I still havent seen anyone answer the question of how do you aim the lights down....

 

Just use a flat head and turn them down. I didnt have to adjust nothing and I dont get flashed

 

Use a flathead where?...sorry i dont know exactly where i would adjust them from...and i need to get my hids to face down...i dont wanna blind ppl.

 

Not to be rude or anything, but this "fix" that people do by aiming their headlights down is kind of stupid. If you have to aim the beam down, then you're going to be putting more light directly in front of the car instead of way down the road where it should be. In a way, you're lighting the road using your glare.

 

The glare from our TC headlights are pretty noticeable. I think with some modifications in the way of an eyebrow like overlay would get rid of it. I was messing with this last night actually and was thinking of calling up BlueBatmobile to see if he can fab up something. If you go into a really dark room and shine the lights against the wall from 6-10 feet away or so you can see the diagonal line that is what would cause people to flash you. But as soon as you put an eyebrow on the lens it gets rid of it. The TC lights actually have a very straight line, not like a projector of course but it is pretty good none the less.

 

I was messing with that same idea about the eyebrow so i cut out a piece to cover where the most glare was...and it seemed to work fine...i think we should call up bluebatmobile and see if they can come up with something

 

I was wondering why I get so many flashes....

I got soo ____ed of that I would just flash the hell out of them right back...

so you say an eyebrow would take care of the glare?

 

I am amazed that anyone would worry about this since I drive all the time at night and never have been flashed with this set or my last set on my other car. Running 6000K and didnt adjust the beam pattern at all.

I do get flashed when I have used the HID High Beam part though.

 

The projector guys are correct. Projectors give a much better output. But honestly, I get tired of hearing them down talk those with kits just because they had over $1K to throw away on some headlights. Get off your high horses! A retro fit is just as illegal! It is illegal to put HID in any car that does not offer an oem option. That being said, I personally want HIDs really bad. Retro fit would be my first choice if I come into some loot, but most likely i will go with the Techone kit because I've heard so many good things about it on this sight. The truth is I see cars with HID kits all the time and during the day the glare is no different from the star effect you get from projectors. At night they are bright but not even close to as bad as halogen highs. When cars with projectors are comming directly at you( from above or below your eye level) the light shines directly at you and its pretty intense for a second. I say all that to say this, everything glares a little (when I had silverstars I would occasionally get flashed), all HID for the tC is illegal (but so is the fact that I have no liscense plate on my front bumper), and in the end its about what looks the best for the amount of money your willing to spend( after all, nobody is doing this mod for safety reasons if they are really honest with them selves). All HIDs are sexy.

 

You're absolutely right. All HID retrofits and conversions are illegal. The only reason to go with a retrofit is because you know what kind of optics you're getting. If you stick a D2S bulb in an S2000 projector, you're going to get the same beam pattern as a Honda S2000. If you stick a re-based D2R bulb into a halogen headlight, you can get varied results depending on who rebased it (quality of the work), what kind of base it uses (H4 and H7 bulbs have very different designs), and your headlight. Obviously, projectors are better for glare because there is a cutoff shield built in. Some projectors like the Valeo H7s are pretty good with an HID conversion kit. A high quality conversion kit will yield decent results. In the end, it's all about what you want.

This is the way I look at it... if you're going to modify your car, don't you want to modify it with better parts? For example, getting properly tuned springs and struts are going to yield better results than cutting your springs. So if you're going to modify your headlights anyways, why not modify it to work the best that they can? If you don't want to spend the money, then I respect that choice.

 

Someone should try to design an HID conversion with a self-leveling feature. My dad's Prius uses a reflector type HID headlight. In the rear suspenion there is a leveling sensor that changes the angles of the headlights to reduce glare. There is a difference between non-HID and HID headlights on the Prius. The Prius uses bi-xenon headlights, meaning that the light works as low beam and high beam. Toyota acomplish this by adding a flap that covers part of the light during low beam operation. When you switch to high beam the flap retracts into the cone in front of the bulb.

 

Auto-leveling is more of a headlamp feature than an HID conversion feature. You could do it if you wanted to retrofit. A lot of cars now have auto-leveling or adaptive headlights, but I don't think it's required in the United States. Auto-leveling would be really important when you're driving on backroads so that on-coming traffic wouldn't get blinded by your headlights. This is a problem with all headlights, so I think it's really up to the manufacturer to design this. You could just get a Lexus or a BMW and then your problem would be solved.

 

Well said, I definately agree, and when it comes down to it, I would love to have some 6000ks in a nice retro fit with angel eyes and eyebrow indicators. These are way in the future. For right now, I hate stock yellow. I've had my tC for 9 months and have gone through 2 sets of silver stars, 2 sets of hyperwhites from ebay, and a pair of luminics pure blue. The lights I am using are the remaining bulbs from each of the two silver star sets (only remaining lights that matched). So i'm expecting them to both blow anyday now. With the money I will spend on cheap aftermarket bulbs by the end of the year I could have bought an HID Kit. Since I won't have the cash in my budget for a retro fit for probably another year (lots of other things i want to do to my car) its probably cheaper to get an HID kit now and swap it with a retro fit later. With my experience with aftermarket bulbs dying every 2 months, my HID kit would pay for itself in a little over a year, and I would have the look I want for my car. If I'm lucky, by then someone would have come up with a projector housing for the tC. Maybe Scion will even listen to the feedback and put projectors on future tCs that can then be purchased by us 05-06 drivers. Either way by then the Retrofit would probably be cheaper and I would already have ballasts. That's all I'm sayin'.

 

Not to mention, the ballasts from the kit I want take only 7 amps of power from the stock wiring for the first five seconds to start the bulbs! Stock halogens take more than that. Probably means the lights take longer to warm up then other HIDs, but that cool delay is one of my favorite features

 

a retrofit only cost upwards of $1k if you pay somebody for the labor. if you handy and mechanically competent, you can do a retro for not much more than the cost of a HID kit. i paid about $350 for the parts to do my retro. its slightly more expensive than a kit, but its also many many time better than a kit.

 

What about the time it takes to do a retrofit, not to mention the know how. If I'm not mistaken I think I read your right up maximus96, and it seemed very technichal and complicated, although very well detailed. Did you purchase a second pair of headlight housings to modify? If you did, I don't see how it could be under 350$. I don't think many people on this sight can have their tCs out of comission for having know headlights for any given amount of time.

 

i'll wait till someone produces projectors for the tC...hopefull it won't take more than 2 years from now.
then i'll get an HID kit

 

Check us out if you get a chance - www.jlevisw.com
We've got pretty competitive pricing on HIDs ;)
JL