HID all it's cracked up to be?

same type of device that's attached to cars with auto leveling for the suspension. Mercedes makes this a little more complicated with more of them in various locations... but the 80's lincolns had the same device for the air bladders. Some luxury cars still use the same setup for their suspension systems. look under the back. you'll see it. i think it's on the driver side just behind the wheel... well.. a foot or so in.

 

Just to be clear, the leveler adjusts the beam for car tilt due to extra load in the rear. It does this by checking the height of the bottom of the car to the ground.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DanMan32\";p=\"96248)</div>

[font=Comic Sans MS:6024f412e6]Do you really mean to the ground, or to the axle, which is the ground plus perhaps 10", as V8CobraKid suggests?

If you really mean the ground, how does the car do this? An ultrasonic sensor, maybe?[/font:6024f412e6]

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DanMan32\";p=\"96248)</div>

[font=Comic Sans MS:c4392ec58d]Do you really mean to the ground, or to the axle, which is the ground plus perhaps 10", as V8CobraKid suggests?

If you really mean the ground, how does the car do this? An ultrasonic sensor, maybe?[/font:c4392ec58d]

 

no. it's a little arm. Imagine having the rear axle in front of you. the left rear wheel in in front of you. The rear right wheel is away from you. Parallel to your vision. there is a little lever. like your i ndex finger that is reaching out from your left and sitting over the rear axle in front of you. a 2 inch piece of plastic ( or possibly aluminum.. but i dought it) is between them. When the rear axle raises, your little lever moves up. if it drops, then it drops. this tells the car how thigh the back of the car is. When weight is added, it gets pushed up because the back of the car is dropping while the rear axle is staying still.

I'll find you a pic. better yet, i'll take one. not enough time and too tired right now. i'll do it after work.

 

are you telling me that, i actually made sense there?

 

In New Zealand, Prius only come with Halogen bulbs. This is a marketing choice I guess as there appears no reason why HIDs would not be acceptable. I replaced the factory bulbs with some high performance bulbs and there is quite a marked difference, but I would like to investigate the questions of HIDs further.

Would genuine Toyota HIDs be able to be fitted in my car? There are several questions here.

1. Can a HID "kit" be purchased separately from a US dealer?
2. Would this be able to be fitted in an existing Prius with halogen bulbs?
3. Is this feasible, we drive on the left rather than the right?
4. Anyone suggest a dealer I could contact to get more info?

 

they have HID conversion kits. All aftermarket. these kits usually Run for $1,000 USD

Not sure if it's possible to buy the HID units from Toyota. I would imagine Toyota would charge more, go with aftermarket.

The one problem you would have is.. no auto leveling. I'm not even sure if your car has the rear axle bracket for it. It may.. but i can't say it does because i haven't seen your car.

(halogen cars don't auto level right?.. anyone can correct me here)

HID kit would fit. You are changing the bulb and adding Ballast units. That's about it

Auto leveling could be a huge problem. you would buy the unit and adjust the lights. When you put people in the car, your lights will point up, blinding people.

 

Thanks V8

That pretty much sums up what I have already discovered. You are correct, there is no auto-leveling with halogen and (like you) I am not certain about the rear axle bracket, but I will look over the weekend.

 

Here are a couple of photos I took this morning while under the car installing a Coastal E-tech hitch.

The first shows the location, viewed from the right rear of the car, towards the left rear wheel.
[Broken External Image]:http://desperado.scvnet.com/~philh/images/level-sensor2.JPG

The second shows a closeup of the sensor, from ahead of the axle looking back and up to the left side. The silver "bone" is the link between the lower tab (connected to the moving axle) and the sensor (mounted to the body).
[Broken External Image]:http://desperado.scvnet.com/~philh/images/level-sensor3.JPG

 

Oh, I see! The leveling system compensates for the car body's tilt nose up/down, with respect to the rear axle, i.e.,the road surface, not with respect to earth's gravity! Very neat!

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Some Prius's with HID lights need the leveling sensor replaced. It was causing my headlights to point too low. The dealer ordered me a new sensor, which hasn't arrived yet. In the meantime, so I could drive safely, I disconnected the autoleveling sensor. Now I can manually adjust the height. I almost never have weight in the car. So I don't need autoleveling. It only lowers the lights if weight is in the car.

To disconnect the sensor, take off the back left wheel. You'll see a little black box with an adjusting arm. This is connected to a wishbone piece of metal which is connected to a mounting bracket on the axel. Just take off the wishbone metal piece by unbolting the top and bottom bolts. Now you can set the lights manually. Pushing down the arm on the sensor (black box) will raise the lights all the way, which is too high. Experiment until you get them set just below the windshieilds of cars ahead.

Also, the standard bulb in the Prius (D2R) has black shading which limits light output. You can replace it with a D2S or D2C bulb which has no shading and is supposedly 30% brighter (I haven't installed them yet so I'm can't say for sure). The bulbs are available at http://www.sigmaauto.com/jdm/prius/prius0405.php

Good luck!

 

My Prius has the standard halogen lights. These are very, very good halogens, the low beam pattern does not have an abrupt cut off (like every HID I have ever driven does) and the high beams light up the road farther than any halogens I've ever seen. Great standard lighting on this car.

 

One nice thing about the HIDs on this car is that they DON'T cut off abruptly. I just love the look of the light. Since I live on Long Island I don't benefit from HIDs, other than the COOL factor.

 

i wonder if its because we don't have projector HID's that we don't have the cutoff.

as for the person who said this
" An awesome featuere but both of their headlights need to be moved up and their left one needs to be moved up a little more than the right. it's too low. "
on their parent's lexus...

HID's sometimes have their left headlight NOT level with the right headlight at the cutoff so as not to blind the upcoming driver on the other side of the road.

Audi's have this, but because I dont know how great your disposition is, I can't say that what I'm talking about is the same thing as your problem