Toyota MR2 Message Board - View Single Post

TonyHuynhTwo · 10-07-2009, 11:24 AM

Yeah I definitely wouldn't recommend buying the least expensive kit on ebay and just sticking them into a conversion housing. These kits are both single beam and of course not designed for use in the headlight housing your suppossed to use in them. There is no beam pattern with this set up at all. Even the bulbs that come with the ebay housings will give you a crappy beam pattern. The "diamond cut" reflectors and grooves on the back of these headlights, are only for show purposes. The factories in china do not design these headlights with the aid of computer software to control the beam direction and pattern like the car manufacturers and qualified aftermarket headlight producers (sylvania, GE, etc.). A lot of the more honest sellers on ebay will have on their headlights disclaimers, telling you that these headlights are for off road use only. Putting HID's in any MR2 besides the spyder is of course illegal because these cars never came with an HID set up from the factory (yes even the revision 6 system is illegal). There are no such things as DOT or SAE certified conversion kits. The law is simple if the car never came with the xenon lighting system to begin with, than they are illegal.

So anybody that breaks the law knows if your going to do something illegal than do it smart. There are only three smart ways to have an HID lighting system in the MK1 and MK2 MR2's in order to prevent Johnny Law from pulling you over; the revision 6 system, the pegasus headlight option, or splicing a pair of projectors from another car's headlights into the conversion housing. Let me reiterate that these are still illegal systems. An additional note: Never buy the kits with color ratings above 6000k. The K is a color rating (it's suppose to represent the color of plasma from stars if they burned at this particular temperature) the higher the K rating the bluer they are. I love blue lights (had a 10K set up in my celica) but that is one sure way to get you pulled over good beam pattern or not.

The revision 6 option is probably the easiest and best option to go for when doing the conversion. But the prices are absolutely ridiculous. The set up raises your headlight about 1/2 way of the usual height and has two headlights on each housing (left and right). You can either set it in a fixed position or buy a special part so that it will always open at the correct height. This option allows you to run a Xenon system with both hi/lo beam. When choosing to go this route you have to make sure that you choose the option that has projectors for at least the lo beam headlight (hi and lo beam have different "headlight housing"). You can then choose the HID option and by now you should realize that you're going to be paying an arm and a leg for this system (should be over $600 with both options).

Then there is the pegasus option. This set up has only a low beam option for the HID set up, making this the worst way to go. This set up looks like the conversion kits on ebay except with a "real projector" in the housing. This is the only real plug and play set up. It takes about twenty minutes to set up and most of the time that will be deciding where to mount the ballasts. Even though you will probably never get pulled over with this option; if it happens and the cop takes a closer look at your headlight and thinks they look out of place; he will use a piece of white paper to determine the color (the light reflecting on white paper gives you the best indication of color); then screw you by asking you to flip on the high beams. HID or no HID every car in the U.S. has to have hi beam. Which is why I pointed this out as one of the flaws for cheapest kits on ebay. My friend bought one of these set ups from NORCAL and hit a pot hole hard and asked me to fix his drivers side headlight as the projector in the housing became misaligned. I couldn't open up the housing to adjust the projector, so i emailed NORCAL and he told me not to open up the housing. So I thought about breaking the lens to open it that way. Again I emailed NorCal about buying seperated housings from him so I could put the projector in the new housing. Which then proceeded to NORCAL trying to sell me a brand new pair of housings (so i have a slight bias against this seller). A pair of housings goes for $200 without the HID's and I think around $300-400 with them included (again only low beam available).

Now the last option is the set up that I myself am running. This set up requires that you obtain a set of conversion housings from ebay, a pair of bi-xenon projectors from another car (I used one's from an audi), and any old hid kit. The end product is similar to the pegasus housing, the only difference is that now you have a hi beam. I ended up making a pair of these for my friend also after the pegasus headlight incident.

Whenever you put HID's onto your MK1 or MK2 you take a risk, simple as that. You might be pulled over simple as that. But if you take steps to reduce your risk than you won't have to worry about it as much. I doubt very many people if any, running those set ups have ever been pulled over for illegal lights. The majority of cops don't know which cars came with what lighting system so the goal of those set ups is to mimic factory quality lighting. When you shop around for an HID conversion just remember to add the cost of an operational violation to the price of those cheaper kits with no cutoff, no beam pattern, and no high beam. I have been running HID's on my cars (only one of my cars came with factory HID's) for four years. The first three months of ever having these kits I was pulled over three times for illegal lights and ticketed once (the ticket was $150). My set up was the same as Pilots and I had my lights aimed to the floor. Ever since I started using projectors in my HID systems I have never been pulled over for the same problem and times were I have been pulled over for speeding the cop didn't even look twice at my headlights.

On some cars the HID systems come without projectors but the whole housings were computer designed to produce similar or better results, with regards to beam pattern and cutoff, than projectors. But there is absolutely no sealed beam housings in the world, without a projector that have been designed and produced to work with an HID system.

10-07-2009, 11:24 AM	#15 (permalink)
TonyHuynhTwo Cage Fighter Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 154 Thanks: 0 Thanked 4 Times in 4 Posts iTrader Rating: (1/100% )	Yeah I definitely wouldn't recommend buying the least expensive kit on ebay and just sticking them into a conversion housing. These kits are both single beam and of course not designed for use in the headlight housing your suppossed to use in them. There is no beam pattern with this set up at all. Even the bulbs that come with the ebay housings will give you a crappy beam pattern. The "diamond cut" reflectors and grooves on the back of these headlights, are only for show purposes. The factories in china do not design these headlights with the aid of computer software to control the beam direction and pattern like the car manufacturers and qualified aftermarket headlight producers (sylvania, GE, etc.). A lot of the more honest sellers on ebay will have on their headlights disclaimers, telling you that these headlights are for off road use only. Putting HID's in any MR2 besides the spyder is of course illegal because these cars never came with an HID set up from the factory (yes even the revision 6 system is illegal). There are no such things as DOT or SAE certified conversion kits. The law is simple if the car never came with the xenon lighting system to begin with, than they are illegal. So anybody that breaks the law knows if your going to do something illegal than do it smart. There are only three smart ways to have an HID lighting system in the MK1 and MK2 MR2's in order to prevent Johnny Law from pulling you over; the revision 6 system, the pegasus headlight option, or splicing a pair of projectors from another car's headlights into the conversion housing. Let me reiterate that these are still illegal systems. An additional note: Never buy the kits with color ratings above 6000k. The K is a color rating (it's suppose to represent the color of plasma from stars if they burned at this particular temperature) the higher the K rating the bluer they are. I love blue lights (had a 10K set up in my celica) but that is one sure way to get you pulled over good beam pattern or not. The revision 6 option is probably the easiest and best option to go for when doing the conversion. But the prices are absolutely ridiculous. The set up raises your headlight about 1/2 way of the usual height and has two headlights on each housing (left and right). You can either set it in a fixed position or buy a special part so that it will always open at the correct height. This option allows you to run a Xenon system with both hi/lo beam. When choosing to go this route you have to make sure that you choose the option that has projectors for at least the lo beam headlight (hi and lo beam have different "headlight housing"). You can then choose the HID option and by now you should realize that you're going to be paying an arm and a leg for this system (should be over $600 with both options). Then there is the pegasus option. This set up has only a low beam option for the HID set up, making this the worst way to go. This set up looks like the conversion kits on ebay except with a "real projector" in the housing. This is the only real plug and play set up. It takes about twenty minutes to set up and most of the time that will be deciding where to mount the ballasts. Even though you will probably never get pulled over with this option; if it happens and the cop takes a closer look at your headlight and thinks they look out of place; he will use a piece of white paper to determine the color (the light reflecting on white paper gives you the best indication of color); then screw you by asking you to flip on the high beams. HID or no HID every car in the U.S. has to have hi beam. Which is why I pointed this out as one of the flaws for cheapest kits on ebay. My friend bought one of these set ups from NORCAL and hit a pot hole hard and asked me to fix his drivers side headlight as the projector in the housing became misaligned. I couldn't open up the housing to adjust the projector, so i emailed NORCAL and he told me not to open up the housing. So I thought about breaking the lens to open it that way. Again I emailed NorCal about buying seperated housings from him so I could put the projector in the new housing. Which then proceeded to NORCAL trying to sell me a brand new pair of housings (so i have a slight bias against this seller). A pair of housings goes for $200 without the HID's and I think around $300-400 with them included (again only low beam available). Now the last option is the set up that I myself am running. This set up requires that you obtain a set of conversion housings from ebay, a pair of bi-xenon projectors from another car (I used one's from an audi), and any old hid kit. The end product is similar to the pegasus housing, the only difference is that now you have a hi beam. I ended up making a pair of these for my friend also after the pegasus headlight incident. Whenever you put HID's onto your MK1 or MK2 you take a risk, simple as that. You might be pulled over simple as that. But if you take steps to reduce your risk than you won't have to worry about it as much. I doubt very many people if any, running those set ups have ever been pulled over for illegal lights. The majority of cops don't know which cars came with what lighting system so the goal of those set ups is to mimic factory quality lighting. When you shop around for an HID conversion just remember to add the cost of an operational violation to the price of those cheaper kits with no cutoff, no beam pattern, and no high beam. I have been running HID's on my cars (only one of my cars came with factory HID's) for four years. The first three months of ever having these kits I was pulled over three times for illegal lights and ticketed once (the ticket was $150). My set up was the same as Pilots and I had my lights aimed to the floor. Ever since I started using projectors in my HID systems I have never been pulled over for the same problem and times were I have been pulled over for speeding the cop didn't even look twice at my headlights. On some cars the HID systems come without projectors but the whole housings were computer designed to produce similar or better results, with regards to beam pattern and cutoff, than projectors. But there is absolutely no sealed beam housings in the world, without a projector that have been designed and produced to work with an HID system.