Originally posted by Mike K@Dec 11 2005, 02:42 AM
Can you do a little better than that? My "junk" lights outshine most of the newer cars I come up on and have a very wide beam.
I'm just trying to figure out what the benefit of a projector is when compared to a properly working 9007 kit.
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Trying to emulate this color-flickering effect with a solid-state blue or purple bulb is only detrimental to lighting performance, it doesn't fool anyone, but most importantly it endangers other motorists around you. Blue light has what we call a very high diffuse density, which causes it to radiate outwards as opposed to forwards. What results is a wide glow of light outside the beam pattern that is blinding to motorists you share the road with. A blue HID bulb will produce color bleed around the headlight, around the objects it lights up, outside of the beam pattern, and around the cut off line. This is effect is known as "glare", and these illegal and improperly installed HID kits are the reason why HIDs get a bad wrap. As common evidence of glare, observe a traffic light at night in a dimly lit area. There is red light and green light. Red is opposite blue and green is next to blue, thus we can substitute green for blue. If you observe the aura, or glow, of light around a red light and compare it to that of a green light, you'll notice that the green light produces much more glare than red. Blue is even worse. Purple, the worst.
As far as color selection goes, there are two main color temperatures out there: ~4100 kelvin, which is OEM color, and ~6000 kelvin, which is aftermarket color. By the way, the term 'color temperature' does not have any correlation with the property of 'thermal temperature'. I personally do not see any reason for buying anything other than 4100K OEM, but that's me. Some people like blue light and are willing to pay extra money for extra blueness and less brightness---and thus the 6000K market. I'm sure the reason isn't because people like to see everything on the road in bluescale, but because they want their headlights to appear blue to onlookers. The proper way to achieve more blue/violet in your HIDs is to do an OEM projector HID B)