I haven’t seen it directly though, I just saw it via photos captured by my brother’s mobile phone. Next week I’ll be back in Jakarta, and hopefully the result is better if I saw it directly, and more useful used in the real road conditions.

UPDATE:  Since I’ve seen it directly in action, I must say I’m very impressed! The road surface illuminated  so much better than using halogen.  The money totally well spent! I’m also took better photos of the beam pattern. For your information, the bulb in the photos below is using 6000K color temperature, 4300K color temperature was not available at the time. As the time of this update, the bulb already replaced with 4300K one, so it should illuminate the road even better. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos.

The problem is, it was hard to locate a HID projector in Indonesia. In the end I purchased an HID plug and play kit to replace the halogen H7 bulb in my headlights. The lowest colour temprature I can get was 6000K, I really wanted lower than that, at least 4300K or 5000K. The result? it was really BRIGHT. I was quite impressed with the output, altough it does produce glare.

hid reflector

A little more than one year later, one of the ballast is faulty. So I put back the original halogen bulbs on the headlamps. I miss the brightness of HID. But I made a decision not to buy another HID bulb unless I do projector retrofit.

Around six month ago, I found on local online forum (modifikasi.com) thread that someone in Jakarta, Indonesia are selling HID projectors. I immediately tempted to bought it. I was already in Papua at that time. The projector is quite pricey, I can get new set of headlights for my car for that price! But I was affraid I will not found another HID projector for sale in Indonesia. So I bought it, transferred the money and I ask my brother to met the seller and check the condition of the projector. The projectors are coming from an RX-8, and after I researched on the internet, particularly on hidplanet’s forums it is not the best projector, but still OK. The projector came with clear lens and should produce additional light intensity and sharper cutoff.

rx8 projector

Then, around 2 weeks ago I almost forgot about my intention to do HID retrofit. Since my home leave vacation are coming within a month, I began to continue to search additional parts to complete my retrofit. Firstly I’m looking for used headlights for my car. Luckily, I found Galant VR-4 headlights in good condition. The low beam reflector already replaced with projector, but I think that’s halogen projector. I’m going to replace it with the RX-8 projector anyway.

vr4 headlights

After I found it, I began to search where should I buy the D2S bulbs and its ballasts. Unfortunately no one in the local online forum sells OEM ballast + philips 4300K D2S bulbs at the time. My other options are to buy from overseas, I searched on ebay for OEM ballasts (denso) and philips I can get them for around $300. But I never bought stuffs form overseas before, I’m bit worried on the customs. How much I need to pay the tax for this?

In the end I chose to use another HID kit (non oem). Fortunately I found a workshop who sells HID kit D2S bulbs with 4300K colour temprature locally. The workshop name is Delapan Satu. It’s quite cheap (only 60% from what I paid for my HID kit in 2006) and they also offers retrofitting service! They also got HID projectors for sale but since I already  got one I don’t bought it. Now my car is in the workshop for retrofitting. I really want to be involved in the retrofitting process, but I got very limited time in my hometown.

I hope the output will be good, at least can be compared with the guys at hidplanet.com forums who did really good job on the retrofitting.

UPDATE: the final result can be found in here.