Sounds silly BUT is high beam brighter than dipped beam......

A3-frankie

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i may sound really stupid here but...

The reason i ask is because if i get a HID kit then obviously it is the norm to replace the dipped beam for the HID unit.

Now when you flick to high beam it will be the normal halogen bulb it is using.

So do some people change both bulbs for HID and if so does it have to be a 'brighter' one or is it just the angle the beam is at that makes high beam brighter.

The other thing i'd be interested to know... does a 4300K kit look "HID" enough. The 6000K seems to be very popular.

Thanks in advance.
 
Before I smashed them into millions of tiny pieces and spread them along about 100 or so yards of the M6 I had OEM facelift xenons on my A3; and obviously they're just the same, dipped is xenon, high-beam is halogen.

I'd always thought of having a bi-xenon setup, but having decided not to bother and go the OEM route I was by no means disappointed. I think I'm right in saying that yes, the reason the hi-beam appears brighter, and casts its light over a wider area is down to the reflector / lens and the bulb has very little to do with it.

I think it's also probably fair to say that a bi-xenon setup may produce a brighter light overall (potentially giving a greater overall distance with 'usable' light); but I'm not sure how much you actually need it. I noticed that (comparing to my pre-facelift halogens) the dipped beam was noticably brighter, offered a larger area of usable light, and offered a cleaner (closer to natural) light. Someone also used the word sharp to describe their output which I thought was pretty apt. The high-beam were also a massive improvement, and to be honest the few times I actually needed them they were certainly sufficient - I really don't think I'd have needed any extra or different output a bi-xenon setup might offer. A while after I fitted them, I put some Philips Power2Night GT150 (or something like that) bulbs in for high-beam and they offered a bit of an improvement again - probably nothing like another HID lamp but they were better than whatever started in the clusters - certainly a bit brigher (perhaps not the quoted 50% but certainly over 10 at a guess), and indeed a slightly lighter colour temperature. That only reassured me more that bi-xenon would probably be overkill. Of course some may disagree, but I was pretty confident.

In terms of temperature of the xenons, the OEM are 4300/4600k (I can't remember which) and to be honest, you could tell they were xenon, but subtly might be a fair description of how that came across - you obviously could tell when you first lit them from cold and they take a second or so to warm up, and then every now and then you'd catch a little flash of gleaming white / really light blue. 6000k are more towards the late-model Merc / BMW type appearance that seem a bit more blue a bit more of the time. 8000k is another step up (and a bit of a drop in luminance), probably more blue than most people would like - but having said that there are kits by BOSCH HID (http://www.boschhid.com/en/index.asp) at 8000k which I've thought about purely because half of me wants to believe BOSCH HID is actually a proper BOSCH (as in, Robert Bosch) brand and not a touch of far-east trademark borrowing (I'm only thinking about a HID kit because I doubt I'll get any more OEM xenons at such a steal for the next car so facelift projectors and a HID kit it will have to be for a while).

Sorry to have waffled on, looking at that little essay I think I might be starting to miss my xenons and the motor they sat in a bit! Doh!

Anyway, hope it's some way helpful,

Regards,

Rob.

EDIT: Small pic, but my OEM xenons are the ones on the right in my avatar... It's probably a fair pic because that's what I'd say is an average of how they looked, at some angles (and ambient light conditions) you might catch a flash of some other tones though.
 
Yes if you put HID kit in the dipped beam it will still use the halogen main beam,
The bulbs are no brighter it just the diffuser of the light unit that makes them appear brighter on a a3 (both bulbs are 55w)
And finally i believe 4300k kit are the same bulbs as audi fit standard on S3's ect, 6000k are more of a blue colour which seems to give a better look and visibility (Please correct me if im wrong:shutup2: )

(damn Rob you beat me, how are you mate?)
 
Sorry mate... Got on a bit of a roll there! :laugh:

Yeah I'm OK fella thanks :) Bit of a crap day at work and I found out Enterprise are being a bunch of clowns about the hire car I booked (and consequently are now likely to deliver a clown car); but car worries aren't getting to me - other things are keeping me smiling.

Anyway, I'm about to go update the other thread with details of what the latest is with car etc...

Regards,

Rob.
 
Yeah 4300k is the standard, its a closer light to daylight - but if you want a blue tint then get a 6000k set, you'll still notice a big difference
 
The dipped beam is projected closer to the car and the high beam further away on standard headlights they are both the same wattage or 5W different. Xenons are a lower wattage but as they are more efficient they output more light, as this light is closer to daylight and projected closer to the car the night driving experience is improved. If you were to fit Xenons to your main beam they would take too long to warm up every time you switced them on to be effective, cars with bi-xenons such as Porsche have a single Xenon bulb with a relay operated shutter that moves up and down to change the bulb from low to high beam (similar to a H4 lamp). Event these have a H1 or H7 halogen lamp to fill in the spaces and for flashing purposes.
 
Thanks for the info guys, thats what i like about this forum. everybody knows something.
 

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