Anyone ever seen an HID retrofit done on a 97 Land Rover Discovery? The headlights are halogen sealed beam H4's with textured glass lenses. I am considering both:
1) just sticking a D2s / Hella kit in there, or
2) sticking projectors in there with D2s / Hella.
Any advide or experience would be very appreciated.
your lamp is an H4-textured glass, you should probably stick to a good quality H4 retrofit that has a properly designed underbelly shield. the fluted lens will likely distort the beam pattern if you try and stick a projector behind the lens.
make sure any H4 kit that you get that it comes with an underbelly shield.
according to the folks who use them, casper provides pretty good shielding. i personally have not seen them in person. you might want to paint them black prior to installing them. this will reduce the amount of yellow that may be reflected upwards.
My friend has the same truck (or close) , he bought a "good" kit From some place and after that he decided to scrap the project b/c the frosted lens distorts the light so badly. He also didnt like the High beam (or lack there of) set up.
He found an aftermarket clear housing and wound up gutting it and using some Hella 90mm Highs and lows with a d2s Hid.
Looks good now but cost him a pant load.
My lights are 10x7 inches big, and nowhere seems to have them. Anyone have any or have found any this big? I really want to do the retrofit with projectors on my car.
If I just use the D2S bulbs with casper shields on my existing housings (without projectors), is it really going to look that bad? Light pattern going to be that bad? Be very bliding to on-coming traffic? I'm not expecting to compete with stock BMW X5 projector HID's, I just want something that lights up the read well, and doesn't piss of others!
My feeling is that even if you get the Kit and its decent, it wont be long before you realize it could be a lot better if you go the OEM projector root.
If you do decide to get a quality kit its probably not going to be to bad for oncoming traffic, its going to be a lot less money, and definitely a lot easier to do.
But if your like the rest of us, it wont be long before your tinkering again.
I'll spend a while surfing the net for those housing and let you know what I find.
Looks like anyone who is interested in lighting does not rely on that vehicles headlights at all, they upgrade using auxiliary lights (driving/fogs)
With the truck format there is plenty of room for those upgrades to fit in nicely.
But, have you looked into using the newer models headlights. the ones with the separate modules for high and low and the clear glass, they look close to the same size, maybe with some mods you can make them work.
Actually I got some PIAA 959 fogs, and am looking into some round SUV lights to mount on my brush bar. What's a good BIG one? I am looking at PIAA 520's and IPF 900 MSR's. Anyone have experience with these or others that are cool?
Thanks a lot for all your advice and help. I want to be the first (or one of) to do have this mod on a Discovery. Seems pretty cool. I'm having a guy make custom clear side lights for me too. Please let me know if you can find something online, i've been continually searching for a while, but i'm pretty new to this so i'm probably not as resourceful as you.
Your definitely 'one of' the first to do it but I dought your the first, so track down the others and learn from them.
The best way I have found to do that is to go into the various Discovery chat rooms and start reading previous chats, or do a search in that chat room, or just post a new topic asking if anyone has done/ or heard of such a mod. Failing that I would search the web for pics of peoples tricked out Discovery’s and go through them all until you found a setup like the one your thinking of, or close to it.
I've been searching around a lot, but I have never really seen a tricked out Discovery. A lot of Range Rovers though. If anyone finds something on one, please let me know. I'll continue to search, but never found anything yet! Thanks fellas
Alright, I got my D2S bulbs in with Casper shields on my 97 Land Rover Discovery.
Damn bright and brilliant color, but i'm really concerned with upward glare. I don't have much to compare to (would be nice to have 2 HID systems side-by-side). What else can I do to further reduce upward glare? I'm not too concerned with beam pattern because I know either way it's going to be impossible to get a nice projector-style one, so that's not an issue. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Actually, I took the lights out. I just did a rough install the other night just to see, but I wasn't sure enough to finish the install yet. I'm headed over to my friends place tonight so I can install the lights and compare to his X5 with HID's to see how much more glare I have. If it's not too bad, i'll keep em in. Either way, i'll snap some pics.
The Land Rover is a pretty tall car, am I one of the few who is against putting HID in tall cars like that? The new Land Rover is absolutely atrocious, and this is the FACTORY HID! There are a few other cars with HID that are annoying, S2000 and some older S-class Mercedes'.. but the currently, the Rover just seems to be the worst.
I am not against people wanting better lighting, I am all for it.. regardless of what type of vehicle it is. I am just saying, with a car that tall.. and roomy, why not install an additional set of driving lights that you can switch on for more light? That way, atleast you can be selective about WHO you blast with your massive lights.
The allowable headlight center height maximum in the USA is 54", which is ridiculous. Even a 40" maximum is too high, since that's about eye/rearview mirror level for more than half of the vehicles on the road. The SAE warned DOT/NHTSA about this in 1996, but nothing currently stops the automakers from putting the headlights on their trucks and SUVs as high as possible. Chrysler has shown some social responsibility with their Dodge truck headlight mounting heights, but that's about it.
