Xenon dazzle?

The phrase that the lights dazzle is very old indeed, long before the HID xenon appears.

Many times the lights of the opposite direction cars or those witch are behind disturb us, even if they have simply halogen bulbs.

But why does that happen?

There are many reasons... maybe they adjusted wrong, either the bulbs are very low quality or they don't be installed correctly in the car headlight.

The high intensity discharge (H.I.D.) bulbs are a type of light technology which replaces the old halogen bulbs.

The HID bulbs generate carbon arc between the two tungsten electrodes when the high voltage is applied. The light intensity output is triple than an ordinary halogen bulb.

The reason that some lights are dazzle is not because they are HID xenon and have triple intense comparing with a halogen bulb, they dazzle because they have very bad focusing .…

The point of the light source, (the thread of the halogen bulb and the electrodes at HID xenon) should be at the right position, inside the car’s headlight.

Only then the beam will be correct. These are simply optical rules.

In order to understand better what happen, we’ll see some light types below and how the light beam developing.

There are three basic categories of lights:

1. With parabolic mirror and multi-lens crystal.

In that case the reflection comes from the reflector and the beam is shaping from the lens inside the crystal.

2. With multi reflection mirror.

Here the beam and the refraction are made from the reflector with better result.

3. With elliptical mirror and projection lens.

In that case because of the projection lens, we have not only reflection, but also projection of the light beam for better focusing.

With the installation of an HID xenon system, essentially we change the bulb with a new technology lighting system.

It’s important then the bulb we’ll install to be produced according the requirements of the original headlight, in order the light source to be at the exact point it should be, related with the geometry of the headlight.

The appropriate bulb should be made according the preconditions of the manufactory and not have deviations at the point of the light source.

A poor quality HID bulb. The tip-to-edge deviation is .61mm

The properly constructed HID bulb. Edge-to-edge is just .15mm

Xenon lights produced much less temperature than the halogen bulbs. For this reason increases the reflectors life spam.

At the market we could find many different types and qualities of HID xenon.

Installing a high quality system, we do not differentiate the beam. While a low quality does not give us the desired result.