Converting Hella 700FF's to 55W HID

[mastacox]

This is it they're installed and I have comparison pics Suffice to say, they're so bright I can basically turn my headlights off and not notice any difference. Installed pics will come later, but for now here are the comparisons:

Comparison 1:
Low Beams:


Hi Beams:


HID Hellas:



Comparison 2. This one is better because the road is a lot longer
Low Beams


High Beams


HID Hellas- the road in the distance (probably around 500ft away) is lit up bright as day



Nuff said. They're so bright I'm still a little shocked

[CYi5]

Yep, I always say they make the stock headlights seem unsafe...

[4x4mike]

Cool. How is the heat coming out of them? I know you went with the 55W and were wondering. Also the color tint seems a little cold/blue. How are they in person?

[mastacox]

Cool. How is the heat coming out of them? I know you went with the 55W and were wondering. Also the color tint seems a little cold/blue. How are they in person?

They are very cool-running lights. It turns out that HID's have higher irradiance in the visible and UV, and less in the IR which means they actually heat up the housing less than a standard 55W halogen bulb would (and far less than a 100-130W bulb). You can basically put these in any housing that is rated for a 55W H3 halogen bulb.

As for the color, they did turn out a little on the cool/blue side, which I'm ok with (they look pretty blue against the "yellow" headlights). I'm definitely glad I got the 5000K bulbs instead of the 6000K bulbs. In the future I may go with 4500K bulbs if I feel like it, but for now these are plenty bright and have a "cool HID" look to them.

I'm also pretty happy with the Hella 700FF beam patterns. They have much better throw than the Hella 500's I had, but are broad enough to cover the road ahead of me, and have enough diffuse emission to light up the sides of the road and directly in front of me (see what I mean about the "dark spot" in front of your vehicle being a myth?)

I'm probably going to end up dumping my little crappy Wal-Mart H3 driving lights too, they just don't do anything for me any more... I may end up replacing them with some yellow fogs, because the HID lights will be completely useless in fog and snow given their cool color and huge brightness.

[mastacox]

Some daylight pictures:





I swear my headlights and mini driving lights have never looked more yellow/brown...


The lights do have a little bit of wobble to them (which is expected, they're just bolted to the stock bumper after all), I'm thinking about making a custom strap and holds the top of the light to the grill, to help with that...

[Scuba]

That's awesome Brian !!

[YotaFun]

Hey Brain, if you do think of swtiching out those little driving light to fogs, you should put the yellow HIDs in them

A friend of mine with a taco got some fogs from a 4th gen runner and did that and he swears by them.

[mastacox]

Hey Brain, if you do think of swtiching out those little driving light to fogs, you should put the yellow HIDs in them

Yeah I thought about that. DDM has the 3000K 35W Raptor kit which would be a good choice for that I think; unfortunately the little driving lights I have don't have a wide enough beam pattern to be a fog light otherwise I'd just convert them.

I need to find myself a cheap set of H3 fog lights on ebay or something.

[4x4mike]

Anything new to report since you've had these lights for a month?

How is the heat with the 55w?

Can you tell if it's any hotter than it was with the 100w bulbs?

What about the ballasts? How about the heat at the ballasts? Where did you mount the ballasts? Are they sealed? Just wondering if they can stand up to rain from the front of the vehicle.

[mastacox]

Anything new to report since you've had these lights for a month?

No problems, they work great! I haven't hooked them up to the hi-beams yet, I need to do that eventually...

How is the heat with the 55w?

Can you tell if it's any hotter than it was with the 100w bulbs?

They are significantly cooler than a 100W halogen bulb, or even a 55W halogen bulb. HID lights have more emittance in the visible and UV wavelengths and less in the IR wavelengths compared to a halogen bulb, which means they actually heat up a reflector less than a halogen bulb does (the heating of a reflector is primarily due to IR emittance). As such, the 55W and 35W kits are perfectly fine to run in any reflector that can use a 55W or higher halogen bulb.

Theoretically you could put them in a 55W H3 fog light housing if you wanted, although those would be some pretty damn bright fog lights!

What about the ballasts? How about the heat at the ballasts? Where did you mount the ballasts? Are they sealed? Just wondering if they can stand up to rain from the front of the vehicle.

I haven't checked the ballasts, but I seriously doubt they heat up at all (the power throughput is not all that much). The ballasts are mounted (zipp-tied) behind the grill on the radiator support kind of behind the headlights. The ballasts and voltage regulators are completely waterproof, they could even be submerged under water and be fine.

Edit:
On the topic of waterproofing, you can also see in my pictures that the connections to the bulbs and ballasts have o-rings to help seal the connections. They are a tight fit in the connector body and I suspect do a good job of sealing the connections against water.



Keep in mind with the DDM kits that the DDM 35W and 55W kits come with a lifetime warranty on the ballast and voltage regulator, so if it ever goes bad you can have it replaced for free (minus shipping I assume). The DDM Raptor 35W kits on the other hand only have a 1 year warranty. It's very hard to beat the price, but you have to skimp somewhere when they are only $40/pair.