HID upgrade kits are they any good?

Hi all i've got a 1999 td5 disco and was thinking about fitting one of these hid conversion kits off e-bay but was wondering has any body fitted one of these kits and are they any good also another route i could go down was fitting the headlights from the face lift disco i know it's a lot of work to do this but they do look quite good but are these lights HID or just normal candels?

Make sure that it is correctly E marked and handed for a RH drive car or you will fail the mot when it is due and could get done by the oldbill

Do you mean that these kits are handed then?

I've tried some of the Enay ones, you'll find in a Landy they will P*** people off.
The problem is that normal headlights are reflector type. This is where the beam is focussed by the reflector being designed around the placement of the filament in the lamp, they're not very effective at getting a clean cut off for low beam, and let a high proportion of light go into the direction of oncoming traffic. That's not too bad with normal 60/55 lamps, but put approx 3x the light out as you do with HID, and that bit of light gets very nasty for oncoming traffic. Then allow for the fact Landy headlights are quite high compared to most cars, and you realise there's quite a bit of light to dazzle the oncoming drivers.

You may find the Osram +90% lamps are quite good at getting a much better headlight for driving but not being to bad for oncoming drivers.

BTW the cheap Ebay ones (which they nearly all are cheap-even if you pay a lot for them), tend to fail quickly due to poor manufacturing, so a et by a reputable maker (Hella, Bosch etc) is more cost effective in the long run. Also you should have either self leveling headlamps or self levelling suspension, and headlamp washers to be legal but the chance of getting picked up is probably quite low.

Andy
Andy

discoalltheway said:

Do you mean that these kits are handed then?

Click to expand...

All car headlamps are handed either left or right depending on which country you're driving in. Remember those stickers you used to get for driving on the continent.

My 2004 Td5 had normal bulbs in it and when i bought it the spare bulb was normal I have since changed the bulbs for them whiter blue ones which are supposed to give the Hid look they are brighter or whiter...Tony

Tony S said:

My 2004 Td5 had normal bulbs in it and when i bought it the spare bulb was normal I have since changed the bulbs for them whiter blue ones which are supposed to give the Hid look they are brighter or whiter...Tony

Click to expand...

Ooops there could be trouble ahead. Lights at the front should be white although yellow is still accepted.

i've tried fitting slightly brighter bulbs in there a bit better. I drove my mates car a while ago which had these hid head lights and thought they brilliant you could see so much ferther than normal ones so are the lights on the face lift disco hid or not?

not

I was pulled recently for having yellow headlamps, on cars it has to be white, motor bikes can be yellow or white. But as white isn't defined a blue-ish hint isn't a problem, it's when they start to become a noticeably blue light you run into trouble.

The lamps are not handed (most of us call them bulbs), but the lenses and reflectors are handed, when on low beam as they form a flat horizontal beam on the side of the oncoming traffic and an inclined beam that goes up at approx 15 degrees on the near side. That way when you're on low beam you can read road side signs, see junctions etc.

Andy