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1992 BG Astina ( SOHC :( ...) Lights


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1992 BG Astina ( SOHC :( ...) Lights
Here is my little BG with my preliminary lighting...
What I mean is, this is only a stop gap setup for what I'm going to do...

Very soon (when I get the right price), these HIDs, which are "only" 300% brighter than equivelant halogens, will be replaced by ones with over 450% of the brightness of halogens (infact, if reflectors were accurate enough, real world difference would be over 500%, but thats a whole lot of light refraction and wavelength seperation theory that I'm not going into)...

To put that in perspective, standard globes are lucky if they produce 1000 lumens, the theoretical legal limit for halogens.
My current 35w HIDs have an average lumen output of 2900.
And, the ones I'm getting are going to be closer to 5200 lumens (over 500% lumen output! But real world difference is only around 450%. But again, I'm not explaining wavelength seperation theory through reflection here).

Please don't be too alarmed though, I'm very responsible when it comes to the focal point of my lights (I'm an absolute perfectionist), and they are not above the horazontal plane... I go to the extreme with this, I will back off going over a crest (even if it means I slow down more than needed) to keep my line below the mirrors of the car infront, and if safe to do so, I will get slightly closer to the car infront when going over hills in order to keep my lights out of their face).
So I'm doing HID users a favour, hopeing people (and police) notice that some of us are responsible and are trying to keep our lights bright, yet safe and pleasant for other road users.

Soon (well, in the next few months anyway) I will be setting up my popup lights to only move a fraction of what they do now, so that when I have low beams on, the lights are what you see now, but with hi beams on, that cutoff line will raise by around 8-10 degree's, giving the beam 7-9 meters of height above the horazontal at 50 meters... Woo


[Massive angry rant="1"].

It seems almost EVERY BLOODY ACCORD EURO AND BMW OUT THERE has its lights focussed too high, wth is wrong with these moronic manufacturers aiming the beams so high from the factory? It simply IS NOT necessary. We aren't talking just a little high either, most of them are aimed 4 degree's to high (and as much as 3 degree's above the horazontal!.... doesn't sound like much, right? 3 degree's at 40 meters is a virtical difference of 2.1 meters.... Think about it, thats ABOVE your eyeline... if you're in a JACKED UP LANDCRUISER... This means that the majority of the time, part of the focus of the beam is aimed at oncoming cars. This is absolutely unacceptable, and it ticks me off no end. Sure, most aren't 3 degree's above the horazontal, but being perfectly horazontal or even slightly over is bad enough. Ideally, they should be 1-2 degree's BELOW the horazontal, depending on the car, so that on a perfectly flat piece of road you have a beam length of 25-40 meters (depending on passenger count) and so that going through our winding, not so flat country of Australia, you're focal point is bouncing in and out of oncoming traffic


[/Massive angry rant]


Circuit diagram notes

Ok, I know that a couple of guys don't want projectors in your BGs because you lose your standard Hi beam when you do. But for those of us with spotlights, this isn't an issue, so long as you focus the spotlights correctly.
Well this is how you work a few relays to get the desired result.
Notice that I didn't want to use diodes with only two relays, as I wanted to keep this to standard parts that you can buy from any car shop, no car shop that I know sells diodes, and jaycar isn't a spare parts store.

I did have to cheat a little though with the capacitor... We don't sell cap's at work, so I ended up going to jaycar anyway, but you don't actually need the cap in there.

So why is it in there? Well, there are inherant overlaps and gaps in switchgear and small delays in relay activation (but so small that the human eye couldn't pick it up even if you slowed it down by a factor of 10).
So who cares you're thinking?
HIDs hate being turned on and off rapidly. For a HID to start, you need a very high voltage to "ignite" or initiate the plasma between the electrodes, so it pulsates a very high voltage until the resistance between the electrodes comes down enough that a lower voltage can sustain it. If you flick them off then back on, even though the gases are warm and the resistance is low, the ignitor will still pump a few 20kV charges across the electrodes anyway (because its just a dumb box with a capacitor, invertor and diode in it, no IC's).

Well, this is a forced circuit. Jumping a gap is a forced earthing action in electronics, so the more power you unleash the more power the bulb has to disapate; in the form of heat. I think you can see where this is going.
Anyways, the capacitor filters out these small on offs and protects that part of the circuit.

The diagram with diodes on it is quite different to this one, so its not a simple "you put a diode here" explanation, if you really want to know how to do it, just PM me, none of this is hard or complicated so I really don't mind.
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Click Thumbnail to Enlarge.
Cutoff line and hotspot formation (which took me a long time to get right...) Burbs, notice my cutoff isn't so steep... Filed it :P Notice how they seem blueish? I took this photo so that the seperated blue light from the projected image was at the camera lense height Frontal view, too bad our camera doesn't pickup HD lighting, as in real life it doesn't look like the whole lense is filled like this; normally you can only see the projector lenses (circles) Soon, these spotties (which are actually 4300k in colour) will be those HIDs... :D And as you can see, the spotties (which are 55w philips bluevision bulbs in compact rectangular spotties) pale in comparison to the HID's. This is why you need projectors with HID's, otherwise this will blind you... This is a circuit diagram of what I came up with to keep the Lo beams on when the Hi beams come on. You can't use two relays to get the same functionality and current distribution
Gallery Statistics
Member: Lawsy
Created: 09-04-2008 12:02 PM
Last Modified: 09-04-2008 03:07 PM
Views: 3073
Images: 7
Comments: 1

Comments
Author Comment Date
atsp Hey, i like your lights..just wondering what bulb your using for the indicator lights cause they are so bright..and also how did you put fog lights on your car? theres nowhere to mount them. 17-09-2008
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