What brightness are the stock HID's? 4,000 K?
NE1 here changed theirs to something brighter?

 

stock is as bright as you can get, if you change it to anything else all you are gonna do is diminish the amount of useable light that comes out of the headlights. i hope that made sense. if not just ask.

 

4300 K i believe

 

Color temperature != brightness.

 

I don't understand why people don't get that. K has never been a measuring unit for brightness.

 

btw I got a pair of 6000k if you just need bulbs

 

Yeah but more is better. Always.

 

I put 80,000K bulbs in mine when I am having a party so people can find my house or when I need to signal batman. It works pretty good.

 

 

Quoted for emphasis. K does not equal brightness. K is the color temperature.

If you want to measure intensity, use Lux. Lux = lumens per square meter. To measure overall output use lumens.

Higher color temperatures actually reduce useful light in most cases. I know for certain that my eyes are able to identify objects better when using warmer (lower K, just a hint of yellow) light of a given intensity rather than cooler (higher K, more blue) light.

I've got a flashlight with an aspherical lens that produces over 50,000 lux @ 1 meter distance (really only about 200 lumens but in a very concentrated beam), so lux isn't the entire story either. You need to be looking at several measurements to determine how useful a light will be.

Science aside, my personal opinion is that high K values are ricerific. There is a sweet spot that most OEM HID lights hit quite nicely. Anything more blue looks ridiculous and provides inferior illumination.