heres the situation, I have a set of housings coming my way. and I intend to heavily modify them in most every conceivable way.

of course the parking and turn signals will be LEDs(duh), gonna go with a smoked strip up the side, lined with LEDs as well.

now the question is painting. its going to be gloss black, this I know. I am going for ferrari-esque where the housing matches the car. but how much can I paint?

obviously the side with the strip, the entire turn signal area(leds are directional and do not benefit from a reflective surface)

that leaves one area... the HID and high beam area. does anyone know if the HID actually reflects off the back of the housing in any way? if I were to black out that area, would the light output be affected?

same for the brights, any huge issues going to arise from painting the ENTIRE housing black? I am shooting for the entire thing gloss black, leaving only the clear lens for the HID remaining, should have a really cool look to it.

but I dont want to screw up my light pattern.

thanks in advance for any input, comments, or suggestions.

 

by the way, before anyone asks, I have no intentions of offering the LED strip for sale. housings cost 1400$ a set, and Im not taking that liability. I will do a thorough write up on how I did it all for the braver of you to try, and may even put together a kit with all the nescessary parts to do it yourself.

as it stands, the strip of LEDs itself, is not expensive at all. <50$.

 

I was thinking smoke colored tint on the headlight.... instead of solid paint. Can you picture this? :-D

 

might be picturing different things, but that was my backup plan, if the reflector was indeed important to the light ouput, I would use the tint paint to smoke it but keep it as a reflector.

or were you just talking about smoking the outer lens. I dont want to do that because it would decrease light.

 

I'm thinking the reflector is definitely part of the light pattern. I wouldn't paint that. You could probably get away with painting the flat surfaces just below the bulbs though.

 

Couldn't you mask the reflector area off with something that would simulate black paint such as painted aluminum foil? Granted it wouldn't be perfect but, it may give you an idea of how the paint will efffect lamp brightness.

 

This is what I was going to suggest doing. Do a couple test runs with something covering the reflective chrome. I would bet the bank that the chrome probably more than doubles the light output. Thats the whole reason behind parabolic reflectors.

I do have a thought though. Maybe instead of gloss black paint, you could use black chrome? I assume this would reduce light output, but may still be reflective enough to run. Also, what about continuosly running your brights? Can you adjust them to compensate for the reduced light output? Kind of a band-aid type approach, but just a thought?

 

nah I dont think I want to do that. be blinding oncoming traffic, plust the yellow color it gives off.

I guess I will try it with them off. I assume I just connect these to 12 volts and the ballast does the rest. the hid seems like it doesnt even light up the housing that much, I just see all the light coming from the lens even though its not a projector type or whatever.

 

You can paint the reflective part behind the bulb... You light output would suck... The only part you can paint is the silvery gray piece... When you open up you will no what to paint. Its one piece. THe headlight splits into 2 parts and then there is a loose center part. That is the part that gets painted...

 

ares, this sounds like an awesome project... post pics when you're done

I think you might be OK painting the entire housing.. one option you may not have considered, is to have a new lense for the HIDs. This probably won't improve your peripheral lighting too much, but with the right concavity on the lense, you shouldn't loose too much range

 

Sorry I had a typo.. You can't paint the reflective part behind the bulb...