Whoever said you couldnt obtain a good cutoff w/ aftermarket HID? - SRT Forums

viper2pt0 · 01-23-2007, 05:25 PM

Guys, after reading many threads about it, and seeing how horrid my beam pattern was with my aftermarket hid's...I decided to try and do something about it. After playing with it for 2 nights now (not done yet) here is what I've come up with...

This is my beam from one headlight (not in car, I was holding it. And sorry for the grainy pic). I acheived this using a custom made shield for my HID bulb. I am not done, I still have more playing around to do, but so far, the results look pretty promising...

Also, don't think that this is a perfect mod, initial tests show that light output is diminshed a bit, although it is hard to gauge how much because I have only done one light so far. I think that modifying my sheild a bit more may let more light through. Pros so far include MUCH reduced glare, filtering out the yellow/orange light that is produced out of the bottom of the hid and a much better cutoff. More pics to come when I do more!.

OK HERE IT IS!!!....

after some tests and such..this is what I came up with.

Here you can see my bi-xenon HID bulb, as you can see i drilled some reliefs around the base...I did this to give the JB weld something to hold onto (for some reason it kept falling off this one bulb).

Here is a pic of my bulb with my shield next to it. For the shield I used some aluminum flashing. Its very thin and light, easily cut with tin snips, and all for all it seems to have been a good choice. I wrapped it around a marker which happened to be just the right radius to get around my bulb.

Then I simply mixed up some jb weld and glued my shield to the base of the bulb. Notice that the shield should cover the bottom half of the bulb, NOT, the top half.

Finally, pics of it installed in the headlight housing. I found that tipping the bulb down in the housing made the beam MUCH sharper at the cutoff. To do this I placed a piece of wire as a space between the base of the bulb and the housing on the bottom to space it out. then when I put on the clip to hold the bulb in, I only caught it on the top two screws.

That is it for now. I have one installed in my headlight, and the other is waiting for the jb weld to dry (the shield fell off the bulb when I was trying to install it...hence me drilling those reliefs).... I hope to install them back into the car semi-soon. I just made a new dual-relay harness and bought a new battery. I'm gonna install my tranny mount before I put it all back together though. I'll post up pics of the beam pattern when I do!!!

Installed in car....

needless to say I am very disappointed at my results. As you can see there is a HUGE difference between the first Pic I showed of the beam pattern vs. this one. This is because of my shield modifications. The beam pattern above is using the shield that I showed you pictures of. The beam pattern at the top of the thread is using one that had a shield that covered about 75% of the bulb, as opposed to this one which covers 50%. I am not sure yet if I'm going to rip the headlights out again and re-make the shields to cover the 75% or leave them be.... Just a little angry right now.

haknslash · 01-23-2007, 06:07 PM

300 will be fine. HIDs run cooler than halogen so your interior headlight temperature will drop as opposed to before when on stock halogen. Alot of guys on hidplanet use JB weld, and though I'm not a big fan of it, they seem to have no to little problems. None related to heat that I'm aware of. Usually the only problems I see someone acquire when using JB weld is that the had a poor setting meaning they didn't allply equal amounts of both parts, thus giving a weak compound.

As for your sheild mod you did, I congradulate you on taking the step and improving what can be improved in glare reduction on the stock housing. But as you said, there is a trade-off and you'll probably have slightly reduced output. Still better than throwing glare everywhere. However glare as you know is only part of the problem with HID kits. Uneven beam distribution is the other major side effect. But I give you BIG kudos for being one of the few and stating the truth about how "horrid" the glare can be on these cars. Big kudos for doing something about it too!

Keep it up. I'd love to see what you ended up doing to reduce the glare on your custom sheild.

Keep us posted as progress develops mang.

viper2pt0 · 01-23-2007, 06:18 PM

wow....I'm so happy right now its not even funny. I may have run into a snag though, and I wont really know until I put my lights back in my car (along with a new battery since mine died)....I found that by tipping the bulb down a hair in the housing it kinda puts it at the right focal point and sharpens up the cutoff alot. The problem I potentially see in this is that I have bi-xenons and it swaps to the 'high' beam by tipping the bulb down in the housing w/ a solinoid. If im tipping the bulb down to being with..(in my mind) this is already putting me somewhat in "highbeam" mode.....if I cant lower them enough to make up for this (I think i should be able to)...them im screwed....but too early to tell still.

As for the JB weld...this is good...im just wondering if the guys you know used regular jb weld or jb Quick..I'd hate to use it then have it burn up and drip on my reflector or something.

haknslash · 01-23-2007, 06:24 PM

Your JB qwik should be good to go. Test it out by mixing some up on a piece of metal and throwing that piece in your oven for say 10 minutes at 200 degrees. If it holds up and stays hard (get your mind out of the gutter viagra guys), then you should have no problems. You car is not likely to exceed ambiant air of 250 degrees in the engine compartment I don't think. The good thing is that JB weld is removeable (per dremel) so if you do realize an issue after oven testing, then just go with the regular JB weld. I would hop on hidplanet forums and ask them. www.hidplanet.com/forums

Undertaker · 01-23-2007, 09:20 PM

I was thinking of this same idea too the other day. I passed an SRT-4 tonight with HID's but the glare wasn't terrible with the S Style Eyelids. Then I remember seeing a post about someone wanting to paint their HID's to cut down on Glare. So while I was driving, I thought, why not a shield. But you beat me to the punch. Great idea, now a little how to.

Thanks,
Steve

H22-T · 01-23-2007, 09:36 PM

hey wanna post up a how to when your finished or start selling? cause im interested.

viper2pt0 · 01-23-2007, 09:54 PM

well I will DEF. post a how-to, but as far as selling, when all is said and done, it really is quite a simple mod, and due to different bulbs from different manufaturers I couldnt make it work for everyone. Regardless I will post a how-to. Best part of this mod? its CHEAP....all I had to buy was the jb-weld because I had everything else. even if you dont have the other stuff...its all very very cheap....im gonna say under 10 bux for this mod tops.

Hak....do you recommend me painting my shield black w/ high temp paint or is it really not necessary? The part of my shield facing the bulb is white, and the part facing outwards (towards the reflector I guess) is brown.