98-00 Hid

98-00 Hid

I've been trying to my homework on this, and I want to get some more thoughts/opinions on this.
I've been wanting to put a 4300K or 6000K HID kit on my 98 for a while now, and I've never bought a kit because I'm nervous about the poor cut-off from the stock headlights. I know rollatuner110 has plug-n-play HID's on his car, but I'm curious to see how it looks with them on. I do a good bit of night driving, so more light is welcome, but I dont' want to look like a dick and be spewing light everywhere. So my big questions come down to:
1. Is it worth the time and money to retrofit (and can someone point me to a good site for that?)?
2. Are the HID's OK with my stock headlights, or can I buy some cutoff shields for them and make it look OK?

Any information is welcome.
Thx guys/gals.

Most HID kits have built in cutoff shields. I've dealt with two kits and they both had good cutoff shields. The kit I have has it. I haven't had any issues with upward glare or blinding. I've driven behind cops and even been pulled over[gay] but no mention of my headlights. For any reason, if the kit doesn't include a built in cutoff shield you can buy the Casper shield for it.
https://www.casperselectronics.com/...Screen=PROD&Product_Code=103016&Category_Code

I originally wanted to retrofit a bi-xenon setup but I honestly didn't want to spend almost a grand to get it done. My bi-xenon plug-n-play is good enough for me. For some retrofit sites:
http://www.theretrofitsource.com/
http://hidtech.com/
I was looking at these for a while. I emailed retrofit source and he quoted me around 6-700.

most HID kits now dont really give off that much glare anymore. if you line up the HID to the stock bulb, they both put out the most amount of light from the same spot on the bulb. I had a projector retrofit done to my 98 headlights, but when I did the 2002 front end swap, i just poped in HID bulbs. I didnt notice any glare from them at all.

If you want the most light output from an HID, go with 4300k bulbs. If youre willing to sacrifice light output for color, go for 6000k. I wouldnt personally go any higher than that though.

You have an H4 bulb though, so youre going to loose your highbeams unless you shell out some extra money for the HIDs that have a halogen bulb built on for the brights.

If you really do alot of night driving, and you can spare the extra money, I would go ahead and do an HID upgrade. When I get my new car, im gunna go all out and upgrade ALL the lights to HIDs. 90% of my driving is done at night, so every little bit of light I can get, helps alot. I had my corolla wired up so when my highbeams were on, the highs, lows, and fog lights were all on at the same time. I could see pretty darn good.

Not unless you shell out a bit more for the bi-xenon kit which has the HID filament mounted on a magnetic solenoid which slides back and forth for both low and high beams. Its the best upgrade on my car ever. I think all non-bi-xenon H4 HID kits come with a halogen high beam. I haven't seen any low beam only H4 kits.

Actually alot of H4 HID kits come with only low beam.


If I had extra money, I'd go retrofit. IMHO, those things are worth every cent. But right now, my 50w 6000k HID kit is fine.

Hmmm... I didn't know that. Learn new things everyday. haha

I personally have 6000k on mine 01. Light output is still good, I can still see alot on the road. But I wouldn't go any higher than that. The more higher you go up the less light output you will have. But right now I am in the process of doing a retrofit. I already have a pair of TSX projector w/ FX45 clear lens w/ also 4300k bulbs sitting in my room. All i need to do this to find some time and put them together.

You should retrofit. Maybe you'll be lucky and maybe you'll get a good kit that doesn't have glare...maybe. Or you could end up being like those people with annoying glare with pseudo-shields that don't keep the light from reflecting off the bottom of your headlight, thus creating a stray shooting beam into the sky. Aside from that, your oem headlights were built for oem bulbs and HID bulbs are a different size than your OEM bulbs which means it may very well reflect differently in your housing...yet another reason to retrofit. Let's not forget the fact that your OEM headlights have what's called a "textured lens" in which case, you'll end up with glare no matter what, even if it's a little bit (a little bit as in those cars that have bright lights but you can't tell if they're naturally that bright or they have their high beams on but either way, it bugs the hell outta you). And don't think your aftermarket projector headlights are ready for HIDs either cuz those have the same issues with stray beams as your OEMs. If you retrofit, you will get a clean cut off, no glare, decent coverage, reliability, and plus, it'll look much cleaner..




Final thoughts: Retrofit or go home..


With retrofitting, you get a clean cut-off with no glare:






Without retrofitting, you'll have the beam centered to a certain point:


No matter what, you're gonna get glare using a PnP kit for your OEMs:



Completely intolerable:


Better hope your glare shields work as good as these...if there's no light hitting the bottom of the housing, the shields are doing their job:

why did my quoted username come up 'address forbidden'?

It doesn't show on my Firefox. Neither does your sig if you have one. It works on IE though. Its strange but other people have my same problem.

I'm running Firefox, and his name and sig show just fine.... :wtf:

Maybe its the server.

do you have me on your ignore list?

i too see | address forbidden | and your sig works using IE

so weird, i wonder why its doing that...

I haven't ignored anybody[chuckle]. At least on purpose.