My other car is a 05 Acura TL, and altough I like the Titan better, the TL has HID's and it makes a HUGE difference when driving at night. In the Titan I felt like I was driving by candlelight. I added the fog light kit and that made a noticable improvement but was still wanting for better lighting.
I considered getting the Silverstars or something similar, but at $30 or $40 and they only last a year which in the scheme of things isn't very practical. Especially if you are going to keep your truck for awhile. It isn't that much more to drive with the HID's if you think of it like this. So I read the reviews, and researched and researched, and picked the JDM kit off of Ebay for $280.00 complete with shipping. They shipped from Brooklyn, NY and I got them three days after I ordered them from DHL. It came with a tracking number to boot. They come with a year warranty and will swap broken part if you have one. JDM's rating on ebay is very good. But you might also check I think there is a group buy going on with Pi3Yeargrad, I think it is located here:
Here is one of the HID bulbs, which I picked 6000k over the 8000k
The 6000k is what you see on most of the Acura's and Mercedes..
the 8000k have a lot more "BLUE" in them.
The HID Bulb here has a plastic removable shroud on it. You remove that
when installing the bulb. You also want to make sure that you don't get
your nasty fingerprints on the bulb... Or it will be bye bye bulb.
Here is the Ballast box, there is no seperate igniter it all happens in this nice tidy box. The box is about the side of a regular iPod.
Also is the harness with the bulb attached this is basically how it all hooks together, it simply needs to be mounted in the truck. You take the Titan wiring clip for the bulb and plug it into the brown clip.
When plugging it into the clip. You have to make sure the red wire matches with the white wire.. And the black wire with the black.
The parts are all of very nice quality. The rubber weather boot on the back of the HID bulb is not really useable as far as I can tell. It's no big deal as the Titan doesn't have a weatherboot on their bulb either.
The kit came with some metal brackets that you could hard mount the Ballast box if you choose to. I skipped it and used some 3m Body Moulding tape ($4 from Autozone) and stuck it on to the shelf below the light assembly as show on Spank Monkey's instructions.
The JDM kit seems to be of higher quality than what I could see in Spank Monkey's kit he got from some other vendor.
The install took about 15 minutes per side. I didn't take any pictures because it would pretty much be redudant with Spanks pictures.
But I did post a lot of result pictures for you all to check out.
Here the first one is a test run.. HID one one side, with the Fog's running, good show of color difference.
Now for a little bit of experimenting.
I covered up one light at a time to show the difference in lighting.
Which initially didn't work right with the camera, because the camera
compensated exposure for the varying degrees of light, and made the Incandescent bulb seem much brighter than it really is.
So I switched the camera to manual mode. Which for the HID is a bit over exposed, and for the Icandescent is Underexposed. But it literally shows the light difference. The camera had the exact same settings for each of these photos.
Here is the same picture as above, but with both lights on
the one on the left is using the same exposure settings as above
and the one on the right the camera was set to AUTO
This one I pulled up to a garage door. Unfortunately the truck was at a bit of an angle making the lights appear lopsided. But it shows that the headlight assemblies to a great job of cutting the light off from drifting up and blinding oncoming drivers. The Titan housing works excellent with HID's. And you retain the ability to use your high beams.
Of all the mod's I have done, this has been the single best one, And If you drive much at night I highly recommend this mod. Also the more over 40 you are the less light you see! It can really help if you have older eyes. It only took me about 30 minutes to do, and I took my time.
The first side took about 20 minutes, most of which was spent getting the tools, the second side, I did in about 10 minutes. If you can change your car battery you can install HID's.
If anyone in the Dallas area want's to see them.. Drop me a line. If you show up at the next meet I will help you install them.
Congrats from someone who has done thousands of low light/flash photographs. You managed to show this mod for what it truley is. Thanks for all the time and effort and may I say, DUDE YOU ROCK!
__________________ IRC VK56 Member "BIG CHIEF WANNARACEUM"
2005 XE, "Land Shark",1/4 MILE: 13.851 AT 98.52 Full Street Trim on Snow Tires Record HolderBuild date 3/05
Performance mods: UpRev Osiris, JWT cams, NISMO CAI, NISMO True Duals and NISMO Headers with Swain's White Lightning Coating, Suncoast Ram Air Hood, Tru Trac, Burnout mod
Stereo mods: Pioneer Premier DEH-P880PRS head unit, Audison LRX 4/300 Amp, Boston 6x9 coaxials front & Focal 6.5 coaxial rears with JL tweeters in dash.
wow, I already blind cars here in LA and have them flashing their high beams because my stock lights are so bright.
Seems dangerous to me.
someone flashes that **** at me I'm pulling out my Coleman 1Million candlepower spotlight and beaming them in the head with it.
Please let me know if it blows anythign up in your electrical system, I hooked some 30 watt HID's up to my ATV and they created some high voltage spikes that wiped out some expensive stuff on my ATV. I think the ballasts were sending high voltage back to the battery. Do these have any type of filter to prevent them from damaging other electrical?
__________________
PRG Upper Arms and SAWs DR rears 4" lift, Dunder Grill, Extensive Stereo System, HID Club, AEM, Stillen Exhaust, Wet Okoles. Some Titan Pictures (Work in Progress)
Justintoxicated,your stock lights are aimed too high because of your leveling kit.This is why you are being flashed;it isn't the brightness of the stock lights it is the aim.You tilted your nose(and the headlights) upward with the kit.Readjust your headlights-tilt them downward.
ELBO-great review and pictures.I have been eyeballing the JDMs since bestatchess mentioned that he installed them.Guess I should just pull the trigger and spend the $280.Thanks.Charlie
PS Are they the ones you find on Ebay with JDM mentioned in the heading?Do you have the sellers web address or Ebay name?Thanks!
Justintoxicated,your stock lights are aimed too high because of your leveling kit.This is why you are being flashed;it isn't the brightness of the stock lights it is the aim.You tilted your nose(and the headlights) upward with the kit.Readjust your headlights-tilt them downward.
ELBO-great review and pictures.I have been eyeballing the JDMs since bestatchess mentioned that he installed them.Guess I should just pull the trigger and spend the $280.Thanks.Charlie
PS Are they the ones you find on Ebay with JDM mentioned in the heading?Do you have the sellers web address or Ebay name?Thanks!
I think his leveling kit is causing a problem.. I have never been flashed once. I drove around a little bit last night with the HID's I don't see any reason I would be flashed, They put out a ton of light, true, but it is aimed down at the road, as the last picture on the garage door shows.
11-18-2005, 12:38 PM
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