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I have been thinking if we should get back the old rule of masking the top part of the headlamp .. It looks to be even more required today, considering the more powerful bulbs we use, and with using HID's without projectors ..

And yesterday, I Spot this car ..



Thoughtful of the owner ..

With modern complex patterns, esp with most cars no longer having lenses in the front glass, this will be pretty ineffective. Brilliant idea, first do illegal with the light source, and the break the law by blackening. Strictly speaking you are interfering in the safety related system by covering part of the glass. I have checked with a transportation engineer friend and he had confirmed.

So break the law, and then again break it.

Can you think of something else to overcome the breaking-the-law part ? I remember the reason they said for having the strip, and the reason they said for removing the strip.

But the new bulbs, not even regular halogens in reflectors can cut off the high-beam in a way to prevent blinding the on-coming person. In such a situation a the blackeing may be the easiest method to prevent blinding the on-coming driver, - however crude the method.

Even with new cars, the projectors with their precision-like cut-off are in the low-beam. Most of the cars that have projectors have a regular reflector based high-beam, which easily blind the on-coming driver.

And let's not even touch the HID-sans-projectors.


btw, this guy may have broken the law by adding these lamps. But IMHO, it is still not as bad as the ones who drive with their high-beams permanently on.

Technically, your suggestion would be wrong. The blackening method is only acceptable for old headlights with no optics involved and anything later than the glass lens will not give any benefit, and rather degrade the light output to an unusable level.

To elaborate on what professor has said, the low beam of your car is bounced off the upper portion of the reflector with the farthest part of the beam thrown from the center of the reflector. Refer the image below:



So if you blacken the top portion of the reflector, the near area of the low beam will be gone and you will get a faint beam far away from the car. And the high beam will be compromised to some extent depending upon how much you have blackened.

However, in high beam, if you want to elimnate glare, the whole lens should be blackened since the entire area is used to reflect the beam. Blackening a portion of the lens will not give you any reduction in the beam. Hence, it is good that this rule has been trashed. Perhaps they should implement auto dipping headlight systems in all cars as a rule. That will make a huge difference.

Speaking this as I work next to a team working on LED headlight clusters, so I get to hear some points :D

Low beam and high beam, or full and dip are actually old terms, the real terms are shielded and focussed. What we call high beam is focussed, and the low beam has a shield that cuts off part of the beam to avoid blinding on comming traffic.
You should dip your beam when there is oncomming traffic, and use the focussed high beam only when there is no one ahead of you. Anything else is just silly.

Rahul

Hello

I own a 2010 Honda City SMT.Using P8 HID's as the main source of headlights.

However, over the years i feel the light quality & amount has gone down. Also, my regular highway trips have increased.

Want to upgrade to better lighting. What could be the solutions ?

1. Get a new set of HID's ( High Intensity ? Please suggest specifically )
2. Get Fog Lights with HID's in them
3. Additional LED/Other based light bars etc etc ?

Looking forward to some urgent guidance please:
TIA

Vehicle owners as well as manufacturers are taking ongoing efforts to ensure that headlights are becoming better. The throw and spread of light is optimum & lumen emitted per penny invested. This is good because safety gets enhanced in the process.

However, a trend that is observed where indicators sit pretty close to the headlamps in the headlight clusters.
Due to this, when the driver tries to indicate a turn (using the indicator) while the headlight is on high beam, it may not be readily identifiable by other commuters coming from the opposite direction, resulting in judgement errors.
This could have a direct impact on the safety of the commuters of either vehicles.

This challenge could be potentially countered by manufacturers by ensuring that headlights automatically switch to dipper mode each time the indicator is used.

There could be potential flip-side of the suggestion that I have just made. While I work on figuring this out using my limited knowledge, would request other forum members to share their thoughts on this.

Picture with no lights and just the LEDs on.
.

I suggest you to go for good quality projector setup kit from Morimoto or xenon planet. Both offer warranty and reliable for long term.

This may be due to headlights being very old - the glass may have lost its original shine and see-through ability over the period of time. Did you try doing any headlight cleaning and restoration things? There are some detailing shops who do this and it's not costly. May be just Rs. 500 to give it a try.

Your current P8 HIDs are good enough. Adding more K lights may not help bigtime. In my limited experience, I have seen that the HIDs are good for most situations but if you still need more light, nothing can beat aux lights setup using Hella, Lightforce or even LEDs. You can also use morimoto bi-xenon setup as well but the gain won't be too big. Also I suppose this will need opening your headlight assembly and tweaking with it. I would personally prefer to have a separate light setup instead of fiddling with headlights.

That is a very good suggestion. Very few people bother about the impact of their car's headlights on other commuters/ road users. I never use upper beam while driving within city limits. However I do use the fog lamps for the additional illumination on the road just ahead of the car. When turning at an intersection I switch off my headlamps once I turn on the indicator. My fog lamps give me sufficient illumination and the indicators can be easily spotted by the oncoming traffic. Besides this when I come to a standstill either due to traffic or at red lights I switch off my headlamps (note: parking lamps and fog lamps are on). That way the oncoming traffic or people crossing road don't get dazzled by my headlights. Also this gives an opportunity for the lights to cool down a bit.

This is definitely very considerate of you sir.
You are very right when you say that "Very few people bother about the impact of their car's headlights on other commuters/ road users."
Or it could simply be that as a user, I may have forgotten to manually flip some switch so that others are not troubled.

Historically, car manufacturers have identified the need for reducing manual intervention in activities like switching off turn indicators when we the vehicle finishes taking a turn.

And, for this exact same reason, it could be worthwhile for vehicle manufacturers to explore opportunities by automating change from high beam to low beam till such time that indicators are on. Headlights can change to high beam automatically once indicators are turned off.

Am sure this should not add too much to their overall cost.

Benefits:
- Improvement in road safety
- No trouble to oncoming vehicle
- No dependency on vehicle user to manually change headlight settings.

Has any one tried Philips X Treme Ultinon H4 or equivalent bulbs in their stock reflector set up. At the moment they are available only in white colour, as I am not a fan of white light, I will be interested in using them when warm white is introduces.

Rahul

Hey Rahul, even I keep a close eye on this product and have been trying to get some feedback on it. Eventually, I guess I'll have to be the guinea pig and share my thoughts on it with others but the only thing stops me from getting it is the price tag. Somewhere in the range of 5-7k would have been the ideal price but 11-12k is way too overpriced. I mean, you can get a decent projector HID setup with that price.

This is just plug and play, it fit's the H4 holder there is no modification to fit it.
A friend recently fitted his XUV500 with Osram HID's in low beam, and X-treme Ultinon 2700k fog lamps. The local reseller had fog lamps in 2700k, 6000k and 6700k with holder adaptor for H8 / H11 / H16.
If they had something around 4000k in H7 he was interested in replacing the high beams too.
I don't know what others feel, but I don't see better in white light as all manufacturers advertise.

Rahul