To HID's or Not?
 

Some of you might remember but a few years ago I had some retro fitted headlights. They are in a box in my garage right now and I 'mthinking about cleaning them up and installing them over this winter. I am on the fence though because I kind of felt maybe I was doing to much, or to much was going on. Im really interested in knowing what you guys think

OEM lights
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6...a6d8c9c1_b.jpg

HID retro lights
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8063/8...a7853063_b.jpg

In my honest opinion, I would run the retro fitted headlights ONLY IF the reflectors and upper marker light wasn't smoked out (at least looks smoked from the pic/angle). Because the projectors get rid of soo much of the chrome/mirror reflection from the halogen housing which kinda of throws the front end your Fit off to me since there isn't any chrome bits up front what so ever yet on the other hand having the reflectors and side markers not smoked breaks up the black/dark bits just enough to were to it doesn't all just "blur" all together and conflict with itself.

Again, that's just my opinion. Its your car YOU do what you feel is adequate to fit your preference. ^.^

If you're looking for a fairly low cost alternative to brighter lighting without re-installing your retrofit or your/another HID kit look into some PIAA Intense White bulbs. If you do a LOT of night driving they burn out quick admittedly (one every 15 months for me on average) but produce a crisp white light (4700k if I remember right) and visibility is much better than the factory bulbs and Silver Star Ultras for about 50 bucks on Amazon.

put the retros back in!!!!!!!!!!!!!! looks sick and retros are the way to go!!!thats my $.02

shut up or I will ban you :p

better choice of words

.... what?

Not too much going on at all, flows well with your car being mostly black.

Don't install them and sell them to me instead :P

The car is not daily driven and doesn't see much night driving any more. You would also be right to think the reflector and sides are smoked out. The Fit headlights are very big and it, at times, seemed kind of out of place to have the two small projectors in all that black. I know my car is kind of got a Black on Black theme going on but at times, to me at least it seemed like maybe to much and like Hootie said, it kind of all blurs together.

Keep the comments and your .02 coming guys. I really would like to know what you think

I have thought about selling them, several times. The thing is they are not in the best shape. That's why they are not installed any more. Winter took a real bat to them and both the lenses have fogged up. Also the right light bulb.or blast when out... so Yea. Funny I actual saw someones WTB thread for some retors and it got me thinking about mine again.

Did you originally retrofit them yourself? Maybe open and clean them and reseal them better with silicone. Have you tried swapping the one good bulb over to the dead side to test? If replacing ballast, maybe even redo/upgrade the retrofit.

no i dint do it my self, but yea thats what I would have to do. Take them apart and reseal them. I have not tested. When I took them off it was the middle of the winter and I put them in a box and kind of forgot about them, you know. The projectors them self are pretty nice, they are FX35. If I do end up wanting to run them then yea the first thing I will figure out is if its the buld or the balist

EDIT: if any of this looks like im just rambling nonsenses, I have been up for 24 hrs and cant sleep so sorry :)

EDIT2: by rambling nonsenses, I mean more so then normal

I'm not a big fan of the smoked out headlights, but it goes with your overall theme/look. I say definitely put them back on (once you open them up and re-seal them, and fix the ballast/bulb issue). Especially since they're pretty good projectors.

I like the OEM ones more for some reason

Put the projectors back in, they don't look any more awkward than the OEM pieces and are more functional. OEM pieces looks like they threw some flea market 80s fog lights into a housing and called it a day.

while the retro's look good, i think from a reliability standpoint, i'd keep the stockers and just run stock bulbs.

unless ofcourse this is like your weekend fun car or something and dont use headlights much...if at all.

I'm not a fan of the Fits OE headlights (GD or GE)... and retrofitting them to me, which, like you said, looks out of place with a small projector in a large (blacked out) reflector housing. Which is why I went duals.

But, if I had to choose between your two options, I like the retro better in this case.

as for the bulb/ballast issue... I just replaced my HIDs with another kit I had bought a while back, but never got around to installing. The bulbs themselves were burning out, but I felt better replacing both bulbs and ballast in this case (since I had startup issues getting the driver's side on sometimes). I would suggest just replacing the whole kit (bulb, ballast and if you have it the relay... or add one if you don't) instead of trying to figure it out. Get it from a place you think is reputable (TRS?).

If you think that's a bit much ($), then I would suggest sticking to the OE headlight.

The retrofitted ones seem to remind me of the BMW "angel eyes" effect for some reason.

If you can work out the kinks of the bulbs and ballast, I'd vote for the HIDs. Like a few of us have mentioned, cosmetically they work better on your car.

retro for sure! goes really well with your car

put the retrofit back in, your car looks so mean with it.

care to share the specs on your retro?