nevernu

I've had the car 6-7 years and recently late at night on very hilly back country road with high beams on, I started noticing a distinct brownish separation between the the light pattern 20-30 feet from the car. Closer to the car it was the HID bright light and further it was the non HID yellowish light. I was tired and the separation became very noticeable/annoying especially going up and down hills. I got so that I was focusing on the separation point instead of driving properly, so bad that I had to switch drivers. The next day I had a look at my lights and sure enough with high beams on there is a HID part (from the low beam) and a yellow non HID part from the high beam. Is this usual and is there a remedy with a simple bulb change? Granted it took me years to notice, and on level road it is hardly noticeable.

KMiles

I was noticing the same thing and the only remedy I've found is to swap them out to LED's. I recently installed the LED's listed below and they work great. I drove home from Portland Oregon late Saturday night and used them a number of times. The only challenge is that you can't use them as DRL's (Daytime Running Lights). I kind of hated the OEM DRL's and had replaced fixed that a year ago with another solution.

http://www.vleds.com/shop-applicatio...icro-9005.html

If you wait, they typically have sales on holiday weekends and you can get a 10-15% discount.

nevernu

thanks for your reply, Ill keep an eye out for sales. But I'm confused, the product blurb talks about replacing your high beam HIDs with these. What high beams bulbs do I have, with yellow light color? Is it possible that I have HID low beams and non HID high beams?

KMiles

I don't know about all of our cars, but my 2010 ES350 has only HID low beams. The high beams were just standard bulbs - hence the yellow color. I'm not sure that they could make an HID be used for DRLs, but I'm not a lighting expert.
I really felt like the standard high beam bulbs, being used for DRL made the car look old when it comes to lighting. I ended up turning off the OEM DRL function and replacing my turn signals with three way LED's - they are full 5K bright when in DRL mode, turn amber when in turn signal or flasher mode and then white dim about 80% when the headlights are on. It makes the car more visible during the day and looks more modern. I had done the same thing with my Infiniti, as they didn't have a DRL option in the US.

jkayca

If you check the owner's manual it should tell you what the replacement bulb is for the high beams. From there, you can tell if it's a HID or not.

nevernu

of course RTFM

highbeam 9005 60w type C HB3 halogen bulb

emperorpen

I have a 2010 ES-350 and the high-beams are definitely halogen reflectors. Also, I'm pretty sure the low-beams are halogen projectors rather than HID; there's a lens in there, but the light is yellow and dim compared to cars I've owned that definitely had HID lights. Were HID's an option, maybe? The high-beams are definitely halogen reflectors, in any case...

High-beams are mostly halogen, even on very new cars (aside from those that are all-LED). There are some "bi-xenon" cars (some pre-LED Acura models, for instance) that do indeed have HID high-beams. However, it's actually a single projector per side. It mechanically toggles its aim up and down, by way of an internal baffle controlled by a servo motor. This is a very efficient and logical design because HID's have to be self-leveling in the EU anyway; you can kill two birds with one stone and have the baffle serve both functions. The light they produce is bright and focused enough that simply aiming it higher does a pretty good job of fulfilling the high-beam function.

There are a couple of reasons you don't see separate high-beam HID projectors (at least not that I'm aware of--could well be wrong). First, as everyone has observed, they take a couple of seconds to warm up and produce full brightness. That's obviously a problem for high-beams, which you need to be able to instantly (and frequently) toggle on and off. Second, the ballasts cause a momentary--but substantial--spike in electrical load when you switch on the lights, in order to establish the electrical arc by which they function. Some people learn this the hard way when they retrofit HID's into cars that weren't designed for them. So if you wanted to have separate HID high-beams, you'd need to beef-up the electrical system (at added expense) in order to be able to handle that repetitive spike. It's not really an issue for low-beams, of course, because you don't tend to toggle those while driving.

Hope this makes sense.