HIDs in projector housing?

[dherrera09]

Hey guys. I'm Dan, nice to meet all of you. I've been reading this forum for about a year or so now, just about as long as I've owned my Megane. So I was wondering, how does the HID lighting look if its put in a projector housing? My Megane came with projectors instead of normal headlamps but it had normal H7 bulbs...so I was just wondering how that would look like. Btw, I'm living in Panama, so stuff like that isn't illegal yet.

Thanks,
Dan

[TheFinn]

Nice to meet you too, Dan. Welcome aboard!

An aftermarket HID kit in a projector headlight shouldn't glare the oncoming traffic nowhere nearly as badly as an HID kit in a reflector headlight.

The projector lense of a halogen headlight often slightly differs in form from a real xenon projector lense, the halogen version usually producing a slightly narrower beam than a xenon projector. But the glare is cut off in both by a similar glare shield, so from outside it is very difficult to tell a "hidded" halogen projector from a real xenon headlight. Of course there's no beam auto-levelling system in the HID car so it's very important to remember to use the in-dash adjustment when carrying load or rear passengers.

One thing that should be checked prior to purchasing the HID kit is the location of the bulb's "arc sphere" i.e. the place in the HID bulb where the brightest light is generated. If it's too much off compared to the position where the halogen bulb has its filament, then the bright spot may not be in the focus point of the projector lense. That might cause black spots in the beam, in other words poor lighting. Another thing to check is the overall length of the bulb's glass part: HID bulbs are often longer than the equivalent halogen bulbs, so they might come into contact with e.g. the headlight's glare shield in front of the bulb.

[dherrera09]

How difficult is it to do this modification? I mean there are no access points to the headlights besides the small covers under the front wheel arches. Do I have to dismount the front end of the car? or is there some other way of doing this easily without having to take anything off?


Thanks
Dan

[MrAsia]

It's a bumper off job.
Takes about 10mins to get the bumper off if you know how to do it. Not hard though. You will need to mount the balast as well.

Take Finn's advice and make sure the HID globes fit in the housing.