I bought a brand new pair of Genuine Ford headlights for my ERST as a special treat to put my new HID's into. However, I've been using them since I got the car on the road a few weeks back and I have to say, they are shit.

I bought a quad-ballast 4300k kit. OK, I bought it from Ebay, but from a reputable seller, but I am very disappointed in the results. They have twin filament bulbs and a ballast to switch each filament, I thought this was the better way to do it.

I've tried to set them up on a proper headlight aligner, but they don't give off anything that resembles a beam 'pattern' and so cannot really be set up properly. Also, it's difficult to distinguish which is high beam and which is dipped beam.

WTF is that all about? Am I expecting too much? I honestly thought that these would mark the end of shite headlights for me, but so far, I wish I could have my old ones back, but sadly I chopped all the original wiring out.

 

I'm using some, 5 or 6000k (cant remember as ive had them for over a year). Single bulb but in a motorised casing (clicks back and forth for dipped/full) and i set it all up by eye and then had it checked on the MOT and it was spot on! I'd never go back to standard bulbs as they are fantastic! Don't know if the 4300k is the problem or not?

 

fitted a set on my mates escort, they wernt the cheap ones, and they are superb,smit on here has them on his cossy, if he sees this hopefully he will put the pics u took up!

 

Just realised the above doesn't really help what so ever

 

Don't you need an optical lense of somesort for the HIDs to align properly?

 

C - Think you got too lower K... I think 5300k is the brightest u can get... After that they turn blue/green/voilet etc...Beam wise i had to turn the orignal beam down quite a way as i haven't got a reflector in my headlight lense.... I set mine up from a distance into a MOT centre wall (they had all the limits on show on the wall)

I've got 8000k on mine and seriously i wouldn't change them if u paid me. Maybe you've gove got too lower brightness???

Few pictures..

 

have had quite a few cars in for test and failed them due to not having a beam pattern

 

I had them on two of my old cars, a focus and a mondeo. I thought they were shit too.

They had a bit of a beam pattern on the focus, however in the mondeo there was nothing at all. They are too high intensity for a headlamp to cope with.

Got factory xenons on my new focus now and they are excellent, you can't even compare them to an aftermarket kit!

 

Mark, they look good and seem to perform good going off them pics.

 

I thought the lower the kelvin rating, the brighter and whiter the light? I didn't want them to be blue atall.

I'm beginning to think that the quad ballast thing was a bad idea, despite it being 30-40% more expensive than a 2 ballast kit.

 

i think my kit was 6000k, and had the solenoid on the back of the bulb, which moves the bulb to give you main beam,

tbh in the saff they were fookin brill, way better than std, ive still got the kit, which is going in the wifes focus soon

 

focus has h7 bulbs and a saph has H4 so wont work

dont understand the quad balast thing, ive sold a fair few kits,, though they wont work on headlamps with reflectors in the glass as it scatters the beam pattern all over the place,,,,, it also blinds people onthe other side of the motorway too due to the shite beam scatter

 

ps: you shouldnt have to butcher any wiring to fit the kit, the balasts are ment to plug directly into the oem plug and act as a extension , as said ive sold loads of these kits

 

So it is the bulb design with the quad ballast kit that is causing the problem? So, a normal twin ballast kit will be fine then?

Can someone recommend me a kit please?

 

you should have bought them from nathan, i sent you a link quite some time ago. he runs xenons online, his kits are ace but cheaper than anyone else i know.

 

i bought a 6k kit from him, twin ballast packs they were hi-low kit and work superb. i even managed to getb it through the mot with them fitted.
speak to nathan. tell him mar_k sent you and he will sort you out nicely. he will also give you good advice. i have a direct phone number for him if you want? pm me
http://www.xenonsonline.com/magento/
this is his site. but like i said i have a number for him.

charli luciano has a kit from him
so does big tony rs and a few others
all very impressed with the kit

 

the ones that eurocarparts sell are the same as the ones on ebay,,,, the ones with the " new thinner balasts" but got different names on the box,,,, i know this as i also seem to sell alot of the wanky H4 bulbs with halogen hi beams that over heat,,,,,,ive sold em to people who bought the kits on ebay and couldnt get the bulbs,, we sell the bulbs for 55 quid for a pair or the kits for 110 quid, the older style balasts had a high failure issue hence the redesign,,,,, people are trying to sell em as a different kit

christian pop into a local eurocarparts and get em to order in a kit for youand have a look, as said the BEST H4 kit has the motorised bulb, looks a little like the Philips D2R hid bulb most cars come with but has the H4 fitting to fit the headlamp

they wont work that well with your lenses though compared to a car with projectors as thats what scatters the beam pattern,,,,, though it should be brighter than before anyway just blinding people on the motorways or comming towards you

 

I have the same ones in my Escort, i very rarely use main beam now...... theres no need to!!

 

I have the H4-4 kit, with motorised deflector that moves on bulb to create dip and main.
Personall I think they are shite, there is so much height difference between dip and main beam that you can't get a decent compromise, sure they are VERY bright, but the light doesn't get to where it needs to be.
All this crap spoken about it won't work without projector lights is just that crap, a reflector only bounces an point of light, so if the point of light is created in the right place it will still be in the right place, angle of incidence = angle of projection(in this case).
The problem occurs due to relector lights not being the best in the first place and having scattered light, not normally bright enough to be a problem, but make all the light including scattered ligth 3 times as bright and you have problems.
Just by chance when I fitted a kit to a astra, I needed to clean out inside one headlight as bulbs had exploded in there, running@16V+, so was nice and clean, the other light has 15 years worth of grime and this is seen in the pattern, as it is fuzzy anbd dazzling to others, whereas the clean one isn't.
They do seem to be overly bad if the inside of the glass is at all dusty/grubby.
For my money I'm going back to Philips Extreme, as I need both a dip and main, as do a lot of night driving, also can go back to my permanent dip staying on even on main beam, makes a massive difference.
tabetha

 

C, 4300k is the best - it is the same as OEM. My MOT guy checked them with his optical lens telescope thing and said the beam pattern wasn't that bad. The fundamental problem is that HID's really need a projector type fitting/bulb rather than a reflector. Ever see those cars that seem to flash a tinge of blue/colour - they are projector bulbs and this happens even without HID.

Focus uses H7 bulbs with projectors so much better. I have the motorised kit, and they are very good on DIP, but they don't really move much for main. You can get twin filament type where the main is still a halogen - these may be better.

A lot of people are now starting to retro fit projectors in their std head lights. Eg, heat up the head light in the oven to take the glass off, then fit the projectors out of a more modern headlight. Quite involved, but can give very good results. The easier option is to goto a quad light kit, these uses std 5 or 7in lamps so you can get a projector version pretty easily.

Rick

 

I agree - a decent set of halogen bulbs will be far better than an aftermarket HID kit

 

i got the kit that is listed above, the one that charlie and tony have and it's brilliant at night

it really is that different

the only thing i've found is that you need to have it on for a minute or so to get the best light from it as it gets brighter and brighter when you first switch it on

it makes no compariable difference during the day though with teh sunlight so you really do need to be testing this srot of stuff in the proper dark