My '98 was not advertised as having the HID lights, even on the Lexus CPO window sticker included from when the prior owner bought the car a couple of years ago. But the headlights are wonderfully bright, and look like projector units I've seen on some newer cars. And there's a little sticker about "warning- high voltage" on one of the units. Am I correct in assuming they are HIDs?

 

Possibly aftermarket...who knows. Take some shots of the lights and we might be able to tell.

 

very possible that someone used a conversion kit if it wasnt standard.

 

you should be able to tell the difference between xenons and halogens. while driving at night, get next to someone with standard lights. if their light on the ground looks yellow and yours looks bright white, you ahve xenons.

 

you can check if they came with HID's if the beam goes up and down when you turn the car on, unless they took autoleveling headlights from an HID car.

 

During a conversation with a Lexus salesman in the fall of 1997, he complained that some of the arriving 1998 LS400s did not have HID headlights. The HID option was so cheap ($500) compared to the approximately $54,000 base list price that no one wanted a 98 LS400 without them.

The salesman was not happy about HID not being standard. But he had to move the cars without HID and appropriate incentives were offered.

The non-HID headlights on the 98 LS400 are really very good and infinitely better than the awful headlights that came on the 1990 LS400 we owned for 13 1/2 years.

If the headlights on your 1998 LS400 are not HID, I doubt if converting them to HID will provide all that much more light. Heck, the halogen headlights on a friend's Mercedes are every bit as good - maybe better - than the HID lights on my 2000 LS400.

 

My 98 has the HIDs, but I didn't even notice until I saw the build sheet a few days ago. The color is right, but they aren't all that bright. The high-beams, though, which are halogens, are excellent.

 

the HIDs are now 9 years old, and the high beam halogens have most likely BARELY been used. so you're comparing nearly decade old HIDs to basically unused halogens

 

If you wanna find out if you have HID's (Xenons) just look at the front of your headlight if it said "D2R" then you have HID's if it said "HB4" then you have the standard halogen.

 

Interesting. Didn't occur to me that the lights would lose significant brightness with age. Do the bulbs lose brightness, or does some capacitor lose capacity, or the mirrors cloud, or what? The plastic lenses are still pretty clear (though I do plan to wet sand and buff part of one light that looks like someone spilled acid on it).

 

Thanks, all. Armed with all this info, I should be able to figure out what I've got. Whatever they are, they are plenty bright.

 

HID bulbs give out less light in relation to the number of hours they have been used.

the plastic lenses fogging/clouding would obviously lower output as well, but theres no capacitor or anything electrical to worry about.

 

I changed the HID bulbs on my 98 and noticed a HUGE difference in light output and brightness. Dont underestimate age when it comes to HID output. Its very simple to change them on the LS... and since the replacement, it really didnt matter if i was traveling at night or day, because i can see the road just as well.

Now with the '04... I can see better at night then during the day

 

Looks like I need new bulbs. Guess I'll have to take out a new mortgage ...

 

$60-70/pair+shipping is all it takes for you to leverage your house