Got pulled over...for HIDs

[Norm Peterson]

They're adjusted properly from the factory so why mess with them? Not my fault people are used to HIDs.

Your's are factory. That means they are aimed correctly.

Guys - that only means that they are probably somewhere near correctly aimed, with no guarantee that they really are. There is this odd production consideration called 'tolerance' that affects every single thing on your car . . . including the headlamp and fog lamp aim. Kind of why there is an adjustment provision, don't you think?

Or just do a light vinyl tint overlay...

Never ever happen here. It's just plain silly to throw illumination away when proper lamps and a proper aim will fix the real problem. And if you put 100W halogens or brighter HIDs in to compensate, you're right back to where you started (minus the two items with their $ outlay)

EDIT: Also, if you lower your car more in the rear its going to bring the overall angle up so your lights should be re-adjusted to compensate. It's also possible for lights to shift and become out of adjustment over time.

This ↑↑↑.

This also applies when you install nearly all of the lowering spring kits. Half an inch more rear drop = headlight cutoff goes up a little over a foot at 200' ahead. That's more than enough to make the difference between getting flashed and not.

Yes, 2013 HIDs are more bright than an average vehicle headlight but they still comply with regulations. Otherwise they wouldn't be on the car. So it comes down to people being over sensitive.

Or it could be from people in cars that sit a little lower than average, or whose drivers sit shorter than average, or who with age have had their vision become more sensitive to and slower to recover from glare even if it isn't directly aimed into their eyes. Once in a while maybe more than one of those conditions is present.

Does nobody remember the damn drivers Ed book? Or if your my age the driving class? They taught you not to stare at lights but to look at the edge of the road! Works every time for me and lights really fuck with my eyes

Perhaps I'm showing my age, but when we were kids younger than driving age we all knew enough to look away from ALL lights in order to preserve our night vision.

Well I'll be damned! I've had the grille of probably 5 or 6 times since I bought the car and never noticed that. Thats the first thing I'm gonna do. But the beam pattern is so wide I don't know if that will actually make much of a difference.

The adjustment is for beam height, not width. The higher you pull the beams up, the further out the fog light pattern will reach (eventually it'll get too high). Lowering the beam aim will bring the pattern in closer.



Just a miscellaneous closing thought - try staggering the right and left side aims, with the right side aimed a little higher than the left. This tends to keep any dark patches in the two lights' patterns from lining up, and you get an overall more uniformly lit pattern that actually makes things better without doing anything else. I've been doing this, along with the basic "garage door aiming" procedure where you light 'em up and back away from the door. You want the pattern to drop ever so slightly as you do back away from the door (or rise slightly as you approach it). Functional aiming. FWIW, it's an extremely rare occasion for other drivers to flash their high beams at me (several whole months at a time go by without it happening, and I normally run with the fogs on for close-in "fill" lighting).

You can probably do the same staggered aiming thing with the fogs, something that I may try now that I realize that the fogs apparently have that adjustment.


Norm

 

[drive_55_not]

would you flash me?

One of the guys I work with got fed up with tailgaters, he put a light bar on the back of his truck to light em' up n' make em' back off. He sez it's pretty funny to see the front of their car dip n' swerve as they slam on the brakes.


As far as the headlight wars go,, I've noticed over the past couple,, and the last year especially,, the number of people cruzing down the interstate with their high beams on has jumped ... Probably 1/3rd of the vehicles have obnoxiously bright lights anymore,, blinding traffic (on BOTH sides of the road) for 2+miles in front of them.

I switched to Silverstar Ultra's to get me on semi-equal footing but they aren't anywhere near as bright as some of the new HID's.


.

 

[Torched S197]

Norm, that's what I'm saying. It's common sense to not stare directly at the oncoming lights. But to reiterate it, the driver Ed book was a good example

 

[Norm Peterson]

Common sense to you and me and maybe most of the others here, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of non-enthusiast drivers are no smarter than deer when it comes to this.

Us kids wouldn't even look at street lights or house lights if we could possible avoid doing so.


Norm

 

[randys06v6]

Shit, i roll around with AALLLL my lights on and never been pulled lol. 6k HIDs top and bottom along with PIAA fogs and LED side markers and switchbacks lol. And I live literally next to the beehive state trooper station. I'm always blinding them lol.

 

[jsimmonstx]

Adjust them. Each light has an adjuster screw on it.

 

[cavero]

Shit, i roll around with AALLLL my lights on and never been pulled lol. 6k HIDs top and bottom along with PIAA fogs and LED side markers and switchbacks lol. And I live literally next to the beehive state trooper station. I'm always blinding them lol.

Somehow...I expected more light

 

[DDTCM]

Heck, I drive a Bullitt. Never had fogs before.

Then how do you explain that oddly placed single fog light in your sig pic?? Hmmmmm?

 

[cavero]

Back on incandescents...for now

I decided to give Silver Star Ultra bulbs a shot. They didn't have them in 9145, so I just got Ultras for the headlights. The fogs are back at the plain-Jane Silver Stars I had before I got the HID's (as my classic bike has taught me -- never throw anything away if it still works, you might use it again, and you've got the room).

Here's a comparison for the low beams (pic dimmed down so you can see a difference)

kinda surprising, about the same brightness.

And high beams:

You can really see a difference between the HIDs which just retract the bulb a little bit to shift the light up and a true hi-beam where it lights a second filament. My wife said that all she could tell from the HID's was that it changed but couldn't tell which was high beam.


I'm still not decided on what I'm going to long term. I really like the pure white (yes, they look blue in the pics but only start off that way when they're cold), modern look of the HIDs compared against the yellow incandescent bulbs. So for now, I'm not ripping out the ballasts just yet. I still might do a projector retrofit, so I can tear them out when I do that (assuming the ballasts aren't compatible).

So I zip-tied all the wiring securely away and sealed all the connectors with electrical tape (worked for 4 years on the original LH headlight plug since the HIDs didn't use it)

I went for a test drive tonight, sorry no side-by-side pics. Its too damn cold out to switch between lights. And I gotta give it to the Silver Star Ultras. They definitely compare well the HID's, not only brightness but they really do focus the light better. AND OH DAAAMN ITS NICE TO HAVE REAL HIGH BEAMS AGAIN.

Again, not done with this but at least this will do for a while. At least until I figure out a better HID setup

Fog lights...eh. The HIDs were definitely better.