Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Group Buy Complete HID Kits! $475 CDN + Shipping

What's the status on these? How many are left? I'd want the 8000k's. And an estimate on when these would arrive, and how much shipping will be would be great.

I wanna see pictures of these first! I don't know why its taking so long

Apparently, your not aware that the NHTSA of America has banned the sale of HID retrofit kits in the US? This is true, anyone who buys into this will be putting illegal equipment onto your cars.

IF you REALLY want good HID xenon for your cars, why not do it RIGHT and just put in the real xenon projectors like what comes stock on any xenon equipped Acura, Audi, BMW, Infinity, Lexus, Mercedes, etc.??? This is a much smarter way to have cool lights, because since they are engineered to spread the light of a 3200 lumen xenon bulb, they wont put excessive light above the light/dark cutoff line, blinding everyone else out on the road. Besides real HID projectors allow you to have 4100k bulbs, which are the brightest ones, and since the projectors create the color prism at cutoff, they look even bluer than the dim 8000k bulbs that the lame kit companies want to sell you. Trust me, I tried a kit once before in my 'tour w/ 9006 retrofit, and since the 3200 lumen xenon bulb with a fat gas chamber is not designed for a halogen fixture which is designed to spread the light of a 1000 lumen bulb w/ a long skinny filament, then you will get glare, and that's not cool. I later switched to Audi A6 xenon projectors, and they are bright where they need to be, colorful, and have a very controlled beam pattern.

So not to rant for too long, I just wanted to let anybody know that this GB is a waste of dough, since the much better way to get factory engineered performance backed by millions and millions of dollars of research and developement is to go with OEM xenon projectors in your cars

Here are some useful links to learn more about the truth,
before you decide what to sink your whole week's pay into:

http://faq.auto.light.tripod.com/

http://www.network54.com/Forum/216460

http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/

Once you learn up on the subject, you will realize that retrofits into halogen fixtures are pointless and dumb

I didn't say less light than halogen. I said typically more glare. Yours may not have more glare since Cougers have projectors with a cutoff shield in them, but CONTOURs have reflectors, and WILL cause more glare than before when you times the output by 3x and give the lightsource a different shape (i.e. long skinny filament to fat gas chamber). And it's a fact that 8000k are not as bright as 4100k so let that part rest. 8000k are escpecially worse performance in the rain. And that's a fact. I tried 6000k Philips Ultinons (around 2650 lumens) once in my Audi projectors for a few weeks and I took them back out in favor of the old 4100k bulbs because in the rain, the 6000k were terrible for seeing the pavement (escpecially blacktop). And it's a given, that 8000k are going to be worse than 6000k, because the output is shifted that much higher in the spectrum, farther away from the center of the visible spectrum that humans see in

True 8000K are not as visilble compared to 6000Ks, but dry pavement driving visibliy is greatly increased. I have not had the chance to drive in the rain with these yet, but it should rain tonight (if the weather forcasters ever get it right) and I'll tell you my findings. Overall though these are much much better than oem bulbs, and true cougars do come with projector style lenses so light dispursement would be better than reflector. However I am going to install a set in my friends gti as a test and I will take pictures for a comparison.

Cheers

Your friend's GTI is German based which means it likely has the ECE based beam (modified to meet DOT requirements), normally referred to as a harmonized DOT beam. These tend to have a sharper light/dark cutoff line meaning less light bleeding above the cutoff to begin with. That GTI may not have much glare when upgraded to xenon.
But Contours for sure produce a lot of glare when you upgrade their halogen fixtures to xenon bulbs, since their beam pattern starts out as more like a fuzz beam from the factory, with not much of a definite cutoff line in the beam. I wish I could have taken a picture of my old 9006 fixture's beam pattern when converted to xenon. The beam against a wall was a mess, and sure they were bright, but everybody would constantly flash at me. And so then I had tried to aim them way down, but then all the light was shining down on the ground in front of the car just to keep people from flashing at me, but now I couldn't see worth a crap for distance vision.

European style ECE beam pattern is definitely a better candidate for attempting halogen to xenon retrofits, than the USA's DOT style beam, although there are some exceptions to that rule, as with your projectors in your Couger (since you said they seem to be OK). Generally it has been my experience (I have professionally done several xenon retrofits for a handful of people in my spare time), but its been my experience that with DOT fixtures results can vary greatly, but most the time the results are not desireable. DOT reflectors, are almost always horrible, although some H4 DOT applications may turn out non glaring, the beam pattern may still not wind up uniform by any means. Many DOT projectors can successfully take a xenon bulb and not cause more glare, but there ARE even a few projector halogen cars that have been known to have problems, as in certain year Acura Integra projectors. The earlier ones tend to cause a lot of glare, and also the Toyota Celica projectors need to have 2 holes filled in on the projector's shield so they wont cause the 'UFO' glare holes. And again, Contours always cause glare. But full-bred ECE fixtures tend to do much better to retrofit. I put ECE 6054s on my truck converted to xenon, with a custom made H4 underbelly shield and they don't cause any glare and those fixtures (reflector) have a very distinct cutoff line with very little light bleeding above. So just food for thought, you can't just stick a bulb with 3x more light intensity in and expect good results, since DOT actually has a requirement for amount of light to bleed above cutoff to light up overhead roadsigns, so when you increase the source by 3x, the required light bleeding above cutoff is also 3x more.

Another important consideration is that, the color blue at bright intensities is the color that is the most sensitive to the retina in the eye, but the color more in the yellow/green range is closer to the center of the visible sprectrum. For this reason, blue seem very bright when they are shining right into your eyes, but the yellowish/white are actually brighter to drive behind. And with 8000k, you'll also find more people over 60 flashing at you, since their retinas don't heal as quick, and blue is most sensitive to that