I got these bad boys today for $80. 9" Hella Rallye 4000s once pencil and one spread. Both have the HID conversion but only 35w. i wanna go abit higher though, was also wondering are there any kits that go under 5000k as you guys have recommended?
View attachment 4283
That's a steal. These lights are still used in the industry, especially in off-road racing or rallying because of their performance. These are still sold for around NZD 900 brand new.
If you replace the ballast with
55 watts,
the colour temperature of the 5000K bulb will drop to around 4000K to 4300K or will always be significantly lower. These are supposed to take
H1 bulbs and
there are no decent aftermarket H1 35W or 55W (which is illegal even in
7th world countries) conversion kits available on the market. The ballasts are poorly made, as well as the bulbs, where the electrodes are almost always misaligned, providing bad light production and the materials used are just too cheap. You can buy the kit and replace the ballasts, fuses and bulbs with higher quality ones from
Philips, Osram, GE or Hella. They are expensive but worth every penny, always. There are no H1 HID bulbs from any of those manufacturers, though, so you may have to retrofit D2S bulbs but retrofitting is frowned upon by engineers and lighting experts, of course.
Here is a sample of an H1 HID bulb from a kit:
The bases can be H3, H7, etc., but the construction is very similar across all their range. The base is plastic and it is common to see that the electrodes are misaligned, just like the one in the photo. These manufacturers do not value quality. These bulbs almost always have erratic salt content in the arc area, where some have too many and some have almost none. You can't control lighting quality with any of these. Some Chinese HID produce less lumens than your standard 100W bulbs because of these issues.
Philips on the other hand...
The manufacturing processes of the major HID bulb makers are already extremely high-precision and extremely efficient, allowing them to engineer elephant-loads of light.
One thing to note, though is that if the reflectors are designed to project halogen bulbs and HIDs are placed, there is always a compromise on light pattern and distribution. The conversion will not affect the pencil beam that much but the spread one will scatter light everywhere.
H1 Rallye bulbs at
100 watts have raw lumens at
2600 already, as a standard, and that is
slightly below the light output of a D2R HID released 25 years ago. HID bulbs from good manufacturers like
Philips, Osram, GE or Hella are now at the
4800 to
6000 lumens mark because of design and precision manufacturing.
To answer the question, it will really depend on what compromise you are willing to live with, l
ower wattage with HID but with poorer overall light output or
higher wattage with the 100-watt H1s but with the light output as engineered in the laboratory. I haven't tried putting driving lamps on any of our Subarus but if my alternator can take it, I would go with 100w competition bulbs, which have a higher draw vs HIDs but can have better raw lumens than Chinese HIDs and better overall light output. Cheers.
