saki,

can you explain this a little further?

"That's why you'll see on high end cars like Porsches, the HIDs move to change patterns from high to low rather than have separate lights."

do you mean the actual aim or alignment of the lights physically move higher or lower with the flick of the control? I would think that that would be slower but i dunno.

thanks

 

You know how the sharp cutoff of the shield and our stiff suspensions give the illusion of high beaming when our low beams are on? I'm assuming bixenons follow the same principle. Instead of the car pitching up and down over bumps in the road, the pulling of the stalk rapidly controls the movement of the shield allowing more light to escape from the projector.

 

Yes, cars like the 911 have one projector HID and when you select high beams, the light orients itself higher instead of there being a second light. Its motorized.

 

I have an older Porsche 986 with factory litronics. The high beam is still halogen and the xenon low beam doesn't come on when you flash the highs. However, my headlights do have a motor in them and when I turn on high beams a motor moves the low beam projector slightly upwards so that the low beam pattern compliments the high beam.

 

they should have it cut off the power to the low beams. in my moms crv it switches the power to just the high beams when you flash it. then when you let go of the stalk the low beams come back on.

 

That might be ok for a full halogen setup, but in our cases, it would be back to the same problem of wearing out the HID bulbs. The idea would be to minimize the frequency of xenon gas activation/deactivation.

 

I'm pretty sure all factory HID-equipped Hondas/Acuras do this.

 

Even cars with Bi-Xenons have halogen high beams. If the HIDs are off, it will still take too long for them to warm up, bi-xenon or not. Halogen high beams will light up immediately.

My Bimmer has both bi-xenons and halogen high beams. If I pull the stalk back, for flash to pass, the separate halogen (inner) lights will go on. If I push the stalk forward, for prolonged high beam use, the HID cutoff shields are flipped up and the halogen high beams don't light up.

BTW, the bi-xenon "high" beam is significantly brighter than the halogen flash-to-pass beam.

Here's a video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19C1uaAYQKk

 

... which is the point of this thread. So again... answer the question - why do our cars' HIDs turn on with a high beam flick, when the stalk is set to off or parking lights only?

 

Ask Honda.

As per my post, I'm pretty sure all Hondas/Acuras do that. Even my Subaru does it. I've seen other cars that turn the low beams off when the highs are on but not Hondas.