Here compared two superbs

New bowls vs old bowls

more pictures there

http://swiatla.arbiter.pl/galeria/d2s.porownania

dieselV6, do you know, does the voltage make difference for HIDs? I have OEM HIDs, bu i didnt measured voltage on ballast (is if 13V or rather 11V)

Voltage does not make a difference for HIDs, ballasts simply reduce/increase current so that the power is right,

100W HIDs do produce 3x more light output as long as you use correct burners (I custom ordered from GHC) and have true 100W output ballast. Funnily enough I measured output at 9000 lumen, though the spectrum could be better.

If someone puts 100W labelled ballasts that produce 65W, then into 50W burners then no wonder the output is low, you need to check what you are getting.

100W HIDs just do not produce much more range/throw on high beams as it depends on peak intensity. Better to use halogens for max throw, as stated in my earlier post.

Reflector condition does make a difference, but to get the reflector in as bad shape as the one shown in pics you need to "forget" rear cluster covers for a year or two... Reflectors in my Superb still look decent enough, 6 years on.

Hello,

Im happy with this topic about headlights and big knowledge of dieselV6!

With bigger power HID i don't plan to play, because of heat and destroing bowls.

I just put china hid kit into foglights and at night i drive using low beams and fog beams. It is good and strong light.

I have quite big experience with bowls/reflectors especialy in projector beams. After few years they become burned and smoked. I disasembled about 10+ bowls from many cars and all of them had burned signs. Especialy over bulb where heat is the biggest.

Second think is that OEM bowls made by Hella as new are not ideal reflective. The mirror is as new little matt

Here is lens from Peugeot 407 not older than 1 year. Smoke is visible

Here is bowl from car about 4 years old - over the bulb there is burned place

Here is bowl from our superbs with ODO 250.000km. It cant work properly

And here compared old and after regeneration - new mirror high reflecting. The difference in volume of light is huge

It is worth to change bowls in old car

Edited 12 August, 201213 yr by Arbiter

Aside from evident damage due to misuse in some of your photos , the projector headlamp reflector scatters light a little by design, to increase uniformity of light on the road. Volume of light is not everything, it's distribution on the road is arguably more important. Partly scattering reflector of projector style headlight is the equivalent of multi-faceted reflector of reflector style headlight.

If you ever compared plain parabolic reflector with multi-faceted reflector on an actual road, multi-faceted wins every time. For projector style lamps, the light far away is the image of focal plane light, so if you have scatter against the reflector, it will increase uniformity of light coverage on the road.

I am not sure why your low beam reflectors are so worn out after just 155k miles, could this be due to using 100W bulbs?

My car has 105k miles, more than half mileage covered at night. With 75W HIDs in the low beams, the output dropped just ~15% from new, and that is mostly due to front polycarbonate headlamp covers being sanded at high motorway speeds. 15% is not much, given 5000+ lumen HID burners. I have more problem with multi-faceted high beam portion of each headlamp, due to a mistake of putting LEDs in at some point. The LEDs were ceramic based, but due to heat, they still gave some vapour which polluted high beam reflector giving about 15%-20% loss of reflectivity. Not much considering this leads to only 7%-10% loss of range. Still, it serves as a reminder to clean bulbs with alcohol every time they're replaced to prevent fouled up reflectors.

If I ever wanted to open my car's headlights, I'd go much further than refurbishing the bowls anyway. For a start, the fastest wearing element seems to be front lens (polycarbonate), it can be reconditioned but it takes an effort. Secondly, fog lights integrated with headlamps are next to useless, and there exist same-sized Hella modules for driving lamps (high beam).

I just realized - you are based in Poland, the car does not have factory DRLs, so you must have been using low beams all the time when the car is running. We do not use low beams in this way in the UK. It is much more effciient and cheaper long term to fit DRLs, either separate LEDs or run high beams at around 4V unloaded voltage from a DC-DC converter, but that should've been done many years ago, prior to reflector damage...

Edited 13 August, 201213 yr by dieselV6

It is not misuse, it is normal reflector usage. in Poland you have to drive 24h with lights.

Just hella bowls are little matt. Other are like ideal mirror. IMHO ideal smooth is better ( I dont mean FF curvature)

How did you found that your beam is " dropped just ~15% from new"?

"front lens (polycarbonate)" - front lens is not polycarbonate it is glass and it doesnt need to be reconditioned. It is just smoked, and using cloth you can make it like new during 5 seconds. If you mean front cover - I agrree, it is polycarbonate. You can repair it polishing outside and clean inside. Pay attention, that inside they are not hardened and you cant clean them with nitro. But wit cloth ant soap it will become clean.

I cant agree that fog lights integrated in our superbs are useless. They work the same as dipped beams, but have about half weaker output. They are classical Hella Micro DE. I agree with you, that hella produces such lights with option "high beam". But it is simple to change them - just you have to remove shutter. They become high (but not pencil beams)

Now I have LED drls and i dont use dipped beam during day. i hope, after my refurbishing, they will last for the end of usage:).

Edited 13 August, 201213 yr by Arbiter

Measured using digital light meter, back when I played with HIDs and recently, out of curiosity as I noticed the headlamp cover is no longer transparent. Front headlamp cover needs reconditioning if anything, and the point of replacing fogs would be to have pencil beams. Fogs without shield are even more useless - the whole point of high beam is to throw light as far as possible before it hits the road and unshielded fog beam is quite the opposite, tons of light close to the car front.

But the basic point is, to do anything serious inside headlamps you need to open them, then seal back, for an average person it is far more hassle than e.g. doubling power of HID insert.

unshielding fog beam doesnt change light close to the car front. It makes the difference for light at longer distance (same as bixenon). But i still agree not pencil beam

Edited 13 August, 201213 yr by Arbiter

Clearly, we differ on definition of 'close'. Decent high beams are to light up 200m - 1km+ in front of the car, to do this you need under 12deg horizontal/vertical light spread. Fog light beam is about 110deg+ horizontal, and 35deg+ vertical, so it is at around 25x lower intensity and at least 5x shorter range than your car's stock high beam ,

Put simply, fog light beam, whether shielded or unshielded, will only light up immediate area around the car, it does not provide any reasonable illumination further than 100m from the car.

A simple experiment that can prove it to yourself is to park the car on a straight stretch of terrain at night and leave it with someone to operate lights. Leave fog lights on (assume unshielded, or just adjust up the shielded ones), and walk ~200m away from the car. Look at how bright the fog lights are from a distance, then ask the person in the car to switch high beams on.

Once the red circles in your eyes subsided you will no doubt be convinced that at a relatively small distance of 200m, unshielded fog lights are useless compared to even stock car's high beams.

And it will not matter much even if you manage to squeeze 100W HIDs in these fogs, all they will do is dump most of their light within 50m off the car, leaving you effectively blinded by reflection from road and obstacles and not being able to see past the initilal 100m or so. And even at 9000 lumens they still will be sqrt(25/9) = 1.7 times shorter throw than stock car high beams with stock bulbs (!).

For large distance illumination, you need focused beam, and preferably mounting the lights very high up so that they do not hit the road too soon. If you have more than 1 set of high beams, low mounting for one set and aiming them upwards so that they do not land on the road for 100m+ is also an option, this provides great ambient visibility, particularly good if you drive through forests and want to avoid hiting animals.

DieselV6, what kind of DC Converters do you use? Have you masured current on high beams driven with 16V?I found on market dc converters - car laptop 16V 5A - will it be enaough for single bulb?

16V/5A will not drive the bulb as the startup current is too high. Halogen bulbs can take 20A+ on startup and that trips most protection circuits.

There are £8 boards on Ebay, look for "boost charger 150W". These will drive 1 light each comfortably.

Note you need to fit a capacitor in line with adjustment pot to get soft start functionality, several uF value will do just fine

Thank you.

Do you mind this module?

http://www.ebay.com/...=item337bc6be94

How to change voltage?

Without capacitor will it not drive bulb?

Yes, I think this is the one.

It will drive the bulb without capacitor, but it will also blow it quite offten as the startup current is very high.

If you want to operate bulbs for sensible periods of time at a much higher voltage than stock, you need soft start, where current increases gradually

Voltage is adjusted with the blue pot on the side of the PCB, you just need to solder a capacitor underneath to slow down the startup voltage increase.