BBLexus

my sister has an '04 RX330 and wants to know if she has HID or halogen headlights. Her owners manual has references to HID and Halogen bulbs and she's checked the bulbs, but she can't seem to make sense of the situation. Is there an easy, surefire way to determine if you have HID or halogen headlights? Also - is it possible to HID low beams and halogen highbeams? She wants to upgrade to Silverstar ultras if she doesn't have HID.

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

Turn on the headlights and if the bulb starts out one color and then shifts to a whiter color, then she probably has OEM HID. Or open up the cap and pull out the bulb. You can tell if its HID or not because the two bulbs are completely different.


Most cars come with HID halogen highbeam anyways, regardless if the low beam is HID or not.

19psi

geez, this shouldn't be hard to determine. if the lights are much brighter and whiter than 90% of the other cars on the road, then they are HID! if they look yellowish and dim like any other car, then they are halogen.
or you could look on the actual headlight housing for the bulb code. if it's halogen, you'll see imprinted in tiny tiny letters somewhere on an edge of the clear plastic housing the letters "HB2" for halogen or "D2S" for HID.
oh yeah, if she has halogen and wants a better bulb, don't get the silverstars. they're junk. look on ebay for raybrig or polarg bulbs. much better.

emoshun

iTrader: (11)

Premium Plus Package ($3,440) adds a power liftgate, HID headlamps and a wood and leather steering wheel.

So if she has a wood steering wheel, then yes, she has HID's.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

start the car, then turn on the headlights against a wall. if the headlights beam go down, and then up, that means you have autoleveling and thus hid (unless autoleveling is broken which means you will see a warning light on dash)

Nextourer

Or compare it to the foglights. The foglights are halogens for sure. If they're the same colour as the low beam, you hava halogens. If your low beams are whiter and brighter than the foglights, you have HIDs.

Your high beams are halogens.