hey guys,

so this weekend i blew another HID bulb or another bad ballast. this is the third bulb/ballast issue in 8 months and @ $75+ a kit this isn't looking very cost effective mod. So i might go back to halogen bulbs since i know it wont go bad for a year or so.

question:

what is the best halogen bulb that can produce a good amount of lighting without modding wires/fuzes/etc?

or just suck it up and get a new kit off craigslist for $75 and enjoy a new set of hids?

craigslist hid kit ft..w..L?

 

Uh stop throwing money away on cheap HID kits? Buy OEM Z HIDs

 

Dude, i would think after blowing 3 sets you get the picture that Craigslist HID FTL.

You keep going cheap and your getting what you pay for.

Either buy a good set ($$$) or ***** up and get OEM from Nissan.

Hope your not buying the 8000k sets.....

8000k = wannabe HID'ers, anyway... get no higher than 6000k and your fellow road dwellers will appreciate it.

EDIT: And your getting on me for mistakening a Voltex kit......tisk tisk.

 

It also depends on how many hours that you're driving with the light on.

Recently I started down the same path as you and found some science that pointed to the Phillips brand ultra-brights extra-brights or some such brand label. I went to the Phillips web site on these bulbs and found that the life of these bulbs - the mean time between failures - was something really short like 250 to 300 hours. That doesn't sound like much with an hour commute home each evening. The MTBF means that some are going to fail at 100 hours and some are going to fail at 400 hours ... but still!

In my experence the normal 55/65 lights can be replaced with 80/100 watt ones which are then legal for off-road use only. The DOT limits the amount of light just as they limit the color of the lights that can be displayed. If caught with the higher wattage lights on road it would likely be a bad thing.

On my Nissan Xterra I tried a pair of such higher wattage bulbs and couldn't see enough of a difference when changing them out one-at-a-time to be bothered. Here's the picture I took against the garage. I went with 5600K bulbs as I didn't want my off-road truck to look like rice. The camera has white balanced on the stock light making the 80/100 watt bulb look bluer that they seemed in life. I now run the stock bulb - three years and counting.

 

well i've bought hids in the past from cl with no issues. i just need to find a better mounting point on the Z. the vibrations are killing the passenger side.

and yes i always get the 6000k

 

thanks for the info, i may just buy a set of 80/100 watt bulbs for now. thats phillip bulbs right? where did you get them? pepboys? kragen? autozone? i get off in 2 hrs and head over to get a set

thanks

 

Its already been said but cheap HID kits tend to burn through bulbs or have ballast failures. The main problem is the inconsistent voltage on start up and the fact that most cheap kits come with re-based capsules. Top quality HID kits can run around $600 - $700 but if you want a good bang for your buck try a kit from Maruta Technology, they run around $300. Do not buy them from ebay as there are a ton of fakes being sold on there covering every manufacturer. Im running 6 Maruta Tech ballasts in my 2006 pathfinder ( 4 in the mains and 2 in the fogs ). Ive put around 25000 km on it since the install and still on the original bulbs.

 

you can get a good HID kit from tlg-auto for around $300 with lifetime warranty on the ballasts. I asked what makes them so good and was told they have less then 0.04% failure rate, ever. That's 4 tenths of a percent!

 

Math fail. That number is 4 hundredths of a percent

 

Hmmm, good call! You're right.

 

update:

life time warranty FTW!

now i don't mind having this set of HIDS, i got the whole new kit on monday with free installation! woot woot