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Originally posted by Delmarco+Feb 15 2005, 11:57 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Delmarco @ Feb 15 2005, 11:57 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-e36_m3_Turbo@Feb 15 2005, 04:44 PM
do you have to turn your ac and deforster on everytime you turn on your lights? or just during installtion?
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No not always only when you plug back in your battery and before you turn the HID low beams on for the FIRST time ever. This prevents you car from power surging and killing your battery or worst case frying your car's circuit. This is due to the fact that your battery gives off 12 Volts and the HIDs need 12,000 Volts to power themselves on and less voltage to stay on. The HID Ballasts is what, by means of something close to magic, transvert 12V into 12,000V ! But the first time you turn on your lights the battery will be like "WTF" and there will be a slight surge of power to the HIDs (you actually see this when the HID beams flickers from purple to green to white in less than a second before settling into the normal luminosity).
Also try not to turn on or play with the HID beams when the car is not running if you like having your battery functioning.
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Most of these statements are untrue.
The ballast uses a device called a transformer to step-up the voltage to extremely high levels that are required to make a DC arc of electricity used in the bulbs to produce light. They aren’t simply called transformers because they do a little more than that. HID lamps (fluorescent, and others too) require a sudden burst of energy to ignite and begin producing useable light. In addition to that ignition pulse, it also regulates the output voltage to keep it within bounds to keep the lights steadily ignited.
Your battery does not know that the electricity it's about to output is about to be stepped up to 12,000 volts (or whatever the particular ballast is designed for, rapid starts usually spike higher), all the battery sees is a ohm load drop and it empties out a much larger flow of electrons since there is less resistance. (ohms=resistance. [0 ohms=0 resistance=short circuit])
This is known as a voltage drop – the lights (like, interior cabin lights) dim for a sec. Same idea behind when a subwoofer with a really powerful amp but no capacitor in-line - the lights dim when the amp is reproducing a deep, hard note.
Let's not forget about the alternator that is producing electricity and charging the battery when all of its amperage isn’t being used. (Also, with the alternator, the car's net voltage is usually around 14.4v, although the battery is 12v)
Flipping on your is not as damaging to the battery as you think it is. Have you noticed how dim your interior lights get when you start your engine? Yeah, that starter draws a TON of amperage. Just look how thick that wire is that goes to it. Voltage drops are bad for electronics like radios and DME systems, but they have buffer capacitors and don’t draw too much current where a quick severe drop when starting the car would cause the buffer to run out.
Two Misconceptions:
1. What you were describing is not a power surge, but a voltage drop (AKA: a "brownout") A power surge is when the voltage surges upwards, causing more current to flow through electronics, and potentially damaging certain components.
2. Voltage is not the same as wattage, which is not the same as amperage. Think of a plumbing system where water pipes are the electrical wires.
Voltage=water pressure
Amperage = amount of water
Wattage = pressure*water flow (IE: gallons per minute)
Example: you have a house with 2 showers. You are already in one, then one of your family members turns on their shower. The water pressure drops(voltage), thus the gallons per minute (wattage) drops for each shower
That's really basic, but hopefully you get the idea. Wattage and Amperage are the actual amount of electricity; voltage is just the water "pressure".
Now, about the blue tint but white light stuff. (IE: you look at the headlight and it appears to be projecting a blue light, but you look where it is shining and it’s perfectly white) This is caused by a phenomenon called chromatic aberration. In short, blue light bends more than red light and is given off a little wider than where the light is projected. Many OE (Original Equipment) HID projectors project an eye piercing white light, but look like they are projecting blue. All the ricers thought that when they pass all these BMW X5’s and Mercedes cars on the headlights, that they really had blue HID when in fact, they don’t. They wanted to look the same so they demanded blue-ish headlights.
Here's a website with some good diagrams of lense aberrations.
Kelvin:
Daylight is a range of color temperatures ranging from 3000K (morning and afternoon) to 3900 - 4100K (2 hours after\before sunrise\sunset) and peaking out at about 5400-5600K. All of these vary slightly from location to location & atmospheric conditions. There is no “White” Kelvin color temperature since Kelvin is a COLOR scale, but daylight is the best reference in choosing a HID bulb unless you want to look flashy. I found that the bluer headlight bulbs I tried were harsher on my eyes than whiter ones.
I can go into more detail about kelvin, but I'm sick of writing for today, I've been doing it all day.
I REALLY don’t mean to bash anyone or make anyone feel bad, I just can't let this slide and there was a whole lot of bad information floating around in this thread and I felt like clearing it up.
used compare the older pictures to these ones I took today...
Linear Mode
