Anyone running HID's on there 92-94?!

[ericem]

Hey guys, getting sick of not seeing the road lol. I am thinking of getting bixenon's I understand there will be alot of glare, but has anyone actually tried a kit? I want that white light, but I also want BRIGHTER light, and it seems like this just can't happen. Bought several bulbs, idk, i tried this last set and they look nice, but produce like 0 light on the ground now.....

Will there be anymore light on the ground with hid's?




These are what I am using now, and there is no light produced just looks nice since there is so much tint on the bulb's. The lights look like completely white in person and clear, not blue and blinding.

[cartwheels]

Sylvania Xtravision. That's about as good a bulb you can find for our cars. All that blue crap will do exactly what you said it does: nothing.

Just be thankful you don't have a 91. Apparently the post-facelift cars are significantly better than the pre-facelift.

EDIT: you can throw a projector lens from a car with HIDs (something like an Acura TSX) into the housing of the stock lights, and from what I've read it will produce the correct beam pattern (although I think it'd be a good idea to find non-fluted headlight covers as well). The retrofitting is up to you though. Maybe you can mate an aftermarket HID kit with HID projector lenses from some other car?

IMO its not worth it... if I need more light that bad I'll throw some Hellas on the bumper and be done with it.

[wtdash]

This has been covered on here before, so see what else you find, but I've read HIDs are only good when the car came w/them from the factory. When HIDs are installed on NON-HID cars the light isn't focused correctly on the road ahead and causes glare.

I just bought a set of GE Nighthawks as they are better all 'round in wintry weather than bulbs w/the bluish tint such as the Silverstars. They are noticeably brighter than the Xtravisions I had, and supposedly last longer.

BTW, I have the infamously poor 9004's on my '90 Legacy, so I need all the help I can get.

GL,
TD

[Buffman]

they make HID projectors now that will retrofit into many stock housings (h4, 9004, etc) without hacking up the housing. The only issue is 9004 and h4 setups have fluted lenses. You'd have to clear the lense or remove it in order to get the full benefits of the retro.

ddmtuning.com and you can get some low/hi HID kits for fairly cheap. The HID low/hi kit I got from them for my 92 comes with an additional shield the bulb mounts in. Yes there will be a lot of glare, but not as much as say the same h4 housing using a standard kit wihtout the additional shield. I aimed mine down slightly, and don't seem to aggreavate a lot of drivers. You'll have 2x the light of standard H4 bulbs, and less strain on your system then aftermarket high wattage bulbs.

If I remember I can take some pics tomorrow night.

[evolutionmovement]

Clearing the fluting is near impossible and not even worth trying (learn from my wasted efforts). The best way is to cut the vertical part of the lens off with a small cut off wheel and plastic weld a new piece of clear polycarbonate in its place. A real easy way is to cut holes in the lens with a hole saw where the new lamps will be and call it a day, but it doesn't look very good. Be thankful you don't have the prefacelift because retrofitting something like Hella 90mm is much harder as the housings are shallower and use a more complicated system for headlight mounting and aiming.

If someone has access to a vacuum former, a mold could be made off the original lens and the fluting ground off that, then a new lens could be made on the vacuum former.

[Buffman]

evo the fluting in the subaru lenses is about the same as the fluting in my 95 RMS lenses. They can be cleared, but take a huge amount of time to do so. But it's not imposible.

[evolutionmovement]

How did clear them so that they are actually optically flat and get at the edges? I got the fluting out of mine but after over 100 annoying hours of wet-sanding, grinding, and polishing, I ended up with ugly edges, a wavy main surface, weakened, and stress fractured old UV degraded polycarbonate that didn't make for good light transmission or attractive appearance.

On the other hand, $130 for a welder, $30 for a piece of poly, and a couple easy hours cutting, welding, grinding the edges flush, and heating to form the plastic on bends and I got a clear piece of strong, un-yellowed, optically clear lens with the UV resistance of the the new piece. The new lens is also easily replaced when it is either sandblasted or yellowed after a few years. I should have done it to begin with, plus I also used the welder to repair the bumpers, so it's a useful thing to have.

[Dynamic Entry]

It's not impossible! I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than 2 meters....

[evolutionmovement]

Starfleet Academy never taught me that kind of precision. Here's the link to the 90mm thread with a picture of the headlight with a new lens on the last entry:


http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic. ... 283#235283

[Buffman]

How did clear them so that they are actually optically flat and get at the edges? I got the fluting out of mine but after over 100 annoying hours of wet-sanding, grinding, and polishing, I ended up with ugly edges, a wavy main surface, weakened, and stress fractured old UV degraded polycarbonate that didn't make for good light transmission or attractive appearance.

On the other hand, $130 for a welder, $30 for a piece of poly, and a couple easy hours cutting, welding, grinding the edges flush, and heating to form the plastic on bends and I got a clear piece of strong, un-yellowed, optically clear lens with the UV resistance of the the new piece. The new lens is also easily replaced when it is either sandblasted or yellowed after a few years. I should have done it to begin with, plus I also used the welder to repair the bumpers, so it's a useful thing to have.

I'd have to ask the person who did mine, but they were pretty damn clear

here's the stock ones


here's them cleared. you can see he wasn't able to get all of the corners due to the shape, but they were clear for 3yrs and are still clear (sold the car a few months ago)

[Buffman]

Here's an unaltered shot. (92 Legacy Wagon DDM HIDs Lo/hi kit 4500K)


Had to turn down the exposure to see what they look like:



the "highs":


about 25 feet away:

Lows:


"highs"

[evolutionmovement]

Did he do that by hand? Very impressive! I imagine he must have had some kind of machine. The advantage to the Buick is the larger area to get into. The Subaru lenses are kind of tight (doesn't help that they're slanted back either), and that's the larger pre-facelift. If you have a shit pair of old ones, like I did, and the paper and polish already, it might be worth a try if you want to spend the time. Maybe you could get better results than me, but the welding technique is much quicker and lands you the justification for a cool new toy.

[Buffman]

I'd imagine he used a machine.

[evolutionmovement]

I'd have to see the machine, but it's likely it wouldn't work well for either Subaru lens as the bottom needs to be smoothest as that's where the light needs to shine out, but with the lens slanted back, the bottom part of the lens folds back upon itself and I don't know how a tool (that would work) would fit in there. That's the part I had so much damn trouble with. Ton of work and there was a definite waviness where the accessible and less accessible sections met. On the flip side, the top is very easy to clean up.

[Potter]

Best place to buy HIDs is ddmtuing.com. 50 ucks after shipping for 6000k 55w ballist's they light up the road and some

[soobrdad02]

Any pic's on those ddmtuning's, Potter?

[92legacyL]

anyone know where to get headlight lens for 92 legacy

[soobrdad02]

Cheapest option is a junkyard or pull-a-part, or post a Wanted To Buy ad in the Parts Shed on the site.

[jefferson]

I was thinking some edm lights with some high output h4 bulbs running off solenoids would be about as good as you could get.

Jeff

[ericem]

Probably still be cheaper and better to just get ddm h4's because there only $50 and they have a magnetic hi/lo.

[subie69]

i have 95 legacy ls sedan and i have H4 HID's its like the difference between night and day with them! there awesome! people coming towards me dont like them lol but i love em i can see everything even avoided a few deer at night, i got mine from ddm and it was about a 20 minute install and ive been runnin them since!

[Potter]

just go onto ddmtuning.com best hids lifetime warranty. I swear by them made driving at night 10x better. 30 bucks for lows or 50 for highs and lows. I dont know how to post pics or i would