I have a question regarding the appearance of HID bulbs in projector healight equipped models (1st Gen GS, ES, SC). Why do these projectors stifle any "Glow" around the bulb when you look at them from outside the car.

It may sound superficial, but I love the way a 98 LS looks when its coming at you, because the HIDs seem to have glow, or glare around the light! The same holds true for Beamers, etc. I had a 4100k kit in my 1st genGS, and from the front, it just looked like some really nice bulbs! The kit was not intended for my car, it came out of a S500, so the bulb did not go all the way into the housing. But I was on the highway behind a 92-95 ES the other night and his HIDs were lighting the road up NICE! But once I got infront of him and looked in my rear view, there was no glow at all!!

Can this be remedied, without hacking into the headlight?

 

Is this true? One of the reasons I was holding off from dropping a Philips kit into my 96 ES was fear of a noticeable "halo effect" above the lights, I didn't want people approacing from a distance to be annoyed/flash me, or advertise a non DOT-legal lighting setup.

 

does the 96 have projector beam, or free form reflector? The free form will definately give off the "halo" effect, but that looks nice IMO, screw oncoming traffic!!

 

well it's just the physics behind the projective lens, that gives out those glowing blue and purple light around the edge of the hid. on reflective housing you don't see that at all but it only happens on projective housing.

 

I also have a first gen gs300. when i had my stock projector with HID it is like you described. just nice bright blue bulbs. but after a while i got sick of it. it just wasn't bright enough. i now have projectors from a 2001 BMW 5 series on my car. from far away my lights look very blue and as i get closer it gets whiter. also when i go over dips and bumps you can see all the color change in my projector. I have had my friend drive my own car behind me as i drove his car.

to answer your question. you will not get the nice color change effect without hacking and modifying the stock projectors. also another reason why you see the bright flickers from cars that come with HID's is because they have autoleveling. so when they go over bumps you see there light kinda flash at you.

 

Let me get this right, you put a BMW projectors on your GS300? :eek: How did you do that? Got pics?

 

yes, unless you get REAL projective housing, the light output won't be as perfect as what you would have wanted.

but hey, your 5 series headligh retrofit was awesome

 

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...ht=project+one

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...ght=night+time

 

Jmai,

Before I posted this thread, I had already looked at your pics. They look great, but to be honest, I just wanted to do a plug and play job! I am quite sure BMW 5 series did not come cheap, and I want to keep things factory correct! I guess I will go with 6000K, and just deal with the warm purple hue.

Thanks for the info, everyone

 

Jmai, that is very impressive! Where did you get the BMW lights? I an thinking of attempting this on my LS! Major props!

 

That's easy...you can find most of the stuff from the bay with the "e" in front. Go there...do a search for "D2S HID" or "D2S" and look for these items to build your system...

1. E39 (5 Series or X5 BMW ) projectors

2. Lexus/Hella Ballast system...(two are for sale right now)

3. Phillips or OSRAM 4100K/4300K HID bulbs in D2S format

The only reason I recommend the D2S format is simply because you have requested a similar setup to Jmai22. He's using a set like this for his Lexus GS300 and can in fact point you in the right direction afterwards. There is a member See_fuu on here that does these kind of retrofits professionally and in fact is responsible for alot of people here having great retrofits. Check him out too. Keep us posted
Mike T

 

Great info man! Thank you. I already took my headlights apart a few times so that should not be a problem.

 

Retro. you have an LS so the adjustment may be alot harder. Since my car came with projector all i had to do was dremel out the stock projector and "weld" it onto the stock adjustments. so my headlights are fully adjustable, left,right,up,down. you should check on e-bay. you can get projectors bulbs and ballast all for under 400. its its actually cheaper than buying a kit. one other thing i'm not SURE if you can do this on your LS. i forgot what the actualy headlight of the LS looks like but if it has those lines like the picture i attached you won't be able to do it because the light come come out right. but if you just have a plain headlamp assembly like the newer LS, newer SC, newer GS, BMW, Newer accord and all those others you will be able to do it.

 

pic

 

Ugh, seems like I have to get a pair of aftermarket headlights from Japan, install HID's in them and just keep them that way. Thx for the info though!