnacle Infiniti" in AZ, immediately tore the light apart to remove the orange so now I have both clear corners finished !!



another of the brand new clear corner on pass side



anyways.... i did get some glare spilling over above the cutoff..... too much ?? the road not 3x as bright as i expected. But definitely brighter than OEM.

Heres a shot i took withthe flash on, looks more realistic



** All comments (good or bad) are welcome !! **

Thanks for viewing !

[REZN]

i definately like itim looking for something like that.if i were to go with anything brighter i would have to tint the headlightsand thats too much black for me lolim going with hid's soon but i want to put hid's in my foglights too

[Mariach]

That lighting system is b****in!

I am jealous. Did you do the instal yourself ?

And I think the cutoff is almost perfect, a little spill is fine. I think QXXX4 might get a little jealous. HahahaSorry Brian!

[W O T]

Yeah you defientely got a cleaner cutoff than most of the kits Ive seen on here

I know you say there not "that" bright, but go jump in someone elses car with halogens, they only light up like 40 feet infront of the car, look how far yours throw the light!!

My 01 throws it pretty far and I get flashed quite a bit, but ohwell, nothing i can do

[Qxxx4]

lol yeah thats a clean cutoff but your much closer to the wall than i was. they look great! your gunna love highway driving, mine light up all 3 lanes! im really itching to do the corners now but still scared! Id love to get my hands on a QX4 headlight housing, i was even looking at trying to find some from japan with OEM projectors. No luck. I will try to aim them lower. they were perfect before i replaced the bulbs, so enjoy it while you can now lol

can you send me a pic of what your actual bulb looks like? and how do they move up and down? is the solenoid just wired to the hi/low switch? Id love an actual adjustment to raise/lower the HID like in the 01+. I am considering trading up, but then realize mines been so well taken care of itd be stupid of me.

I've got some "borrowed" fog light projectors from the ford supplier I used to work at. I gave them to a friend to try to fit them to his 300M special, theyre gorgeous and black inside with that nice frog eye look. If I only had some way of fitting them.

I totally gotta hunt down some junk yards for some parts to murder

anyways, lookin good! not sure if you go off roading at night but youll really enjoy them if you do. Keep us updated on how many times you get brights flashed at you. My count was 1 for the first six months, then 8 the first NIGHT i drove with my new bulbs.

btw...wheels look sweet at night

[fueler]

Thx everybody for your kind words

can you send me a pic of what your actual bulb looks like? and how do they move up and down? is the solenoid just wired to the hi/low switch? Id love an actual adjustment to raise/lower the HID like in the 01+.

this is what my bulb looks like http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/...B.jpg The shield stays in one place and the bulb moves back and forth yeah the HID kit is wired in a fashion that the factory headlight harness turns on/off a relay, and the HID's draw their power directly from the battery (versus powering them through the factory harness)

Youve got a high / low kit too.... how are yours wired?

[Qxxx4]

wait you have ballasts right?

my ballasts connect from the battery, to the stock socket, which then splits wires into low beam (going to HID) and high beam (going to halogen) the headlight switch operates as if there was one bulb like before fir hi/lo expect now the wires are routed to two different bulbs

i wish we could see the difference, you say you get barely 3x light, but i get easily 5-6x no joke, its extremely bright. Maybe my kit is too powerful? A dimmer would rock lol impossible though. Im considering tint/silverstars with HID's in fog lights, id jsut need new bulbs for H3. i see alot of trucks doing this and it looks really good since the light is low to the ground and you dont blind people, instead of an annoyance its a true show piece.

what colour HID would i need to put behind the yellow lens to get a purple or blue though!!!

[fueler]

yeah i got 2 ballasts... do you have any sort of shield installed along with your bulb or is the bulb completely unshielded? some people call them "casper shields" and they look something like this its supposed to help with cars that have problems with the cutoff line



the guy at the shop told me i could take the shields off my HID's to make them even brighter but i chose to leave them in

[Qxxx4]

oh man! how much do those cost and where can i get them?

[fueler]

haha i take it thats a no! not sure, mine came with them but if you google "casper shield" a whole bunch of info comes up!

[Arsenic]

Looks great, I got a 6k kit from autolumination, I hope it looks that good!

[screwinitupagain]

Since everyone's got their panties got in a wad & theircoños where hurt on NPORA a bit ago when I posted on the same thing, let me be extremely & explicitly clear:

I LIKE THEM. THE LOOK REALLY GOOD. NOT MY CUP OF TEA BUT ON YOUR VEHICLE OF CHOICE THEY COMPLIMENT EVERYTHING VERY NICELY. I HAVE CLEAR CONERS ON MY VEHICLE AS WELL, BUT ONLY CHEAP EBAY ONES.

[fueler]

nobody conos gettin hurt mane!! i was laughing at some of the comments on NPORA, particularly from the Texas street-tire bandits they are so butthurt ever since i been dogging them on that !! LOL

i always liked clear corners. i wish they sold cheap ebay ones for my model so i wouldnt have had to butcher my OEM ones (which are both brand new, i paid $140 each)

[screwinitupagain]

The mods have really gotten uptight & controlling over there lately & I know that I don't contribute much but I've been avoiding NPORA for that reason. I like how over here the members pretty much run the threads not the mods. But at the same time I don't usually get what I need out of NICO though.

For those that don't know coños is slang spanish for p*ssies.

[UndeGuy]

Thx everybody for your kind words

this is what my bulb looks like http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/...B.jpg The shield stays in one place and the bulb moves back and forth yeah the HID kit is wired in a fashion that the factory headlight harness turns on/off a relay, and the HID's draw their power directly from the battery (versus powering them through the factory harness)

Youve got a high / low kit too.... how are yours wired?

Hehe, I finally decided to register on the forums. I would've used another username, but apparently someone already took it.

Anyway, reading your description keeps making me think the light bulb moves up and down... but it just rotates with the second (smaller) shield. I was wrong...

I actually/finally just bought and installed a HID conversion kit myself for a 99.5 Pathfinder (after MUCH reading on this site for last two months, Qxx4 and fueler, you guys are all AROUND the site ).

The packaging was completely NOT what I was expecting... I thought it came in one retail box... but instead, the seller sent it in four boxes, with the main cabling not even in a box. What bothered me the most was the two bulbs were NOT held in place in one of the boxes. One wrong rattle and bye bye bulbs.

That being said, my conversion kit is a Bi-Xenon kit, so it would look like that pic also.

Oh, did I mention that it didn't come with instructions either? So, I took a guess that two of the wires from relay, to the ballast and "back" out were meant to be grounded (which i did to the bracket and bolt that holds the ballast).

The whole thing cost less than $80 ($76.49 including the S&H)... so I suppose I got what I paid for. http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...oduct

I used my phone and I took a couple of pics and even a video while I was driving, but unfortunately I forgot my phone in the car (tend to do that a lot), which is parked a block away.

It uses 10k K bulbs (supposedly)... but, it pretty much looks like your bulbs in terms of color on the road/wall. But it doesn't "feel" like I have as much ground coverage as your pic (with all the semis)... debating whether or not to buy some different replacement bulbs (like 4300 K or 6000 K) to see if I can get better coverage. Part of me is thinking it might also be because of the shield... but I didn't look too closely at it before installing. So, I'm not even certain the shield is removable, but I guess it might be.

PS... I just moved BACK to Chicago area from SD... long story. But ultimately, I do kinda hope to move AGAIN, to SD... don't know when.

Modified by UndeGuy at 10:34 PM 6/17/2009
Modified by UndeGuy at 9:22 PM 6/20/2009

[Qxxx4]

welcome stalker! lol glad to see youve been checking out the forums and have joined. I have been using my HID's during foggy or rainy weather and no issues. Its just a clear night on a dark road where i get all the disgruntled drivers. i still am seriously considering going silverstars up top and move my HID kit to the fogs with some nice new bulbs. Considering trying to get rid of the yellow lens but that seems like I have to take apart the seals of my fogs. Blue HID's down there would be much better and efficient. But id be fine with yellow too. I just dont want to be a nuissance to the other drivers and if the HID's are low where the fogs are, its not bad at all, ive seen many cars with their HID's down there. I really love the projector looking/magnifier lens we have in our QX4's, just wish it was BLACK like the ford projector housings I have laying around......hmmmm....lmao

[UndeGuy]

My main reason for doing the HID conversion was because I went through two pairs of UltraStars in six months... btw, this isn't my pathfinder, I'm only borrowing it from my brother-in-law (I needed a ride and nobody was using the pf). Not long after I picked it up, I decided to replace the bulbs, which I guess might be the original bulbs, since they haven't driven it much in the last 10 years. While not being used too much, I didn't think the bulbs were bright enough for the area I was driving in. I like to see as FAR ahead as possible.

The ultrastars were very bright and just perfect for where I was using it the most, but after about 3 or 4 months, one bulb blew out (low beam filament anyway, high beam worked)... swapped out both bulbs... and about 3 months later, a bulb from the new pair blew out again (low again). didn't feel like paying $60 for a third pair, so I just grabbed the working bulb from the other pair, since I kept them. not long after, a third bulb blew out... which didn't aggravate me too much since I didn't replace both with a new set anyway.

When that third bulb blew out, I bought an inexpensive pair of "HID-simulate" bluish bulbs online, through Amazon... but they weren't very bright. I should've realized it would be the case, since I went through similar bulbs with the Mitsubishi Mirage I had converted (from stock single bulb/dual filament to dual bulb set up) http://www.cardomain.com/ride/655670 . Despite the different setup, the result was the same... low was barely decent, and "high" was a joke (not noticeably brighter than low beam).

So, this was when I got fed up... and bought the hid kit.

Where I live is so "dead" that by the time it's dark enough for me to really put my HIDs to use... most of the people have gone to sleep.

As for when I'm driving in other areas, I've had people complain about my ultrastars, in fact I've had complaints about the STOCK bulbs, that is, until I flash them back with my high beam. It's a no-win situation... might as well get SOMETHING out of it.

While I like the projector look also, I'm just too lazy to do the modding myself. And since there isn't a whole lot of aftermarket parts for PF... I'm just done in that regard.

BTW, I also did a HU replacement back in March, which, now that I think about it, was really when I started visiting NICO. The cassette mechanism refused to play the ipod-cassette adapter I was using, it would pop back and forth and then spit it out immediately. What made matters worse was the system wouldn't output ANY audio to the speakers (no FM/AM or CD audio). The funny thing is... it started reading my CDRs correctly (whereas before it would just error out). I couldn't find a double-din that satisfied me, so I ended up getting an Alpine X-305 from Crutchfield.... again, I do have pics, but they're in my phone. It looks kinda odd because of the positioning, but like I said, I'm lazy... so it'll do.

While I did look long and hard at the Pioneer 8000 that you got... the one thing that put me off, the display... I'm "sick of" segmented displays, and really wanted something like the X305 (without paying $1k+ for those high end double din display HUs).

[fueler]

UndeGuy, yeah silverstars dont last very long. Im curious to see how long my HID's last

and i dont have an 8000 HU (thats qxxx4) i have a single din 6900UB

[UndeGuy]

Alright, this is the 3rd attempt at responding (1, desktop, not mine, crashed, 2 ipod is just too small, 3rd is here on my laptop).

Yeah, I really liked the brightness of the Ultrastars... but $60 every three months is too much for headlights.

I'm also worried how long my HIDs will last, since I paid so little. My fear is that saying "You get what you pay for." And I'm (grrr, sticky keys popped up while I was typing!!!)... As I was saying, I'm worried that just under $80 might be not have gotten me some decent parts. We'll just have to wait and see.

I've taken a closer look at my HIDs (while there was daylight). Apparently, I was wrong, they don't rotate. I can't tell if they moved.

I've been debating taking off the shield that came with the HID... seems rather redundant with the stock shield that's part of the housing.

On another note, I vaguely remember someone mentioning that they added a spacer because the pocket was a bit out of the focal point. So I wonder if I did that, would it both increase the brightness and raise the low beam cut off line. Because it seems like it could be brighter and that the headlights seem to be aimed a little low. This is assuming of course that my HID is slightly ahead of the focal point also.

Oh, another thing I was wrong about... there is a preview button... it's just not as obvious as some other forums (they have it next to and in the same button+word style like the post button).
Modified by UndeGuy at 12:36 AM 6/21/2009