Write-Up: HID Conversion

They work well in these lenses. It was one of the first things I got for it and I'm glad I did. I've had 30,000k and 10,000k now. both great

im looking at 8000K my brother has 10000K on his denali. i dont want that much color that the 10000K put off,i want just enough so the 8000k are for me

where can you pick up the kits for this?

'96reese wrote:

where can you pick up the kits for this?

i've ordered several kits from various vendors on Ebay. no problems yet.

W-body store sells a kit too.

Is it possible to put in some blue or purple bulbs without taking the front of the car apart? How would I go about changing the bulbs, and are there any electrical changes that have to be made? Any specific brand or type of bulb recommended?

blue or purple bulbs in what?!?

Albertj

talk to codith he will tell u everything u need to know

IBx1 wrote:

Is it possible to put in some blue or purple bulbs without taking the front of the car apart? How would I go about changing the bulbs, and are there any electrical changes that have to be made? Any specific brand or type of bulb recommended?

you got some reading to do on HID............. it comes with a transformer basically to put more power to the brighter more crisp lights.......... heck i have some reading to do too ...... but none the less its not as hard as you think to put em' in.......... im getting 10,000k DEEP blue this summer.......... the install takes 15-30 minutes

Just hit up EBAY for a kit that fits 9006 bulbs. It should be under $100 and usually warranted. I've bought about 5 kits from a few different ebay stores to date and I have had no trouble with any of them.

The lamp is a oem style retrofit. It will fit right in. The ballasts can be mounted on top of the fuse box on the passenger side and right on top of the surface where the intake air path to the fender is on the drivers side. You don't have to alter any of the OEM wiring and you can use the same fuse.

As far as the housing goes, obviously it's not designed for an HID lamp and therefore is technically illegal to do. As far as the beam goes, the glare is actually not bad at all. I never get flashed or anything.

On the riv, I have used 30,000k and 10,000k. Both work nicely. you might attract the attention of law enforcement with the 30kk (purple range) so watch out.

Yeah, there's only one other purple-lighted car, and it's a stock civic coupe driven by a bitch. I know who she is, and she is a prissy, I want it all bitch.

I'm thinking about going sky blue, as I've seen one of the kits called, to match the car. It's a relief to know that I can use the same fuse and stock wiring and such. It's a 10,000k setup, so I don't think it'll be overly bright, and other than that I'm no racer, I'm no convict, and I don't plan on having a record made on my way to becoming an engineer at GM. Besides, we know half of our town's police force, so they'll personally let me off for something small like this. There's plenty of ricers and SRT-4's with brighter headlights than I plan on installing.



Codith, could you post a pic of where and how you put the boxes? I saw a wiring diagram for the lights in one of the listings, there's a large box(silver) and a small box(black). I guess the larger box is the ballast/transformer/whatever it's called, and the smaller box is whatever. Could you show me where you put both of them, and how you did it? Is it easy to reach around and physically put in the bulbs, and would I be better off putting these in for the brights or regular lights? Aren't the brights 9005 bulbs? Thanks.



I know I can find cheaper, but here's what I have so far:

9005 bulbs, I think they're for brights:
http://www.amazon.com/XenTec-conversion-10000K-Single-Xenon/dp/B000OKS9PY/ref=pd_sim_auto_title_2

9006 bulbs, these are the regulars?:
http://www.amazon.com/XenTec-conversion-10000K-Single-Xenon/dp/B000O52HUW/ref=pd_sim_auto_title_4

Here's the diagram they give me:

That wiring diagram is for the older design HID systems that have seperate balasts and controllers. All of the new ones have only one box. I assure you it is very hard to mess up. All the connectors plug right in and are basically failsafe. The new kits don't even require a ground or anything.

There really is no reason to get HIDs for the brights unless you actually use them all the time and there is no people anywhere to blind. Just get them for the low beams (9006).

I may be mistaken but since you have a 95, you don't have automatic lights or daytime lights so you don't have to worry about any of the goofyness to that.

I'll see if I can dig up a pic or two of my ballasts. I now have 10,000k which is a pretty deep blue. It does, indeed, light up the road and signs much better. You will definitely notice that the white of the signs shines up long before you come to them. It's nice when you're trying to find streets at night.

10,000k

one of each that i had

cool pic

i told you codith knows his stuff

Haha, I had no idea we'd have the same brand of HID's even! I guess it's a good sign. Yeah, turns out the wiring diagram is dated, because the actual picture of the product shows only one, and smaller, box with a couple of wires and such. There's also a 10 year life expectancy for the ballast, but I think there's a warranty somewhere.

My 95 has the twilight sentinel which is pretty cool, but I can turn it off if I like. I usually like driving around with my parking lamps on no matter what car I'm in, and the Riv is perfect for it. I'll use the money I have saved up for a dash kit and buy this instead. Sherwood Dash still hasn't sended me any samples, so I won't buy a kit from them.

Is your 10,000k bulb the "sky blue" one, or the "deep blue" one?

Oh, I've decided to go with the 8,000k instead of the 10,000k, because I'm told they color everything and make it a bit harder to see. From what I can tell, the 8,000's are deep blue and the 10,000's are light blue but much more intense.

Here they are:

http://www.amazon.com/XenTec-conversion-8000K-Single-Thunder/dp/B000O54J62/ref=pd_sbs_auto_title_1

The kelvin rating on these lamps are supposed to be a linear spectrum. 4,300 is suggested to be the most absolute white you can get. From that range to about 10,000k, it quickely gets blue. So 10,000k is (within the limitation of these HID kits) the most dominant blue you can get or in other words, the darkest blue. 6,000k is a crystal blue or very light blue. 8,000k is something between that and 10,000k. 12,000k is basically that powerful blue still but with a very subtle hint of violet. 30,000 is straight up balls to wall violet/pink. They have a new one out new thats like 15,000k that looks pretty badass but I agree with a blue car, stay with a blue

And for clareification, any K range HID lamp puts out much more light than the halogen. When you look at them from afront, they are all the same exact intensity. To those one look at them on the road, they will all seem equally bright, however, the farther you go away from 4,300k or white, the less usable light you have. Even with the 30,000k, I still had much better vision over my stock lights, just to give you an idea.

8,000k seems to be the most favorable compromise between usable light and beauty. They are still very blue and put out tons of light.

That's good. So, do you plug the factory light harness into the kit? I saw something that had a wire leading to the positive battery ground, but our battery's under the backseat, so...yeah. Did you just screw the ballast onto the car, or is there 2-sided tape or something?

I can't put any screws on my airbox, so where's a good place to mount it if they do screw in?

I've decided to go with 6,000K instead of 8,000K. It's still very different from stock, and has a slight blue tint to it. I like it because it'll be bright white on the road instead of blued out, and won't fatigue my eyes after a while. OEM HID's don't go higher than 5800K, which Philips markets as 6000K, so I'll stick with that. I'll make a write-up of this when the kit comes, as I still have yet to place the order.

These are bright blue when they light up, then after a half minute change to "pure bright-ass white." Great for driving. I don't need it to be show-offy, and this'll keep attention down from the police for glare and stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000O54IC2/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

thats what i have is 6000K on the truck. i love em

Alright, I ordered my 6000K kit! It'll probably ship out tomorrow evening, travel for Saturday, take a break on Sunday, and get here sometime next week. Expect a write-up in a new thread, and plenty of HID warmup videos!

GETTING STARTED


Alright, I finally got my HID light kit!

Turns out, it wasn't a XenTec kit as advertised, and it wasn't shipped from California, but it turned out to be a package coming all the way from Shanghai. Needless to say, I inspected every bit of it when I opened the package and looked for any kinds of defects, poor quality, scratches, dents, anything. But after close inspeciton, this is a legit HID kit. All the connections had 3 rubber seals which made a tight, quality fit between connections. It came with the ballasts, lights in plastic cap enclosures to make sure they didn't get damaged, and they were even nice enough to include brackets, bolts, nuts, and washers!

I will be using the brackets for this install.

These are 6,000K lights, which are just about the best for driving. Any lower, and there's less light. Any higher, and there's more color but less useable light. The 6000K's have a nice crystal color once they're warmed up. When they start, they're very blue, and as they warm up they turn brighter and more pure white until they're perfectly white with a slight hint of blue. Everything looks exactly the same color as it would in the daytime, and that's why I recommend 6000K's for normal driving. The beauty with this kit is that once you have it installed, if you want to put in 12,000K's for show just change the bulb, but make sure they're real HID bulbs, or else your fuse and a few other things will melt!

Here's what 6000K's look like on a Charger. Note the change from blue to white:



The instructions say to make sure you use a fuse rated at 20A, as anything higher will melt. For now, here's a pic of the kit. The wires came neatly packed in the container, without stressing or sharply bending any of them, unlike how they are after I put them back in these pics, and everything has ample styrofoam padding with very thick, rigid box walls to protect them.







Now, onto some basics!

First off, if you're doing this on a Riviera, you want the 9006 kit to replace the main headlights, and the 9005 kit to replace the brights, if you really feel a need to. I recommend 6000K color temperature, but feel free to get whatever you like. You can always buy other HID bulbs and they will work with the HID kit.

Here is what comes with the kit:



-2(two) ballasts, the metal box thingies.
-2(two) mounting brackets for the ballasts.
-4(four) bolts for the brackets.
-8(eight) washers for the bolts for the brackets, four large and four small.
-2(two) lights w/ wires, I think you know what these do.

This is how they hook up:







There are two small connectors behind the lights and coming from the ballasts. Those hook up together, with the black wires and red wires joining together. There is also a large clip that goes onto the ballast from behind the light. This clip is hard to undo, so don't start playing around like I did. There is only one way it easily fits, with the graduated metal clip on the ballast. Then there is a connector next to the light. You plug the factory light connection in here. If you can follow the current, it goes from the factory harness, down the double connectors, into the ballast, out through the large connector, and up to the light.

This is the wrong way to wire it up:



To get the light out, you must unscrew(with this kit) the plastic jar it is enclosed in. The bottom must be slid all they way down, past the rubber seal and all the other clips, to get it off. It looks like this once it's out of its shell:

Just cut away that gromet that they have on the wires of the bulb. That would be used if the vehicle has a sub-housing that needs to be sealed off or a custom application.

Congrats btw. You won't be disappointed!

IT'S RAINING. And it won't stop until early Saturday...

Oh well. Here's another tip:

Before installing the HID kit, make sure it's dry under the hood, it's not raining out, and your car has cooled down.