If the ballast and wiring of the kit was designed for 55W, then it should be designed to conduct the current without heating up. Doesn't take much wiring.
On standard halogens, you have really thin wiring behind the bulb pushing 12V 55W, which is 4.58A.
For HIDs, if they run at 85V from ballast to bulb, then 55W gives only 0.648A, much lower current across the HID wires compared to stock halogens.
wizardry
although you never know, $10 HID ballasts might have 20v rating for 0.5A running at 85v
sorry for fuelling the off topic discussion here guys, but i think the HID discussion is beaten to death anyway so there's not much point to it..
watts are watts
The production of heat is related to current flowing through the wire, so if there's 55W/85V, you'll be running 0.64A as opposed to 60W/12V= 5A.. Think of water in a pipe, what has friction? water under high pressure or water moving quickly through it under lower pressure?
be water my friend
Originally Posted by aaronng
If the ballast and wiring of the kit was designed for 55W, then it should be designed to conduct the current without heating up. Doesn't take much wiring.
On standard halogens, you have really thin wiring behind the bulb pushing 12V 55W, which is 4.58A.
For HIDs, if they run at 85V from ballast to bulb, then 55W gives only 0.648A, much lower current across the HID wires compared to stock halogens.
Have there actually been any cases where an insurance claim was denied because the car had HIDs in halogen projectors?
Not unless its the cause of a fire I don't think they can deny the claim, sure they could take some money off the settlement for non legal parts, but denying the whole thing I doubt it.
If you want to get rid of your HIDs, i can recommend Philips crystal visions.
I put in 55W HIDs after my mate told me "Its soo much better" (shhh I'm still young and i'm allowed to be stupid :P), they looked cool and all but i hated the feeling that i was probably blinding someone lol. Anyway i took them out and replaced them with Philips crystal visions.
You can see a clear color difference in the high beams (stock lights vs crystal vision):
But they are much whiter than stock lights:
HIDs (55W, 6000K) on the right, CVs on the left..
i will probably replace the light housings sometime next year with JDM style housings with proper HID projectors and no ugly amber parkers, but that's a $800+ project and i need to save up money for that
Originally Posted by aaronng
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