I miss my HIDs

yellow

Flashlight Enthusiast
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Sure, those led lights of my Corolla work,
and give OK light.
But I miss the headlights of the Giuliettas I owned be4.
They were soooo much better
;)

Discussion on what type of lighting in cars is/were "better" (and why) open
...
 
Best headlights for the driver of the car or for everyone else on the road?

Standard LEDs are frequently far too bright now. Makes night driving more dangerous than having moderately dimmer lights, IMO.

The old incans were great but died pretty frequently and folks were slow to replace burnouts. It's much rarer now to see one-headlight cars.

Better? Warm, high CRI LEDs with lower candella. Or housings that let the let the candella quickly fall off after 3' above the road.

Or enforcement of standards. An army of cops with light meeters giving out fixit tickets.
 
Not sure what happened to older HID headlights, but nowadays they are far dimmer than they used to be. So much so that I'm hitting my high beams far too often when driving at night. I do my best not to blind other drivers. But at the same time, I'm not going to risk getting into a wreck because I can't see what's ahead.
 
Sure, those led lights of my Corolla work,
and give OK light.
But I miss the headlights of the Giuliettas I owned be4.
They were soooo much better
;)

Discussion on what type of lighting in cars is/were "better" (and why) open
...

Yes, 4300K HID's are way better than 6500K LED's.

Many manufactures like GM and Luxury Euro makes still offer a HID "UPGRADE" , YES! UPGRADE! option from their stock factory LED's.
 
Not sure what happened to older HID headlights, but nowadays they are far dimmer than they used to be. So much so that I'm hitting my high beams far too often when driving at night. I do my best not to blind other drivers. But at the same time, I'm not going to risk getting into a wreck because I can't see what's ahead.
HID's don't usually "burn out", they dim over time. If they're dim it's time to replace the bulbs. RockAuto is usually the cheapest, be sure to get genuine Philips or Osram. Not some aftermarket.
 
Blame the US government for glaringly bright headlights. My car has 96 individually controllable LEDs with diffraction grating and motorized lenses. It can selectively turn off individual pixels to prevent blinding oncoming drivers and pedestrians.... BUT... the US government forbids those advanced features be enabled.

Some 1960s law says you can only have a high beam and low beam. Both are based on 1960s incandescent sealed-beam bulbs. So now that lighting tech and design has come up with highly-focused point-source headlights, the government is stuck in 1960s. and the clipboard warriors won't budge. Trust me, I tried.
 
Blame the US government for glaringly bright headlights. My car has 96 individually controllable LEDs with diffraction grating and motorized lenses. It can selectively turn off individual pixels to prevent blinding oncoming drivers and pedestrians.... BUT... the US government forbids those advanced features be enabled.

Some 1960s law says you can only have a high beam and low beam. Both are based on 1960s incandescent sealed-beam bulbs. So now that lighting tech and design has come up with highly-focused point-source headlights, the government is stuck in 1960s. and the clipboard warriors won't budge. Trust me, I tried.

But what color are they? Anything above 4300K-4500K is horrid.
 
HID's don't usually "burn out", they dim over time. If they're dim it's time to replace the bulbs. RockAuto is usually the cheapest, be sure to get genuine Philips or Osram. Not some aftermarket.
I appreciate the heads-up. Thank you.
 
The best headlights I ever had were in my old Jeep Cherokee. I had Cibié E-code H4 housings with a relay harness and Osram "Rallye" bulbs. I had a similar setup with 7" round Cibié lights in a Porsche 944 as well that also was fantastic. I haven't used anything that worked as well since, and I just bought another Cherokee... my last one I had Truck-Lite LEDs in and they didn't seem nearly as good as the H4s. Makes me want to dig in my storage locker and see if I still have those old lights. Sure, you have to replace the bulbs every couple years but damn if they aren't great.
 
I have a combination of:

- Halogen (car with Koito 7" round reflectors)
- HID (one car with EvoX-R 2.0 HID projectors and another with Morimoto Mini D2S 5.0)
- LED (a BMW with Adaptive LED)

The ones I like the most are equipped with HID. The light temperature is just perfect (4500k), the brightness, reach and evenness of the beam pattern is also spot on. There's a perfect light gradient: I perceive the same amount of light just in front of the car as there is several hundred meters down the road. In a lot of newer cars there's just too much light placed right in front of the car, which contracts your pupils and hurts your night vision. Kudos to Morimoto for designing such amazing projectors. I know a lot of their products are not that great, but those projectors are incredible.

LED comes in a second place mostly because it almost seems I'm seeing in black-and-white at night. Supposedly xenon has even worse CRI than LED, but to me it seems the opposite, perhaps because LED is way cooler at 6000k and washes out warmer colors. Light distribution is also not as even. I can see distracting hot and dark spots.

The Halogen Koitos are amazing... for a halogen, but they are definitely outmatched tech. Mine are running between 12 and 13 volts with standard H4 bulbs. The beam width is not there and the high beam especially is so far behind.
 
I have a combination of:

- Halogen (car with Koito 7" round reflectors)
- HID (one car with EvoX-R 2.0 HID projectors and another with Morimoto Mini D2S 5.0)
- LED (a BMW with Adaptive LED)

The ones I like the most are equipped with HID. The light temperature is just perfect (4500k), the brightness, reach and evenness of the beam pattern is also spot on. There's a perfect light gradient: I perceive the same amount of light just in front of the car as there is several hundred meters down the road. In a lot of newer cars there's just too much light placed right in front of the car, which contracts your pupils and hurts your night vision. Kudos to Morimoto for designing such amazing projectors. I know a lot of their products are not that great, but those projectors are incredible.

LED comes in a second place mostly because it almost seems I'm seeing in black-and-white at night. Supposedly xenon has even worse CRI than LED, but to me it seems the opposite, perhaps because LED is way cooler at 6000k and washes out warmer colors. Light distribution is also not as even. I can see distracting hot and dark spots.

The Halogen Koitos are amazing... for a halogen, but they are definitely outmatched tech. Mine are running between 12 and 13 volts with standard H4 bulbs. The beam width is not there and the high beam especially is so far behind.

Gotta run a relay harness with H4s, there's no way around it. I think my 944 was at something like 11V at the bulb when I got it, old halogen sealed beams never had a chance. I want to say the kit came with an adjustable voltage regulator as well so I could set it for a true 13.7V at the battery, and the bulbs weren't exactly road legal, even in Europe. Low beams were nice and polite thanks to the ECE pattern, when you flicked on the high beams the car slowed down from the alternator load and sheer mass of photons coming out the front of the car, and flies within 40 feet or so were incinerated in little flashes of light.

At the time I bought this kit I was commuting on an unlit road that wound its way through some wildlife research refuge; I went from feeling like I was outdriving my headlights at the speed limit to suddenly there was no time at which I couldn't see to the next bend with my brights on. I was impressed enough that when I got my first XJ I did the exact same thing to it.

The Truck-Lite LEDs on my second Jeep XJ weren't near as impressive, but installation took a lot less time than H4s. When I installed the H4s on my first one I also had to add a relay behind the driver's headlight to make the fog light circuit work correctly because the fog lights relied on grounding a relay through the high beam circuit to work, and with a relay harness it'd act weird (I want to say the high beams would latch on, but I don't remember now). LEDs worked fine, I guess there was enough of a ground path to allow the fog light circuit to work. Although now that I think about it, my CURRENT XJ has some Amazon special LEDs and I do recall one morning seeing that my headlights were glowing dimly... maybe I'd bumped the fog light switch while working on stuff (I don't actually have fog lights on this one) it doesn't bother me though because 99% of the time I'd have my low beams on with fogs anyway. I think the factory wiring runs a relay using the parking light circuit on one side of the coil and high beam filament on the other, so they can be on with parking lights or low beams but not high beams.
 
Blame the US government for glaringly bright headlights. My car has 96 individually controllable LEDs with diffraction grating and motorized lenses. It can selectively turn off individual pixels to prevent blinding oncoming drivers and pedestrians.... BUT... the US government forbids those advanced features be enabled.

Some 1960s law says you can only have a high beam and low beam. Both are based on 1960s incandescent sealed-beam bulbs. So now that lighting tech and design has come up with highly-focused point-source headlights, the government is stuck in 1960s. and the clipboard warriors won't budge. Trust me, I tried.
I mean, we could also go a bit more low-tech and do as the Germans do. They've had headlights designed to not blind oncoming traffic - while maintaining visibility at very high speeds - for decades. You get a lot of light, because it's all going on the road where it's needed, and it keeps it out of the eyes of oncoming traffic.

German lighting regulations are awesome, and even apply to bicycle lights (another area in the U.S. FAMOUS for being horrifyingly blinding to oncoming traffic).

I have a Busch & Müller bicycle light that puts out quite a bit of light, and I have lost count of the amount of oncoming cyclists and joggers that have shrieked in anticipation of being blinded, only to go, "Oooooh!" and then shout at me to ask what my light is, why is it so amazing, and where can they get one, haha.

Just normal, simple reflectors with a cutoff on what comes out near the top of the housing.

I'd argue most of the issues in the U.S. are unfortunately a byproduct of the modern culture.

In the U.S., absolutely NO ONE gets their headlights professionally adjusted. The machines to do so are pretty expensive, and most dealers don't even have them. But, if you get a chance to have them actually adjusted, it makes a huge difference. I know this is actually slightly easier to do with modern housings, but - again - no one bothers to get this done. I see cars CONSTANTLY driving around with their lights pointed in really goofy directions.

There's also the idiots using fog lights without fog...seemingly oblivious to the fact that fog lights without fog are absolutely awful about blinding oncoming traffic.

And finally, in the U.S., our cars are intentionally made extra big and tall so they create the psychological effect that people feel they're getting more value for dropping $60-80k on their vehicle. Car companies are well aware that the same exact vehicle, in both a car and a "larger" SUV form, can net a good 30% higher price for the SUV version, as it looks bigger. Trucks and SUVs are the primary source of profits for automakers in the U.S., as it's easy to inflate prices without people getting too upset (obviously, conspicuous consumption plays into this). It's the GIANT BAG of potato chips (full of air), in the automobile form. For taller vehicles, proper orientation of the headlights is EXTRA important.

That means we tend to have a lot more vehicles on the road that really NEED to have their lights aimed properly, yet, do not have them aimed properly, who then turn on their fog lights and brights to compensate, and wonder why everyone is blinded.

As a last thought, the U.S. population is aging, and it's something like you need twice as much light at age 50 to see as someone 25 years old, so it's REALLY EASY to sell expensive cars to older people by putting in lights that blind everyone on the road - so the rugged individualist American consumer can see better.

So yes, the U.S. COULD have better regulations (Germany has them), but I think a lot of the issue is more fundamental to America's "Me First" culture; people do not care if they are blinding others, so long as they perceive they are gaining an advantage (which, unfortunately, is a more recent development in our culture).
 
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I have a Busch & Müller bicycle light that puts out quite a bit of light, and I have lost count of the amount of oncoming cyclists and joggers that have shrieked in anticipation of being blinded, only to go, "Oooooh!" and then shout at me to ask what my light is, why is it so amazing, and where can they get one, haha.

yeah I built a touring bike on an 80s Trek frame something like 15 years ago and used B&M headlamp, taillamp, and a Shimano dynohub. Rode the crap out of that bike, now you make me want to get it back on the road, really probably only needs new handlebar tape and me not being fat and out of shape.

Next to all the blinky strobey bullcrap that people use the B&M lighting was well thought out and just worked. I did have one of those Lowe's LED flashlights and a DealExtreme collimator for a "high beam" but hardly ever used it. I would regularly come home from work and ride ~20 miles in the dark 3-4 days a week.
 
yeah I built a touring bike on an 80s Trek frame something like 15 years ago and used B&M headlamp, taillamp, and a Shimano dynohub. Rode the crap out of that bike, now you make me want to get it back on the road, really probably only needs new handlebar tape and me not being fat and out of shape.

Next to all the blinky strobey bullcrap that people use the B&M lighting was well thought out and just worked. I did have one of those Lowe's LED flashlights and a DealExtreme collimator for a "high beam" but hardly ever used it. I would regularly come home from work and ride ~20 miles in the dark 3-4 days a week.
They actually still make their dynamo lights, too, which is really neat. Those have nearly disappeared in the U.S. in favor of cheap, Chinese lights that just throw light all over in a sloppy way.

You should 100% take that bike out and get back out riding. My joke is always that "bicycling is ten times more fun than you remember - and I know you remember it being the best thing, ever." If it's been a few years, you're going to get out and wonder why in the world you ever stopped, haha.

I'd stopped riding for maybe a decade, got back into it, and have been going strong about a decade, again.
 
Blame the US government for glaringly bright headlights. My car has 96 individually controllable LEDs with diffraction grating and motorized lenses. It can selectively turn off individual pixels to prevent blinding oncoming drivers and pedestrians.... BUT... the US government forbids those advanced features be enabled.

Some 1960s law says you can only have a high beam and low beam. Both are based on 1960s incandescent sealed-beam bulbs. So now that lighting tech and design has come up with highly-focused point-source headlights, the government is stuck in 1960s. and the clipboard warriors won't budge. Trust me, I tried.




Apparently the US now allows adaptive headlights. Some footage showing in action on a rivian r1t. If so, it should be capable of being enabled by your dealer.

I remember seeing some discussion here about 2-3 years ago about NHTSA reviewing the lightong standards to allow adaptive beam headlights, but haven't looked into it recently. I'll have to dig for some more up to date info.
 
Apparently the US now allows adaptive headlights. Some footage showing in action on a rivian r1t. If so, it should be capable of being enabled by your dealer.

I remember seeing some discussion here about 2-3 years ago about NHTSA reviewing the lightong standards to allow adaptive beam headlights, but haven't looked into it recently. I'll have to dig for some more up to date info.

Certain vehicles sold in the US equipped with ADB capable headlamps are designed to ECE/SAE standards and NOT the new US standard, which differs. So while folks have found ways to hack or access the lighting protocols of their lamps and switch on ADB, it technically does not meet the FMVSS standard for ADB.

I'm not aware of any new vehicles currently that have a US compliant ADB system yet.
 
Adaptive or not the 6500K low quality light of LED's sucks. They need to be using 4300K HID's as the source.

I've tested and measured quite a few OEM LED lamps and they average between a 5000-6000K CCT.
 
And I dont even use the automatic high beam option with my headlights.
;)
That did not work safely enough (for my taste)

And am not really happy with the Auto light on/off at all.

Imho anything that gets taken away from drivers make them worse.

Just look at all those ppl driving around with no light (or just front daylight) in situations where full on were already needed.
 

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