I have 55w hid, in a driving beam hella housing. Led lights close in but cannot get the long range I'm after. Hid just penetrates the dark on the highway and fireroad s better. Led is great for tight trails, and general lighting like brake lights signal, but for true long distance lighting it's not the answer. Ben through this recently with another website where the members are blinded by marketing and false/wrong information. But I am speaking from real world experience of driving 40k a year in the night taking people to catch flights for work. Leave at 1:30 in the morning for a 2.5 hr drive each way. No matter what the weather conditions. I know what lighting works and what does not. Paid 70 bucks for the lights and 53 bucks for the 55w hid kit. Another thing that led's cannot get right yet is color temp. 6000k is not ideal for lighting the road. 4300k is for clear nights, for fog, rain and snow, 3000k is best. Anything higher than 4300k will decrease your actual light output. Again, this is from real world experience, not from ads, or light manufacturers, or people who think they know what they are talking about. I tried pretty much everything for nighttime driving, as I do a lot of it. These blue color lights (6000k) or higher are for little import cars to go park in parking lots and (look) cool. Not for lighting up the night to actually see thing like moose far enough ahead so that you have time to react and avoid.

Remember, lumens is not everything as most companies rate lumens very close to the light. Therefore a 50" may make 18,000 lumens at 1 meter, but move the reading device say 600m u the road, the hid will be producing much more light at that range than the led. Because of reflector design. Most led light use the light coming directly from the light source, the led. With a little cone around it. Other lights use a big reflector and quality lens design to direct the light in the proper direction. Try it with 2 mirrors using the sun. Have one mirror say 1 in, then use an 8 in mirror, direct the light at the same spot. Lumens from the source are the same but the bigger reflector is going to put ALOT more light where its going. Use a bunch of 1" mirrors and its still not going to get any brighter than that one mirror with no breaks in it. As I said on the other site is physics of light, where the other person could not get his head round and I guess he figures physics only applies to solids or something. Dunno...

 

So where did you get you lights? And do you have night pics anywhere of them? I need new headlights - stock ones are crap. And I'm not adverse to doing HID's as long as it's in a proper reflective housing.

 

I used hella 500 housings, and a good quality 50/55w hid kit. I may try 70w next time I place an order for hid. The results are quite amazing for the cost. You can use hella, IPf, Piaa, or some good housing like that. Stay away from crap lights like delta, and cheap stuff like that.

I have to order some hid kits for my Mazda 5, snowmobile and my new motorcycles. So I'm going to get a 70 or 100w hid kit for my hella set up. I'm going with 55w in my car and 35w in the motor sports toys. Just remember to go no higher than 4300k on you hid kits. Anything else will be blue and you will start losing light output.

This setup is not a headlight. Its an aux lighting setup. I'm going with ipf, for my actual headlights. More output and no light tossed up in my face in snow and fog.