HID's + Lift = BLIND??

Hey there fellow tacomians,

I have always hated when someone gets behind me in a lifted truck and has like 6K HID's and I can't see shit

Curious what you guys with lifted trucks do to not completely blind the vehicle in front of you? Is there a way to angle the headlights so we are not lighting them up like the sun? I recently purchased a TRD and put a 6" lift on it and now I have my retro's sitting there and want to be as nice as I can to the fellow drivers out there without compromising my ability to see.

Just trying to ease the tension on the road!!
Let me know what you do! And as always pics are appreciated...

 

The adjustment screws are your friends... i would park a car that has stock hids next to your truck around 30 or so feet from a wall and line your cutoff close to theirs

 

But if I angle them downward won't I just end up blinding them even more?? I don't mean to sound retarded here but maybe I am. It just seems to me that if they are kept at the stock height and the truck is raised, then they are going to be level with or about the height of the roof?? So if I angle them down; in theory wouldn't they be pretty much just going straight into the rear window?

Sorry but maybe someone will have to dumb this down for me, as I apparently just do not get it!

 

Stop while you can still see their tires touching the road

 

If your truck went up six inches and is at the same amount of lean(front to back) your headlights are shooting 6" higher than stock and are now much brighter. If you angle your headlights down the light will not enter the vehicle directly in front of you or the passing vehicle until you are very close to that vehicle. If you truly have projectors in your headlights you can clearly tell when the light output stops but underneath that is a blanket of light. So another way of testing you light would be to get behind a car and normal following distance and see if your cutoff ends on the trunk/headrest/rearview mirror/ or higher.

My truck is lifted 4" and i have hid projectors and my cutoff lands on must cars trunks... this is at most lights when im only a few feet behind them. Some lower cars arent so lucky but i try to stay farther back from them

 

Yeah that makes sense I suppose. I do have projectors and just wanted to make sure I wasn't that asshole blinding everyone on the road...Thanks for the explanation and I will try it out on my wife's car and just adjust accordingly.

Thanks again,
-James

 

Good luck

 

It's better if you have at least a slight rake in our truck, it makes the aiming a lot easier. Rep to the OP to bring up a fairly serious safety concern, I wish everyone would think like this.

 

I was kind of worried about that as well...I don't have a rake whatsoever and I wasn't sure that the adjustment screws would let me go down as far as I would like....but as soon as I get it done I will update this thread with the end result.

 

theretrofitsource.com

get projectors with a cut off so you're not trying to aim light that's going wherever. That's going to be the only way to avoid light going wherever it wants with HIDs

 

unless you have HID specific housings our lenses will cause a lot of scatter. You can adjust them down but because of so much scatter it will still piss some people off. I had 55w 6k in my other truck in "non" HID housings, they were bright as hell but people still would flash there hi beams at me every now and then...I still think they are totally worth it though.

 

My bad, my bad. . . I was reading but must have missed it . . .

 

x2... i missed that part too

 

HID without real proper projecters is like driving around with your brights on. That is what HID's are. OEM or stock hids have a mechanical shutter that directs the light stream downward. Those are the "low beams". High beams, shutter moves and allows all the light to be directed lights up everything from the tops of trees to the goal post and everything in between.

What your doing is throwing in the bulb into your stock housing, bouncing full intensity into your stock reflector. Putting out brights all the time. Yeah, get your retrofit kit and put in a real kit. Don't cheap out.

Got pics of your setup? I get the idea that you might have some ebay projector headlight setup and not a retrofit kit or you wouldn't be asking these questions.

 

Meh... Depends on your reasoning for doing it. There's no denying that HID's a decent set of projectors put out more light than you could ever think about getting out of a set of halogens.

 

Youre not only making alot of statements but calling the man a liar, go preach in some other thread. K bye

 

well you got all the answers. but i know what you mean, and i think most don’t do the retro fit/projectors. they just stick them in stock housing.

 

I would strongly disagree with you there unless you are talking about the aftermarket projectors and housings you get on Fleabay. The projectors you get from places like TRS are just as good, if not better, than OEM. Some of those custom light shops modify the projectors to really get the most out of them and the results are pretty damn impressive.

I see fine with halogens as well but there's always room for improvement

 

Before I finally pulled the trigger on a set of projectors, I spent some time on HID Planet and it's pretty neat to see some of the things they do. Those guys custom make their cut off shrouds, mess with the spacing between the bulb and the lens and also swap the lenses for a clear version. The results are pretty awesome!