Wow, I'm surprised I missed the majority of this exiting thread! Sounds like many (not you Nater) of you guys have a lot of misconceptions here about HID. It seems like LouisW seems to also have a pretty good clue about what's going in this arena. Well I'm an HID experimenting veteran. Check out some of my stuff:
http://www.telcomplus.net/josch/
I've been involved with the
Philips Automotive Lighting Talk Forum as well, for about 3 or so years now (much good info). I go under the screename: JustHitADeereWithHID. I've tryed many types of HID setups and configurations on my various cars, and on some of my friends cars as well, over these years. And I'm here to tell you that many of you in
this thread are awefully quick to jump to bigtime conclusions about stuff that you know little about.
First thing I noticed way way back on this thread is someone said Lincoln's Mark OEM HID uses D2R. Not true. Since that was one of the first HID systems that went into production, Ford used a special use, non-standard HID bulb that uses a DC power supply (ballast). And it has a huge glass capsule, and does not ressemble any other OEM bulb on the market, and is only available from Ford (and I believe manufactured by Sylvania).
And, OEM (read O.E.M.) REFLECTOR HID systems ARE designed to use D2R bulbs (from the factory), and OEM (read O.E.M.) PROJECTOR HID systems ARE made to use the D2S capsule. That part IS correct. OEM is made for OEM. BUT, any time you try to put any HID bulb (2800-3200 lumens), into a reflector DESIGNED FOR HALOGEN lightsource (1000lm intended), you will most likely wind up with (in many cases) UNPREDICTABLE results. You put HID bulb with 3X more light in, and it overloads the DOT light pattern. DOT pattern is designed to have a small amount of ambient light that bleeds above the light/dark cutoff line (intended to illuminate overhead roadsigns), and so when you put in the bulb with 3X more luminous flux, you wind up putting 3X more light upwards towards roadsigns (and right into the eyes of every oncoming car in the other lane, coming at you). And it just winds up pissing everyone else off. I never had any luck
using D2S or D2R bulbs in my Contour (9006). Both made high glare. I WAS able to fabricate some custom shields for it to help fix the glare problem (
SEEN HERE). The shields also blocked out the yellow color (yellow emits from BOTTOM half of bulb). But the shields didn't fix the Contour beam pattern's POOR quality. That is why I later installed the OEM Audi A6 xenon projector units into this car. Now my beam pattern is real nice and smooth. And it's WIDE, like it was intended. And it looks so cool. It got the OEM purplish/ blue hue in the optics. By the way, that colored hue is just a prism created by the projector optics seen at the beam's cutoff line (seen when you shine lights from a distance onto a garage door or wall or something). Because those projectors just have the stock Philips 85122 bulbs in them (4100k).
Another common misconception goin around is that OEMs can sometimes come with different color temp bulbs car to car. NOT TRUE. ALL OEM applications w/ D2S/R have the 4100k-4300k style Philips, GE, or Osram/Sylvania bulbs in them. And the reason that older OEM xenon HID cars have bluer light output is because when Xenon Gas Discharge (HID metal halide type) bulbs age (200 hours or more), they gradually experience a phenomenon called 'color shift'. This is true for ANY gas discharge bulb (even residential, commercial, etc.). This is because, over time, the electrode tips inside the quartz chamber of the capsule tend to get mushroomed-over (a gradual melting effect in time), and this makes the blue arc disperse wider off of the electrode tips while running (which adds bluer color to the output. My 4100k Philips bulbs in my S-15 truck (more than 200hours on them) are MUCH MUCH bluer looking than new Philips 4100k bulbs that are in my Contour (if your looking at it from the offside angles and not directly into the blue prism stripe at the cutoff line). So hopefully that helps to explain why it seems like some OEM cars seem like different color temp bulbs than others. And of course, don't forget that the optics play a big role in how OEMs look. But remember, no OEM car came with anything higher than the std 4100-4300k rating. It's not even legal to have 6000k bulbs in Europe/USA since too much high-intensity light in the blue spectrum can over-irritate the retina (for oncoming traffic), since the eye is more sensitive to the color blue. Definitely not DOT approved.
Next thing to discuss, Is that Autolamps_online.com used to sell all the 4100k HID rebase kits (before the 6000k kits were available), with only the big FAT red plug on them (which by the way, is stock type plug from Philips/ Hella). All of those Philips LVQ-220 ballasts are made by HELLA of Germany. Here is what they look like as OEM for Audi, and BMW type applications in the Hella part#:
If pic does not show. .
But all of Autolamps_online.com's 6000k kits now come with Philips 6000k bulb, Philips marketed (Hella) ballast, with that big red OEM plug cut off and modified to use the now popular 2-wire plug, which was chosen because it's easier to fit into tighter places (better for many retrofits where space is tight). Nick sells only quality Philips components that have professionally modified bases on them, so any who thinks he sells junk is also saying that Audis, BMWs, VW, etc. HID systems are junk (even though Philips/ Hella invented the stuff in the first place).
That pic that someone posted earlier showing the fried terminal looked to me like WATER probably got into it, and caused the starting voltage (23kV) to arc. (Once bulb is warmed up and operating, running voltage is then supposed to taper down around 85 Volts, so it must have gotten burnt on an attempted startup). But anytime HID is put on to a car that didn't come out with it originally, then it must be installed to be WEATHERPROOFED. OEM applications have perfect sealing designed into the fixture and water or moisture cannot attack connections. If some monkey puts HID retrofit onto his car, and doesn't pay attention to this important detail, then there is NO guarantee that water doesn't get in and arcing wont happen. Only other possibility for it getting burnt like that, is that the ballast had the power turned on at some point, while there was no bulb in the socket. That too would cause arcing across the terminals (as Nater said earlier).
