Xenon lights(H.I,D'S)

Long story short, they are ACA Performance once sold by Sylvania Osram as "Xenarc" but a trucking outfit in the Yukon Territory now owns the company.

They are at http://www.starrhid.com/

I've had HIDs since 1999. This is the 3rd gen design. Alex with ACA upgraded me free back when he owned the company.

Highly recommended. The new guys are nice too.

 

I wanna do all the other way. Put D2S 90mm hella projectors with legal low beam pattern on fog lamp place and use them as low beam light. I have a pair of projectors now

 

Best site to learn how to build your own and learn every aspect about HID automotive lighting. Lots to learn.

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

Which is run by the people who sell the stuff here

http://www.theretrofitsource.com/

Go to it! Post some pics when ya done.

 

look like european ML headlamps, but no self leveling system.

check for pattern. they usually make headlamps for EU and US markets with two pos shield inside with RH sholder light for EU and symmetrical for US.

High beam standard is one for US and Europe.

If projectors are designed for H7 you can use D2S ore conversion HID bulb.

 

it depends on low beam pattern. H7 bulb is legal in the USA, but assymetrical light pattern may be not. So check for shield position inside projector.

Seems to me I see cheappest Mercedes ML headlamps, becouse now all ML sold here are with HID, AFL and all other expensive stuff in headlamps.

Well, about your state.. do they check headlamp pattern and headlamp ajustment during DOT inspections? if yes - check low beam pattern!

 

I just had that done a couple of weeks ago. I have an '04 Columbia and bought a pair of headlights for $400 a piece from a junkyard (a great price--most are $500 to $800 a piece). I bought them sight unseen (just a cellphone pic of each) and had them shipped to my mechanic.

They came from an '03 ML. Beware that around that time there was a huge upgrade in the ML light. Get the "new type" not the "old type". I can't remember at the moment what the difference was, may have been the switch from halogen to zenon, dunno, or something else. But anything from somewhere in '03 or forward will be the new type.

If they are foggy--there is ONLY one way to repair them. All haze repair kits except for one and one alone are a ripoff and should be banned. They ALL simply strip off the protective anti-UV coating that prevents haze in the first place. They DO strip off the haze too--temporarily (and the lights look so preeeeety--for a while), but then in a few months, since there is no coating protecting the lens at all, the haze comes back with a vengeance--and it comes back everywhere you used whatever you used.

Contact Doublehorn for the only product that puts that coating back on the lens. I destroyed my old driver side Columbia halogen light by using a Walmart kit. And mostly brought it right back with the Doublehorn. www(dot)doublehornproducts(dot)com .

Back to the subject, the new zenons work great. Nobody has flashed their lights at me yet, and it happened regularly with my (properly aimed) halogen lights. So they actually piss people off less, not more.

Everyone--DO NOT (!) get a kit or a made to fit non-OEM zenon projector assembly. They are ALL illegal, no matter what they say. And they are what give zenons a bad rep. It is impossible for the aftermarket companies to get the optics right. It is like a pharmaceutical drug, it (the optics) are an utterly precise thing, and it is hellish hard for the OEM manufacturers to get it right themselves. Bite the bullet and get the real thing from a junkyard ML. Halogen light assemblies CAN NOT be converted to zenon--anymore than an optician can cut the ends off of two glass Coke bottles and grind them down into a pair of lenses for you to see with. They CAN be made to fit the frame. But the optics are a hellishly precise thing, anyone with glasses knows this, and you can't just convert something over to fit--it doesn't work that way.

ALL kits are illegal!! No matter WHAT they say! It is an honor system, they "assert that they are legal" and unless challenged legally they get away with it. Would anyone out there want a pair of eyeglasses under those conditions?? Glasses are lenses that precisely shape the light coming from the world back to your eyes. The projectors in zenons (like the lens in a movie projector) do the same thing in reverse. They shape the light projecting out onto the world. Zenons require this to keep from blinding people since they put out 2-3 times more light than weaker halogens. Would anyone here want to watch a movie "projected" onto the screen (or in the general direction of it) by a couple of "ground to fit" ends off of a couple of Coke bottles. would the movie be worth watching at ANY price?? The picture would NEVER be precisely projected--it would be smeared everywhere. And neither can a kit or even a non-OEM zenon projector light ever hope to match the precise optics of the OEM light.


Anyway, the ML and Columbia lights are both made on the same assembly line at Hella in Germany. If it is to go in a Columbia one of the mounting tabs cut off manually and then forevermore it is a Columbia light.

Your mechanic must know what he is doing vis a vis the wiring. But there is an expert lighting guy named Daniel Stern who can help with advice. He's the one who told me all this stuff, and he hasn't been wrong yet.

He (Daniel) can also hook you up with replacement OEM zenon bulbs, and a serious upgrade in the lumens (50% more) in the halogen hi-beam. BTW, only the lo-beams are zenon. The hi-beams are still halogen, and the turn signals are the regular kind. I am going to order 2 zenons and 4 of the Osram 65w 2100-lumen H7s for $24.76/ea from Daniel this week. The standard hi-beams are "only" 1400 lumens and while perfectly fine, they suffer in comparison to the outstanding zenons. So I am replacing them with the upgrade from www(dot)danielsternlighting(dot)com . And I will buy 2 more just for a back up. Daniel is also the guy who clued me into the Doublehorn product BTW.

Oh, and one more thing. Kinda funny too, my mechanic, for the longest time, thought I was saying they came from a Mercedes ML "commercial truck". There are two different ML's and they are not related. Make sure everyone understands that you are talking about the ML "luxury suv" not the ML "commercial truck". Good luck.

 

Ddm is cheap - quality and price - I know I tried them - wouldn't recommend- changed them out and paid $$$ for the new set. Been great now.

 

Illegal, too! Just ran across that looking for something else. At least Washington State has banned that type of HID, and I'm sure other states have or will follow that lead.

The bulb replacement suck anyways, they screw up the light pattern and just blind everyone else with glare.