Bill Strahan
Joined: 20 Aug 2008
Posts: 145
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 Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 2:52 pm Post subject: HID light conversion |
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This description is for individuals wanting to upgrade their landing or taxi lights to a HID bulb. I am uncertain as to whether or nor Arion has always supplied the same fog/driving lights for the Lightning kits as what I received with mine (Mark, Nick?) but if that is the case then this will apply to all of the Lightnings that used the Arion supplied lights.
The bulb in the driving light is an H3 style bulb. Fortunately for us it is a pretty common bulb, and you can see a picture of it as it looks removed from the housing here:
http://www.micksgarage.ie/proddetails.aspx?pid=120425&pk=34AEC
Once I figured out what type of bulb it was, I went on a hunt for HID lights that replace that bulb. I googled "HID Conversion H3" and started following the links.
What you'll find if you do something similar is that there are many styles out there. Some HID conversions come with a ballast with integral igniter, which is the kind I have installed. Other kits come with a separate ballast and igniter. I don't really know the difference, I'm just lazy and I only wanted to have to mount one thing. My ballast was about the size of a deck of cards but about 50% thicker.
The upgrade process is simple: Remove the light cover on the wing. remove the reflector housing from the wing and unplug it. Remove the single screw that holds the H3 bulb in your reflector housing and remove the bulb. Replace the bulb with the H3 replacement that came in your HID conversion kit. Find a place to mount the ballast out in the wing near the landing light housing, mount it, and connect it to the same source that powered the previous landing light, paying attention to polarity this time since the ballast has + and - connections. Connect the ballast to the bulb and reassemble everything.
I'm very happy with my conversion and highly recommend it if you'll be flying at night. My tower can spot me more than 10 miles out on a clear night.
Now, as to the selection process, I don't have anyone I can recommend. Just have to do some research and make a selection. Both companies that I purchased HID conversion from almost 2 years ago are gone now.
But, I do recommend you team up. They normally come in pairs and the paired lights for cars are less than twice the cost of single lights for motorcycles, so if you need just one then find someone else wanting to upgrade, order an upgrade kit for a car, and the two of you can each take one bulb and ballast.
And the last thing is about power and color temperature. I am using a 35 watt system and thrilled with it. I tried a 55 watt, but it gets really hot, it throws the circuit breaker at times on startup, and it's not that much brighter. Color temperature is very important though. 3500k is a pretty yellow light, similar to the halogen you have now. 4300-5000k is a really brilliant white. I'm using a 4500k bulb and think it's great. Above 5000k it gets more blue/purple and I don't like it. I'm sure you've seen goofballs driving down the street at night with very high-glare purple lights. They're probably about 9000k or so.
Anything between 4300k and 6000k will be fine, but the brightest light for the power input is at 4000-4500k.
Get a 35 watt, 4300k-5000k, HID conversion that uses an H3 bulb. You might look at slimline ballasts since it will be easier to mount, but I have no experience with them and they're a little more costly.
A quick google search shows me these as reasonable possibilities, but by all means dig into this on your own as well.
http://www.buyhidkits.com/4300khidkits.html
http://www.amazon.com/Xenon-Light-CONVERSION-4300k-Bulbs/dp/B003MOIHSS
http://www.hidgeeks.com/H3-HID-CONVERSION-KIT/H3-HID-Conversion-Kit-p28.html
Let me know if you have any questions!
Let us hear your results!
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