Did you do HID kit drop ins in OEM halogen projectors? What were your findings with the HIDs? Just curious. And which halogen projectors?
You’d think projectors would stop any glare but it seems there’s like this big overspill of stray light that floods and radiates out towards the road and everything in front of you. Even if the cutoff is seemingly there.
I already explained this in post #35 but #44 did a better job of it.
Factory bi-halogen projectors in our 2014 Ram that likely have pretty degraded bowls, and single halogen projectors in a 2012 Mazda, TYC replacements that are pretty new (deer strike.) The Ram will soon get a set of true HID projectors installed in the housings but this will be an issue at annual inspection time. The Mazda is a commuter and probably not worth the hassle unless I need a project. It'll probably return to H9 bulbs in the low beam position.
Understand that drop-in HID bulbs are really rebased bulbs - not regulated, not standardized. Sticking bulbs in places where they don't belong. The $10 amazon sets are going to yield different results than the $50 ones, but they're still a kludge. The $50 kits are going to be very different than a $200 setup and still not as good as having the correct projector. That said, in theory, if the arc is in the same place and dimensionally the same as the filament, there's no "pattern" difference in doing an HID than a hot halogen or standard OE LL halogen. In theory.
But you know how you adjust the EQ on your stereo to sound good and then you turn it up and it sounds really harsh? You have to rebalance. You can't just turn up the volume 5x and get 5x better results.
Like I posted previously, yes, the HID kits are undeniably brighter. Yes, the HID is bright enough to overcome the degraded bowls in the ram and will likely blast them with enough UV energy to ensure they go downhill fast from here. The real problem in both vehicles is too much foreground light.
The OE projectors are designed to take the limited output of the halogen, use enough of it to give you adequate foreground for parking lots, LEAK SOME ABOVE THE CUTOFF so you can perceive trees, read signs, etc, and have enough in the horizontal to turn and perceive peripheral motion. Then they use the remainder of their lumens to illuminate at distance.
With HID projectors, the budgeting is entirely different because the output is not limited. They throw most of their output at the cutoff (distance) and avoid over illuminating the foreground.
With HID in my OE halogen projectors, yes there's more light, but there's SO MUCH foreground that it doesn't translate to better distance vision the way it would with proper balance. If I hold my arm up to cover the foreground, the distance rendering with additional output is great. But with that additional foreground, my brain closes my pupils and distance doesn't proportionately benefit. There's also the negative that the uplight leakage (above the cutoff) is more intense for oncoming traffic.
I think the gap in your perception (and many) is that the cutoff is a hard cutoff and anything you do below it is your business. Bottom line, the cutoff isn't absolute. When you turn up the volume, oncoming traffic experiences that too. Even a sharp cutoff isn't a 100% brick wall spatial filter. There is useful, LIMITED light output above the cutoff for good reason but it doesn't need to be amplified. Frosty/chipped/crazed lenses further worsen it by diffusing the pattern.
This is why a hot halogen is ideal (compared to drop-in led or hid kits). The extra output can compensate (to a degree) for degraded reflectors and lenses, maintain pattern, maintain a good CRI, and not be so disproportionately bright to have negative effects of extra glare, extra light into oncoming traffic, and excessive foreground.
Nobody wants to be told what they can and cannot do by a bunch of know-it-alls on the internet, looking down their noses at folks that use amazon gizmos, but my rights end at shining lights into oncoming traffic when the regulations were intended to limit those negative outcomes. It's not just about output. It's about the location of the output, which needs to change when we turn things up.
Your housings have a SAE/DOT code on the front of them specifying the type of emitter for which they were approved. My state began cracking down on this at annual safety inspections because it is such an issue.
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