Saturday, Nov 01, 2014 at 18:42
The matter is pretty damn clear.....unless the headlamp assembly was approved with a HID lamp..... you simply can not fit one.....or any other type of lamp than the fitting was approved with.
The ADRs are abundantly clear on this matter.
Further...that HID lamp has to be the exact type the fitting was approved with.
OH..BTW..have you read the several hunderd pages on headlights in the ARDs....its pretty danm clear what is required.
There are a couple of aberations in the early days of HID where HID lamps where fitted to pretty well normal reflector/difuser optics like we see in halogen lamps.....but almost without exception factory fitted HID lamps these days are fitted to focued optics ( known as projectors).
As far as retrofitted HID lamps in headlights that incorpirate a low beam function...... the lumen output...it has not a thing to do with anything ...if the fitting is not approved with HID lamps, its illegal.....no iffs buts or maybees....no
grey areas......nothing to argue about.
If however you want to retrofit an entire APPROVED HID light assembly there may be someting to argue about....but the expense is simply rediculous..and it runns right on the bleeding edge of what is legal.
Furthermore there is a great deal of difference between what is engineered by a major motor company and has gained approval and what someone does in their back yard
now on another note.
There is a very good reason the major manufacturers have abandoned HID lamps in conventional headlight fittings.
Unreliability.
Unlike normal halogen or simple tungsten lamps, you can not dip HID headlights by switching one filament off and another on.
HID lamps must be dipped mechanically.....retrofit HID lamps shift the filament..mecanically...this has proven to be unreliable and continues to be proven so in the retrofit lamps.
ALL the major companies have shifted to HID in focused optics where the lamp stays fixed in its reflector and a mechanical douser is used to dip the between high and low beam...this has proven to be far more reliable....BUT there are still issues.
There are car manufacturers that persist with halogen low beam and HID high beam.
BUT all this will have a very short life as it is overtaken by LED..that has none of the switching, lamp life and relaibility problems of HID.
In short I expect HID in cars to be a fizzer and will disapear as fast as it came...with a product lifecycle under 10 years.
cheers
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