HID's

>Tfw all the cops have cars running lights around 8000k
>Aside from a few memesters, can generally tell when a cop is around before visually confirming by other reflectors/paint by headlight

My 4500k Morimoto XB35s came in, but I can't even install them because my Miata's out having paint work done. Can't wait to get rid of these shitty 6500k lights that I've had for the past few years.

My dad was telling me even back in the 50's-60's cop cars had brighter lights than everyone else and were easy to spot.

I usually throw my high beams at whoever's using bright hid light on the oncoming lane

>Natural daylight is 6500k or so.
Where the fuck did you get that? AFAIK 4300-5000 is closer to natural daylight.
Up until recently when OEM headlights became a lot better, the cops in my area used to use 140/100W globes instead of the 60/55W factory cars typically used.

Usually morning sun is about 4000-5000, mid day is 5000-6000 and overcast is 6000+.

I would call about 4500-5000 natural white.

Which he obviously isn't, because the light is diffusing everywhere.

Most OEM HIDs are 4200-4500.

Every none gritter spec car has had HIDs or lasers from the factory for over a decade now.

whenever someone does this I just turn my lightbar on and blind them even more. Sometimes they beep at me.

Is it true that slightly yellowish headlights are ideal for visibility?

Yes, yellow bulbs have the longest reach.

That's why some people install cool temp (like 6000k or 7000k) hids on their main beams and then install yellow hids in their fogs.

>have the longest reach
Forgot about the "in rain/fog" part.

easier on your eyes too

I like 3000 k best because reasons
but in terms of being able to see 5000 k looks about right
with temperatures below a bit dim and temperatures above just looking strange

6000k is probably the true white.

Pic related are halogen bulbs, DRLs are running at 7000k and main beams at 4300k.

So many cars come stock with them now I don't see how anyone can complain.

4300k is getting into halogen types but I'm ok with that having grew up with tungsten bulbs and low pressure sodium street lamps
there are some nice led types available now as drop in replacements
much warmer and with less flickering than early led implementations

IIRC, 4300k is the oem temperature for HIDs.

I've been searching for good quality cree can-bus leds for my DRLs. They're expensive as fuck tho.
About 25€ each.

Yes, blinding other drivers does make you a douchebag. Have you no low-light vision? If so, you shouldn't be driving at night...

main problem with led is finding the right color and keeping large array cool
and forward voltage requirement with no real current smoothing means the connections and wiring have to be very stable to avoid flickering

Wheres yellow?

Yes

I dont even care on cars its when bro truck faggots have that shit and come up behind you

I had stock xenons which I know are 4300k for the longest time. I recently bought osram cbi 5500k bulbs. I'm only about halfway through the "warm up" process but so far they are infinitely better than oem. They say 4300k is the optimal level for visibility, but I disagree. 4300k is basically yellowish white. 5000k-6000k is the best white

Yes. If you need something brighter turn your brights on. Low beams are more for marking the car for other drivers, not to be used as flood lights Also unless you're in the sticks or on the interstate 90% of main roads are going to be lit anyway.

It may not be as much of a big deal for others but it's still a big deal for you. I reiterate — If you have anything but factory lighting you are almost certainly a jackass and retarded.

No, it is not.

That's what I use to make my lights seem older.

I thought bluer was better?

Blue is bad, but then so are most of the things suggested in this thread.

No.

You don't NEED projectors, just good housings.

8000k is blue. Cops don't have blue headlights, jackass.

8000k is color temperature. It's dimmer than 4300k when using HIDs. They didn't have HIDs back then and they damn sure were not using blue halogens.

4300k is pure white.

Better than white in good conditions? No.
Better than white in rain/fog? Yes.
Better than blue? Yes, always.

Blue is absolutely terrible for headlights.

Around 3000-4300k are all equal as far as lumen output. Lumen output starts to fall off after 4300k though.

Again, 4300k is pure white.

Drop in LEDs are garbage for headlights. They completely throw off the beam pattern.

Blue is universally bad. White HIDs with projectors often create a thin blue line along the cutoff line which is visible when approaching said car. People started to associate this slight blue glare from the lights as looking "modern", so they just slap blue HIDs in their car to recreate the look since they don't understand it.

Yes. I instantly hate anyone who has aftermarket HIDs.

>8000k is blue. Cops don't have blue headlights, jackass.
they definitely look blue m8. I'm just eyeballing it from that photo but its plausible for it to be 6000k too. The point being I can now tell if a cop is approaching from like a mile out now

fuck you

I hope someone brake checks you

There's several reasons they would not be blue.
Blue HIDs produce less light than white HIDs.
Blue light kills your night vision.
Blue light creates more glare.
Human eyes are garbage at picking up contrast in blue light.
Blue headlights are illegal on multiple federal levels.

There's literally no advantage to blue headlights. None at all. There are however a ton of cons. There's no reason for cops to run them.
It's not like window tint where there are real world advantages and it's only state regulated.

if you want to argue with my eyes m8 that's fine but I'll take a pic for you if you really want me to risk getting pulled over

I hope somebody stops them at night, walks up to their car, smashes/shoots out the lights, and just walks off and drives away.
And user's such a beta he won't do a thing.

If they're equipped with projectors, you're probably seeing the thin blue line above the cutoff. The light itself isn't blue and it's not specific to police cars or law enforcement use.

uh no?

They're blinding becuase dumbasses don't readjust the headlights when they install them.

Are people driving with their brights on nowadays or am I just overly sensitive to light?

Not even joking, when people get behind me with super bright headlights, I let go of my accelerator until they go around me.

I live in Dallas, if anyone from around here can confirm or deny.

No, they're blinding because they have the wrong light source in them. You absolutely cannot use one source of light source in a lamp that was designed for another type. And that's just for properly engineered lamps. All of the knockoff garbage people put on their cars doesn't work in the first place.

probably just niggers on donks.

Dealerships are lazy shits and not aiming the headlights on the cars when they get them. Some designs also have excessive glare, but it's not to the level you're seeing when they are aimed correctly.

>TFW my car came with factory hid's and I don't have this problem.

>TFW you're making shit up.

idk man, sometimes when people go by I literally cant see anything at all not even the white line on the right side of the road. I think cars come with brighter headlights now

>TFW my car came with factory hid's and I don't have this problem
Are you retarded?

The point is jackass they make full kits that convert it fully.

People arent putting ballast and xenons into stock housings.

if i deem your headlights as 'too bright' im going to get behind you and sit with my high beams on until you pull off onto the nearest exit
simple as that

>this mentality
>hurr fuck you i dont like ur headlights so im gonn a blind you and put us both in danger

keep mouth breathing

The type of light source does not matter. What matters is how light is distributed from the light source. HIDs and halogens distribute light nearly identically.

Yes, people drive around with their high beams on. Pay attention to which light is on if you're curious. Inner lights are highs, outer lows. I've seen a ton of people driving around with high beams on. For some people it's their (rather shitty) solution to having shit headlights or a low beam bulb out.

Others simply have headlights that are out of adjustment. Pay attention to the height of the cutoff line relative to headlight height and you'll see this too is likely far more common than you're assuming.

Then there's people that rub overly bright bulbs in shit housings. Now before you go on about the obvious shit Chinese housings, even factory housings can be shit. A lot of 90s and older halogen headlight housings are poorly designed by today's standards and simply have poor control over the light. ANY bulb upgrade in these housings can blind other drivers, be it an HIR swap, aftermarket high wattage halogen, or the one that takes the blame for all of them, the HID swap.

On the other hand if you have a good halogen housing that doesn't throw too much light above the cutoff line, then an HID swap is perfectly fine so long as you use a decent quality HID bulb with the correct focal point. This can be achieved even with the $10/pr ebay HID bulbs, though they do have poor quality control so it's a bit hit or miss. The assumption that reflector based housings are for halogens and projector based housings are for HIDs is a false one. The reason HIDs and reflectors go together in the OEMs so often is that they are technologies that gained popularity around the same time and both costed more than the technology being replaced. There were however a few cars that came equipped from the factory with HIDs in reflector based housings.

well hey they dont give a shit about my safety and im already at risk of crashing because of them, might as well take them with me

The light source that DOES fuck up your beam pattern is drop in LEDs. This is because LEDs distribute light very differently than the way halogens and HIDs do. LEDs absolutely require optics specifically designed for them in anything but the most basic spot or flood beam.

Ironically, the vast majority of people bashing HIDs for creating too much foreground lighting, hurting distance lighting, and blinding other drivers often gladly support these drop in LEDs.

They produce less light than HIDs at a significantly higher price and ruin the beam pattern. The only pro is that they don't have a warm up period, but if your headlights are configured correctly a short warm up period is of no consequence.

Yes, people are putting arc discharge sources in, say, incandescent luminaires. That's done all the time, unfortunately.
>The type of light source does not matter.
Yes, they absolutely do matter. The shape of the source is wildly different between say, an LED, arc, and incandescent.

Please stop this ignorance.

>The shape of the source is wildly different between say, an LED, arc, and incandescent.
See my above two posts. HID and halogen are two DIFFERENT light sources. That does not matter. What DOES matter is that they distribute light nearly identically. As such, a direct swap is not going to kill the beam pattern, as shown in the picture in my second to last post.

On the other hand LED distributes light very differently. As such, it will fuck up the beam pattern, as shown in the picture in my last post.

Here I'll provide another example of an HID swap. It is brighter, but the shape of the pattern and distribution of light as a percentage is unchanged as far as the human eye is concerned.

And another example of a drop in LED swap.

As you can see, all the issues that people complain about with HID swaps are present in LED swaps but not at all present in the HID swaps they're accredited to.

Dunning Kruger in effect here.

If you knew enough to accurately recognize it in this case, then you'd have a much better counterpoint.

Why argue with people who think they know everything already?

Yes. All 4 headlights have them. 50 watt on my low beam projectors with high beam solenoid shroud and my high beams are 50 watt also. 5000k and they light up the fucking road big time. I can see for over a mile with my high beams on.

If you knew any better, you could defend your point.

I've defended mine with multiple examples, you've shown none.

Look at it this way. If someone knew absolutely nothing about headlights and wanted to discredit me, they would do exactly what you are doing now because it's all they can do.

If someone knew far more than I and wanted to discredit me, then they should easily be able to directly disprove any points they do not agree with.

When someone takes the first stance, the one of knowing absolutely nothing and yet tries to imply that they're far more knowledgeable than the others present in the discussion, why would anyone believe them? That's from an outside perspective.

Now from our perspective.
If you're not willing to consider and debate points you do not agree with, why should I trust that you were willing to accept new ideas when doing the research that led you to your current knowledge?
If you're willing to reply to argue against me, why are you not willing to reply to argue against my points?
If you're not willing to share your knowledge, why should I trust you took the time to attain it in the first place? If your only goal was to go to Veeky Forums and tell people they're wrong with no counterargument, you don't actually need to know anything in order to do that.

It just doesn't add up.

Ahh worthless leds. Can't see shit down road with those fucking things. People buy em here cause they are the latest ricer fagboy fad and they blind the fuck out of you. And then they wonder why they keep getting tickets. Fucking idiots.

...

have you considered that people don't want to waste their time arguing with people on Veeky Forums?

Then why are you on Veeky Forums?

>Yes, people are putting arc discharge sources in, say, incandescent luminaires. That's done all the time, unfortunately.
Well if they are then im suprised they last a week as many setup burn much hotter than incandescents

>If you knew any better, you could defend your point.
I absolutely could defend my point. The reason I'm not is:
1. That would take time that I don't feel like spending on this.
2. I know who you are. I've argued with you about this once before, wasted time finding sources for you, and here you are none the wiser.

The only thing I will say is for people to not believe you and, if they want to understand vehicle lighting better, they should go read some technical papers on it.

But that's exactly what you're doing anyway.
You're arguing that I'm wrong, and yet you absolutely refuse to give even the smallest hint as to why you think I'm wrong.

Logically the only reason for you to withhold such information is that you do not posses it. If you did posses that information, you'd be proudly smearing it all over the thread right now. Instead you continue to waste your time making excuses as to why you can't defend your point.

I see it all the time. You have no fucking clue about anything being discussed but you're in the mood to argue. So you carefully avoid making any point that's actually relevant to the discussion or can be disproved. Just take it to a different thread. You're not fooling anyone here.

>1. That would take time that I don't feel like spending on this.
If you honestly did not feel like spending time on this, you would not still be replying. The mere fact that you're replying negates the excuse you're using for not defending your point.

even a projector doesn't auto level as required by law pleb.

OEM or fuck off.

You already have projector housings, however your cut off is aboslute trash. My 10 year old BMW has a better beam pattern.

Laws don't require autolevel...

It fucks up the vision of the person in the oncoming lane.
Has to do with the eyes ability to "reset" from yellow light easier than blue.

Go ahead and be a dick and come to my town. I'll make sure you get that 72 hours in a cell with Tyrone....

Auto-leveling is required by the US DOT on all HID low beams, and has been...since they were first approved.

Sorry it is actually the NHTSA. And they ruled that no aftermarket kit is legal, period. All OEM kits must have auto level. So yes, no auto level, not legal.

Okay looking into it more, auto level isn't "required" per-se but there is no way any OEM can pass the aimability tests without them so they are de-facto required. Any aftermarket headlight kit is illegal, and it is illegal for a shop to even swap in OEM HID headlights under federal law.

Okay...European law requires auto self-leveling per ECE code. In the US there is no auo self-leveling requirement but ALL HID conversions are illegal, period.

I'm not sure if any USDM mfg makes a car without self leveling, so even then it would only be legal if you yourself put a USDM HID projector housing in your car, personally. For a shop to do it, it even with OEM parts, is against federal law.

I mean you won't get caught, but just like not having cats, its technically illegal.

*although it may be legal for you to swap an OEM HID headlight in to your car, it is illegal for a shop to do so for you. Just as a shop is banned from removing your cat.

anything above 4300 makes you a doucebag.

>And they ruled that no aftermarket kit is legal, period.
Not entirely true, and not because it completely fucks the beam pattern.

They tested two shitty cut lens housings, neither of which had anything resembling a cutoff line. Both showed poor optics and light control even with factory equipped bulbs. With HIDs, a few points read at over the set maximum. Higher wattage halogens also would have failed in these housings.

This did not outright outlaw them. An HID bulb in a better housing can still easily meet the requirements and as such will be legal if tested.

It's only illegal for a shop to do it because HIDs use different bases. It's technically illegal for them to change to any housing that uses a different bulb base than factory, even if they're both halogen. That law has nothing to do with HIDs.

Although I don't recall if it's per vehicle or per model. If it's per model it should be legal for them to swap to complete HID housing from the same model.

>Natural daylight is 6500k or so.
Daylight balanced bulbs are 5000K to 5500K. They'll generally say "daylight balanced" or something similar on the package.

It should be noted that direct sunlight and ambient daylight are two different color temperatures. Anything labeled daylight could be either one or anywhere in between and still be accurately labeled. Daylight is just a buzzword.

>If it's per model it should be legal for them to swap to complete HID housing from the same model.
To the best of my knowledge they did...but you know its like cats.
>An HID bulb in a better housing can still easily meet the requirements and as such will be legal if tested.
which none are. I mean 10 years ago the DOT recalled every aftermarket altezza tail ever made and decided "for off road use only" was not a liable defense to sell such products.

> pro-tip from someone involved in the manufacturing of said lamps

There is no benefit going over 5000K. 4300k is the ideal. Higher temp, less lumens. Less Lumens, less ilumination.

Dailight is 4200 to 4300.

They tested two housings with HIDs and assumed HIDs generally illegal. I may have missed it but I've seen no law enacting a blanket ban on them resulting from those findings. Unless you're running HIDs in one of the two housings tested, there's not enough evidence for them to have any reasonable suspicion. And Unless you're running blue HIDs, they're not going to know for sure you're running HIDs in those housings in the first place. But if you're running blue HIDs, you're already breaking FMVSS on two levels so it doesn't really matter if you're breaking a third. The charge for impersonating an officer is going to be worse than your headlight pattern being out of spec.

Can you please talk to someone in marketing and tell them to fix all the color charts and stop advertising 4300k as yellow?

>Because replaceable light sources are, by regulation, designed to be non-interchangeable, it would not be possible for an HID headlamp conversion set to meet the standard�s photometry requirements for an original equipment headlamp system using a halogen light source, so the replacement lamps could not be sold for this purpose. Furthermore, a headlamp dealer or motor vehicle repair business could not remove the original halogen headlamps and install HID replacement headlamps without violating 49 U.S.C. 30122. That section prohibits manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and motor vehicle repair businesses from making inoperative equipment installed in accordance with a Federal motor vehicle safety standard. We cannot comment on the specific replacement lighting products that you mentioned because we do not have sufficient information on them.

Same bullshit as the ATF. Its not legal but you wont get caught.

They aren't advertised as yellow.

Fuccbois and plebs only think the higher temp lamps are what "premium" brands use, when in reality they just use more fancy housings and mirrors to produce a clearer light.

This is something that won't simply get away. People are way to stupid, and I honestly don't understand why there haven't (yet) been more laws to prevent the asshats from using hids on halogen housings and/or above a certain temp.

Sometimes I just wish leds came for good or that I could simply break all the shit conversions I see.

>it would not be possible for an HID headlamp conversion set to meet the standard�s photometry requirements for an original equipment headlamp system using a halogen light source
It is quite possible. I really wish they'd conduct this test again with modern headlight housings.