Headlights

[Russ]

How hard would it be to fit a set of late model xenon lights to a DRB from say an 06 GT40 production car?. .although i have heard they are about $1000US each :-/. Not sure if attached pic shows enough detail?

[Pete]

I've been wondering the same thing Russ. I would think simply getting a hold of the xeon lights and receptacles would be a good start and then fabbing up some brackets to mount them would be pretty cost effective. I think they look sharp.

Pete

[Russ]

I suppose it would just depend on the curve of the outer surface on the new headlight, would be an expesive exercise if it was totally different to the guard. Those xenon lamps have some sort of capacitor / power box that is seperate from the light too don't they?. . . .remember seeing one on a BMW when xenon's first came out, i was thinking what the hell is that???
Hopefully someone else will spend the $$ before i get there and advise of their stuff up

[JohnC]

I just went through an HID projector (D2S type lamp) "retrofit" on my other hotrod, and it was neither cheap nor easy, and this was for a car that was already equipped with halogen projector style headlights (9006 type lamps). I would guess that trying to do a DIY type projector conversion for an older car equipped with sealed beams would be a real challenge.

This US site (unrelated to me) offers complete sealed beam to HID conversion kits. They include new headlight housings, already fitted with the special HID projectors, and it looks like these would be the way to go: Sealed Beams $600 USD for the whole kit looks like a great price from where I stand, since I'm currently at $850 and counting with my project.

Although 35w HID's are much more energy efficient than older sealed beams, or halogens, they do pull 4x to 5x normal current for the first few seconds when striking the arc, so the ballasts need to be fed from a 30 or 40 amp Bosch relay or similar, and fused with either individual 15 amp slo-blo fuses or a single 20 amp slo-blo.

[Mike Dozier]

I have to check my old files...but I believe DRB already shipped a car
with the new GT headlights. Why not call them ?

MikeD

[John W]

I have fitted severd HID conversions to both cars and bikes.

I buy all my kits from Philips HID,Philips Visionplus,Philips BlueVision,Philips DiamondVision, Philips Power2night and GE HID,GE Megalightplus, GE Euroblue sold by the industry experts
We even set up a group buy over on the rennlist forum for these, and I documented the install process

The advantage is that they sell HID lamps with H1 H3 or H4 mountings, all with the glass of the lamp at the correct depth so the focus is unaffected. Therefore you get the power without all the nightmare of having to change lamp units.
For information, projector style lights when using filament lamps are the least efficient, but with a HID lamp mounted who cares. A 35W HID lamp throws out twice as much light as a 55W filament lamp.
The lamps themselves are offered in different colour temperatures. While the blue ones may look cool they unfortunately offer the least light penetration. I therefore always use the 4500 lamps.

No idea for you USA guys, but in the UK HID/Zenon lights are only legal if self levelling headlamps are installed. All of the cars I've fitted these to had manual levelling (switch on the dash), and all have sailed through MoTs with no problems.

Finally, your a bit overspec'd there John. They take a max of 20 amps to strike, so a 20 amp fuse is fine. You are right though that it makes sense to use an auxilliary relay so that current doesn't have to flow through the main switch etc.

Hope that helps

[JohnC]

John, interesting points! Many of the 90's era cars here in the US were fitted with halogen projectors, so getting a "good" HID conversion with the right optics and cutoffs means changing the entire halogen assembly over to the correct D2S or D2R type.

Aftermarket HID kits became illegal in the US because the kit manufacturers were simply fitting halogen bases onto the D2S/D2R HID lamps and they sold tons of PnP Xenon kits that way. The result was a lot of unfocused light being thrown out, usually with the wrong cutoffs, which blinded oncoming traffic.

My latest conversion began when I installed new Euro spec ECE glass headlamps in my car, and reinstalled my old set of legal aftermarket HID's in them. The sharper cutoffs of the ECE's made the optics mismatch much more apparent than with the old US DOT headlamps, and there was way too much beam rising on the right side, blinding drivers that I was overtaking. The cutoffs looked somewhat like this: _____/ _____/ This problem is described in more detail on Daniel Stern's excellent lighting website: http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/bulbs/Hid/conversions/conversions.html

The only solution was to disassemble the headlights, cutout the halogen projector assemblies, and refit them with proper HID projectors, made for the D2S lamps. Not being particularly good with a Dremel, I farmed the project out to a mate who'd already done it, and here are a few photos showing the process and the final result (these are Acura projectors, Toyota/Lexus Denso ballasts, and Philips 4500K lamps):

[Russ]

Mike D, Good thinking . .can i blame it being Monday that i posted that question? . . but i made up for it with that pic!!. ..check out those rims 20" fronts, 22" rears apparently!! I'd hate to be trying to fit those tyres on the rims!!

[John W]

Hi John,

We can chat about this when we meet next, as I'm aware this isn't really the main point of this thread.
To clarify though, you don't need to change the lights to get a D2S/R lamp mount, as autolamps sell lamps with H1 H3 etc bases on them, and the lamps are correctly focused for their particular mount. They fit straight in !
The owner of autolamps used to work for Philips automotive, so really knows his stuff.
I can understand the legality of these things, having seen some cheap lamps

Those xenon lamps have some sort of capacitor / power box that is seperate from the light too don't they?. . . .remember seeing one on a BMW when xenon's first came out, i was thinking what the hell is that???
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