[s-cars] HID lighting conversion kit

Chris Covington malth at umich.edu
Tue Jul 9 19:30:46 EDT 2002


"This does not stop "headlamp mercenaries" selling "conversions" for such
headlamps. Theresultant mess cannot be called a beam pattern, but as long
as the"converted" lamps spray-out lots of purplish light, the purchasers
of such"conversions" tend to be happy, not knowing and/or not caring that
they are driving with dangerous, overly-glaring, inadequately-performing
headlamps. ESPECIALLY if the seller of the "retrofit" has given
ill-informed (or just plain fraudulent) assurances that the kit is "beam
pattern corrected". There's flatly just no such a thing!

Most people do not have the expertise (let alone the equipment) to judge
the acceptability of a headlamp beam pattern. Most people can tell the
difference between arc light (purplish) and halogen light (not purplish).
It is certainly possible to physically place an arc capsule into a halogen
headlamp. But for all real purposes, it is NOT possible to make an
acceptable headlamp this way. For some cars, legitimate HID retrofit kits
are available. These consist of complete new headlamp lens-reflector units
to go with HID capsules and ballasts. This is the *ONLY* safe and proper
way to put HID headlamps on a car not originally so equipped. "

Cov
'91 200q20v




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