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Originally Posted by wai_lai416
i'm reading this post.. i was wondering what does retrofit mean? so there's the normal type of HID conversion kit and a HID Retrofit conversion kit?? and what rebase mean? what is the difference? i'm still trying to gather all my info b4 i go buy one~ and once i buy the HID kit. i can use any K bulbs? like 4k, 5k, or 6k?
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A lot of questions...
1) Rebase - OEM HID comes in two main flavors: D2S for projector HID and D2R for reflector HID. A rebased bulb means a D2S or D2R HID bulb was modified to fit onto a conventional halogen socket. This is never done in an OEM HID application.
2) HID Retrofit - This entails opening up the headlight casing, and installing OEM HID projectors (i.e. s2000 or TSX or TL projectors). If you dont feel comfortable doing this, there are many vendors that will do the labor for you (at a price). Besides this you still need HID ballasts and bulbs.
Pros: The real mccoy. By far the best you can do in terms of light for your car.
Cons: Difficult, expensive, and labor intensive. See, you can fork over a lot of dough and have someone else do the legwork for you or you can do the research, parts tracking, and install yourself.
3) HID Kit - This involves buying a kit that uses rebased HID bulbs and your stock halogen optics.
Pros: Easiest and cheapest method to attain HID lighting.
Cons: Dont expect to have lighting similar to anything OEM. Compare a HID kit with a HID retrofit or OEM HID. You will easily see how much of a difference there is.
4) Color Temperature - The kelvin scale dictates the color of the bulb output and the lumen output. Higher temperature yields a bluer color but less output. All HID bulbs are 35W and are compatible with any ballast. OEM HID kelvin temperature is 4300k.
Higher kelvin temperatures only really applies to HID kits. The reason for this is that with HID kits, the stock halogen optics dont create the brilliant color that a HID projector would. So thats why people purchase higher Kelvin bulbs to sort of compensate for the inferior halogen optics.
Basically it comes down to this:
If you care about the HID "look", then get a HID kit.
If you sincerely care about the main benefit of HID (superior light output and beam pattern), then I heavily recommend a HID retrofit.