Can anyone recommend HID conversion kit for VW T4 Caravelle long nose?
Something not expensive and good (is it “tall john” to ask :discodance: )
I never install HID’s before and wondering if anyone can point to installation instruction specific to Transporter/Caravelle/T4?
Thank you
My advice is, don’t bother fitting them at all. That way, you won’t annoy everyone driving in the opposite direction or in front of you!
Thank you for advice.
But I think its also matter to adjust them correctly and adding reflector on the top so it will not bother uncommon car’s drivers. Or to find a specific once for T4 headlights reflectors.
If not HID what would be the other best option? H7, H9? Osram, Hella’s, PIAA?
I hate,
hate
,
HATE
HID lights. It’s not like they’re even necessary in Taiwan. Everything is lit up so brightly here. 
[quote=“feropont”]But I think its also matter to adjust them correctly and adding reflector on the top so it will not bother uncommon car’s drivers. Or to find a specific once for T4 headlights reflectors.
[/quote]
The only way to do this properly is to retrofit an OEM HID to your vehicle or into your headlamp shells. There are no cheap kits out there that will actually get you better lighting without blinding other roadusers.
Don’t do this!!
I agree. the housing and the light emitting glass envelope have to be in a perfect alignment with each other to avoid scattering light in off-axis directions. (like into the eyes of oncoming vehicles) This is generally only possible with lights specifically designed for a particular car as OEM. In non-designed applications, the envelope of ionised gas is generally nowhere near the intended focal point of the specific reflector on that car (and aftermarket globes of any kind can have that same problem, i suppose, but seem to be less of a problem as the light is emitted from a smaller source volume).
also, HID ballasts and control circuits are notoriously unreliable,and are quite susceptible to damage from heat and vibration, as well as voltage overload, current spikes, and so on… If a control box goes, you generally need to replace the entire system as they are not usually sold separately. I found all of this out the hard way on my car (the previous moron owner has put in a HID kit, and it was terrible and eventually failed completely. I ave gone back to the original lamp fittings with aftermarket H4 5000K lamps and find them to be much more reliable, much easier to live with in terms of instant light output and their tolerance of being turned on and off frequently (going through tunnels), and basically the same output with lower cost and much better beam profile.
halogen bulbs give you 3/4 the performance without the high cost and low reliability of HID. 50 bucks versus 400 bucks: you choose.
Thanks urodacus,
What brand of H4 5000K would you recommend?
Back in US I would go for Cibies, HELLA or PIAA (most expensive not sure if the best…)
Keep the original circuits. Change to better bulbs. Faffing around with cheap mod kits is only going to give you more headaches. You’d best save your money for the odd repair that will come up from time to time.
I bought some Japanese brand with a name I can’t read so I couldn’t help you with a specific brand. Cibie were always been good to me in Australia, though.
expect to pay 50,000¥ for a 120 W globe in H4. H7s tend to be a bit more expensive.
I had a cheap HID kit on my car when I bought it, and one ballast started getting buzzy and then the control box fried itself. most annoying intermittent dropout to begin with, then more and more frequent, until i had no lights at night at all. Fortunately I was able to find original lamp fittings and put some halogens in… not much difference in output, and much cleaner beam.
50000 is pretty expensive 
and with 120W output do you had to upgrade harnesses? It will burn out the standard harness very fast.
danielsternlighting.com/prod … ducts.html
From this guy you can buy 130W/100W for 22 USD each
Or get Narva standard output from ruten goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21005168067826
[quote=“feropont”]50000 is pretty expensive and with 120W output do you had to upgrade harnesses? It will burn out the standard harness very fast.
danielsternlighting.com/prod … ducts.html
From this guy you can buy 130W/100W for 22 USD each
Or get Narva standard output from ruten goods.ruten.com.tw/item/show?21005168067826[/quote]
My bad! 5,000¥ is more like it, as I’m sure you guessed. That’s a tad more expensive than $22 per, but not much.
The 120W I said is the equivalent rating of a non-halogen bulb. the actual rating is actually about 85 W or something, but I threw the box away so I can’t check.
It’s a Japanese-made Mazda, so the harness is actually a bit better than I was used to seeing with Australian Fords and so on. And Ducatis, of course. Nobody makes electrical harnesses as thin as Ducati. I have rebuilt a few, and must have added several kilos to the bike…
My teana doesnt have projector lights but has OEM hid’s fitted.
Its not a retrofit job either as it clearly states on the vehicle document that i have HID lights.
They scatter light everywhere and generally look shit… how can they be legal?!
Also for something else dumb, my car is pearl white but the chinese translate it as electric yellow, i get quizzed by the police and the test center for this.
I didnt repaint the bloody car, its your stupid language translating it wrong!!! :fume:
I have to get nissan to confirm and prove on a sheet of paper that it is indeed the factory colour.
Oh and if you want HID’s, imho i have used philips OEM and cheapo chinese ballasts.
I could never tell the difference in quality, just make sure you get 6000k or 4700k rated bulbs.
You can get HID’s in Taiwan for about $1000 a set installed.
[quote=“smellybumlove”]
You can get HID’s in Taiwan for about $1000 a set installed.[/quote]
Yes. They are of poor quality, are not focused properly and will blind oncoming road users. For mouth-breathers only.
Seems like I will go for Narva either
H4 Rallye 70/65 Lumens 2000/1350 Ultra high efficacy, compatible w/most stock wiring
H4 Rallye 85/80 Lumens 2400/1750 Ultra high efficacy
They can be bought on ruten or Yahoo .tw
Seems there are a plenty of motorists whos driving style I characterize as just “set and forget” - set headlights on high beams and just don’t give a shit about others.
When I was younger and driving long distance I always has a small bag of ruten apples or tomatoes for such occasion :discodance:
j/k
Quarters are much better.
I used to know a guy who habitually drove his Chrysler New Yorker in the fast lane from start to destination at exactly 100kph, with the high beams on. He stopped doing that after a couple of guys pulled him over and persuaded him not to do that, with baseball bats.
[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“smellybumlove”]
You can get HID’s in Taiwan for about $1000 a set installed.[/quote]
Yes. They are of poor quality, are not focused properly and will blind oncoming road users. For mouth-breathers only.[/quote]
Yeah the bulbs are but the ballasts are ok.
My teana came with philips HID’s, they are 5 years old and the ballast wasnt giving out much power anymore (tried switching bulbs it did nothing) so i put the OEM philips bulbs in with the cheapo taiwan $1000 special ballasts and hey presto my lights were as good as new!.
[quote=“smellybumlove”][quote=“redwagon”][quote=“smellybumlove”]
You can get HID’s in Taiwan for about $1000 a set installed.[/quote]
Yes. They are of poor quality, are not focused properly and will blind oncoming road users. For mouth-breathers only.[/quote]
Yeah the bulbs are but the ballasts are ok.
My teana came with philips HID’s, they are 5 years old and the ballast wasn’t giving out much power anymore (tried switching bulbs it did nothing) so i put the OEM philips bulbs in with the cheapo taiwan $1000 special ballasts and hey presto my lights were as good as new!.[/quote]
Yes, but you can only realistically retrofit HID units into projector headlights, and not every manufacturer’s projectors can be properly modded either. A car that has reflector type headlights cannot be retrofitted without major surgery to graft complete HID projector modules inside, or the results are going to be horrific glare.
What you are talking about is replacement units for cars that came with HID lighting as standard. This is confusing to those who looking to add HID units to a halogen-bulbed car. 
Got a reply from very respective automotive light specialist.
I asked him if I can put 100/130 bulbs into my T4 headlights:
"…Using massive overwattage low beams in a truck/van/SUV with headlamps mounted higher than they are in a passenger car means you either produce extremely blinding glare for other road users (some of whom will write you tickets for it), or you tip down the aim so far that your seeing range is sharply geometrically limited. Either way, you lose. Furthermore, As wattage increases, the size of the filament necessarily increases, both in length and in diameter. This has a strongly negative effect on beam focus – the more closely the filament approximates a point source of light, the better the beam focus, and the greater the size of the filament the poorer the beam focus. Effective seeing distance plummets. At the same time, foreground light goes to nuclear levels, which does two things at the same time:
It fools you into thinking you’ve got “excellent” lighting. We humans are very poor subjective judges of our visual performance; it’s very easy to create situations in which we think/feel we can see much better (or much worse) than we actually can.
It absolutely kills your distance vision. The brightly-lit foreground causes your pupils to constrict, with the result that you can meaningfully see all the irrelevant stuff going on within 50 feet of the car, and beyond that, you’re effectively blind.
So, no 130/100 or 100/90w bulbs in your Transporter!.."
So I probably go for 80/85W Narva or Osram