I bought the one-piece projectors and some 4700k HIDs from John Benham.

With the original H1 bulbs (Halogen) the cutoff was flat and straight and very nice. Once I upped to HID the cutoff changed to having a curve to it. Instead of


A is what I'd like to see, B is what I actually see.

Now, I remember someone mentioning that you can put some washers in the assembly to space things out. I'm not sure if it was in reference to this problem or not, but it would makes sense that if it's out of focus moving things in and out would change that.

Do I space the cutoff from the lens, or do I need to space the bulb from the cutoff+lens? Or will that even fix this?

There's one of two things that happened

1) Your HID bulbs are cheap and not manufactured correctly with the correct arc center compared to a regular H1 bulb.
2) Your HID bulbs are centered correctly, but your projectors are very sensitive to the difference in length/width/shape of a halogen filament vs. an HID arc.



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- Sold my beloved J in April 2010 -

In general.......HID bulbs have a different shape than Halogen bulbs, because they are different lengths & the "hot spot" in the bulb (filiment or globe) creates a different focal point in the projector's reflector. It's not a matter of spacing between the bulb & lens, or the reflector & lens......it's the space between the bulb & reflector (due to the size of bulb)....which cannot be changed/shimmed. The projectors you bought are obviously made to work with Halogen ONLY (yes there is a difference).....they were sold to you with Halogen for a reason.

The projectors that I use are, not only designed to run HIDs (specifically), they're designed for 50 Watt HID......and that's ALL that I would use with them. Different size & output rating will have a HUGE effect on the quality of light output & cutoff. Anyone who claims differently, doesn't have a clue