Post #15
mattgti6phase2 wrote:
never been flashed. my lights are aligned correctly. i dont see H.I.Ds to be any worse than a poorly aligned set of halogen bulbs tbh.
you can uprate your halogen bulbs to 100w! thats a powerful bulb which will equally blind people. banning H.I.Ds is just another money making scheme for this sad country we live in.
Sorry matt but your argument's based purely on opinion. If you read into the physics of light patterns from different sources, in this case filament and HID bulbs, you'll see that the reflectors for filament bulbs aren't set up for use with HID bulbs. It's not about alignment, it's about beam pattern, which are two different things. Alignment generally means they need to be set at the right height and in the right direction. Beam pattern is the way in which the light is scattered by the reflectors. HID's with filament type reflectors will never work properly unless you've found a way round the laws of physics.
The end result is that the lights either produce a lot of glare or the beam pattern is dispersed inefficiently, you'd get better results sticking a decent 60W bulb in instead. I use +90% H7's and have absolutely no issues at night time so I don't see the need for trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
Also the reason the lights need washers is to stop them lighting up like christmas trees, the dirt theoretically glows when lit by HID light which causes a lot of glare, however it's open to debate as the US market for instance doesn't require them.
Self levelers are essential in my eyes, yes you may have them set level when your car's at a standstill, but load it up with passengers/luggage and the ride height changes, meaning your lights aimed at the road now point upwards at peoples faces. And if you aim them down to get around this, what's the point in fitting lights that you can't point in the direction you're going?
All in all I think the law's a good one. Do it properly or not at all, we all got on fine before retrofit kits were invented...
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Bye bye Sundance Kid
Rix13
Posted 12th Oct 2011 at 20:00
