should I upgrade to HID's or just better bulbs

[zzoomp09]

Aftermarket HID's are illegal in the US. You can fool the inspectors if you have 35w 4500 or 5000 as they look very close to stock HID's (4300K are stock on our 3's).

By the way, I installed 35w 5000 HID's on mine. Worked perfectly until I noticed the left side is a little brighter than the right. The bulbs snugged in perfectly, I just don't know why the left shoots brighter than the right. Not higher though.

 

[vdubjetta2005]

I put an HID kit into my 2008.5 mazda 3 sport touring. The result was amazing. I put one side in and turned them on to compare to the factory halogen bulbs. The difference is indescribable.

The install took me about 45 minutes; the hardest part, or should i say the most time-consuming parts where removing the factory bulbs and putting in the ballasts. The bulbs are held in place with a thin metal rod that slips behind a clip. Prepare to have some patience because they are a pain in the ass, especially on the driver side. As far as the ballasts, i regret not going with slim ballasts, although the regular ballasts werent that hard to hide. I hid the ballast for the driver side light right inside the battery box, and the passenger side i just mounted it to the inside of the fender.

Most high-quality kits are truly plug-and-play. A good kit wont require you to run a seperate wire right to the battery. High quality kits also have, as you might expect, high quality wire.

I agree with everyone else, they are deff. illegal, but being that we have projector housings, it would be near impossible for a cop to tell.

HID's offer 3 time the light output as halogen, depending on the bulb temperature, and usually about 30% less power consumption.

Good Luck!

 

[RUMBLEFISH]

For that clip I went to autozone and got the screwdriver with an slight angle and a Y fork in the end. Its took me all of about 1 min on each bulb.

Got this little tip from another forum.

 

[drledford93]

Bringin' this one back to life--curious about those of you who bought the DDM tuning HID kit. Which one did you buy? Is it the 9006? I can't seem to find it. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in that direction...

Daniel

 

[icspots]

Bringin' this one back to life--curious about those of you who bought the DDM tuning HID kit. Which one did you buy? Is it the 9006? I can't seem to find it. I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in that direction...

Daniel

For the low beam it's H7. 9006 should be for the high beam which you probably don't want.

Incidentally on another forum I ran into a couple of cool modifications you can do to the halogen projectors to improve some of their shortfalls when compared against the HID projector. The main performance differences are: fuzzy cutoff, and glare above the cutoff. Also in the HID projector you can "color mod" (give it color along the cutoff) by spacing the shield from the bowl with washers.... on the halogen projector the shield is attached. Anyway these four modifications are:
-Either replace the stock frosted lens with a clear one, or spray the frosted lens with a clear coat making it clear. This cleans up the cutoff immensely.
-Cut off the projection on the shield that causes most of the glare above the cutoff.
-Paint the shield black to eliminate the rest of the glare.
-space the lens from the shield to give color along the cutoff.

Several members on other forums have done these mods and the results are amazing. It's not as good as the HID projector in terms of beam wideness, but it's ridiculously better than HIDs in an unmodded halogen projector. I'll be installing HIDs and halos next week and I'll be doing these at the same time.

 

[derspi]

wrong. in the US as long as the same model came with optional HID you can put the same "brightness" into your own car. But then again, how many DOT workers know what came factory on every make and model. all they care is that the headlights work and they aren't purple or some other color than white

I SERIOUSLY doubt that is the case but like I said I don't live in the US.

 

[maxspeed3]

I have a DDM 10K HID kit in my lows, highs and fogs. It's very nice!!!!

-Max