[Mk2] [Turbo] Whats involved in upgrading to XEON headlamps?

[dellams]

I have been thinking about this for a while, wanted to check with you guys whats involved and roughly how much am I looking at?

Also, best place to get them from so I can gurantee they will work fine with my rev3 tubby.

Cheers.

[toxo]

I think you probably mean Xenon headlamps (Xeon is an old type of computer processor). And I suspect you probably mean High Intensity Discharge lamps (most car headlights have a small amount of Xenon in them). You'll need an H4 HID kit which consists of replacement bulb units and 2 'ballast' units which you'll need to fit in the frunk somewhere. You'll need to pick a colour temperature (measured in 'k' or kelvin). Nearer to 3000k is yellower and nearer to 8000k is blue/purple (like Evo headlights), 4150k is white. There are also 2 different kinds of H4 bulbs, the kind that still use a normal bulb for high beam and the kind that moves the HID bulb higher up for high beam.

Also you need to be aware that it's an offence to fit them to cars that were never designed to have them.

[Babboon]

Toxo has pretty much covered it all however I would add a little from my own experience.

There are 3 types of HID kit out there :

Dipped beam only
HID dipped / Halogen main beam (this is the type I have and the main beam is useless)
HID Hi / Low (HID dipped & main)

Be careful what you buy as it could be a waste of cash / disappointment.

The HIDs work best with a proper projector type lens, however I've not heard of many projector upgrade lens which a CE approved for use in the UK. I've got raybrig lens on mine which give a reasonable effect, some other local 2 owners still use the standard lenses with theirs.

[toxo]

I forgot bulb type!

There are 2 commonly available bulb types: D2S and D2R. D2S is for projector headlamp assemblies (When you look at the headlight you just see a round lens) and D2R is for reflector headlamps (like the MK2 MR2, the light unit is larger and involves a large silver reflective bit).

[sjm1984]

I have been thinking about using HID's but a mate reccommended halfords super bright lamps that they sell

although £18 per bulb i have noticed the difference and i dont even need the front fogs to improved the (candle lamp) OEM lamps

[vinnyninja]

I have been thinking about using HID's but a mate reccommended halfords super bright lamps that they sell

although £18 per bulb i have noticed the difference and i dont even need the front fogs to improved the (candle lamp) OEM lamps

i got a set of these with standard lenzes made a 100% improvement but still laking the punch of HID's I mean come on even my Mrs Aunte has HID's on her Mazda ....the only problem is if you dont get a frendly MOT garage ...you just gotta switch um back over evry year

[vinnyninja]

I have been thinking about using HID's but a mate reccommended halfords super bright lamps that they sell

although £18 per bulb i have noticed the difference and i dont even need the front fogs to improved the (candle lamp) OEM lamps

i got a set of these with standard lenzes made a 100% improvement but still laking the punch of HID's I mean come on even my Mrs Aunte has HID's on her Mazda ....the only problem is if you dont get a frendly MOT garage ...you just gotta switch um back over evry year

[slipping clutch]

I was thinking of doing the hid upgrade myself but then read on another thread of people having "pattern" problems at MOT time when useing ray brig lenses (which I have fitted) any one else heard of this?

[toxo]

The info below may be wrong but I've had this problem with my car. I have a very strict MOT tester and my Raybrig lenses don't appear to be 'E' marked. They produce a very odd beam pattern which strictly speaking isn't legal. They did this with HIDs fitted, so I swapped back to the original (Raybrig) bulbs and of course the beam pattern was still wrong. In the end I got around it by pointing out that he SVA'd the car with them on no problem...