If you’re a muscle car owner with a serious inclination to improve your vehicle’s headlights, you may want to try using upgraded lighting technology. With HID lighting, you can improve upon the efficiency and performance of your muscle car’s headlights, all the while taking advantage of other facets unique to these lights. HID stands for High Intensity Discharge, so if you want headlights that produce greater lighting intensity to match the fierce disposition of your muscle car, consider these tips before proceeding with installation.

Installation

Many people who own and maintain muscle cars have vehicles that are older than the typical cars, trucks, and SUVs you find on the highway today. That’s because many muscle cars are classics, and their unique designs and features has made them worth preserving to muscle car enthusiasts at home and abroad. With older muscle cars, you have to be careful when considering HID kit installation. While stock halogen replacements can be installed by just switching out one bulb set for another, HIDs have unique components that must be accounted for. In many cases, you can simply install those new components by popping the hood, but frequently on older muscle cars there may be a need to make cuts into the headlight casing, and sometimes even into the main body of the vehicle itself. Granted, most of these cuts, if needed at all, are minor in seriousness, but if you’re looking to preserve your car’s body 100% you’ll need to check and see if your model-year vehicle can have HIDs installed without major body alterations. Beyond that, installation is a quick process that mainly involves hooking up and securing ballasts, wire harnesses, and the main xenon bulbs. If you are fairly competent under the hood, this should be something you can accomplish in an hour or two, if not less.

Efficiency and Performance Improvements

Muscle cars aren’t typically known for their efficiency, so HIDs have a huge advantage in that respect. Unlike incandescent bulb types that expend much of the energy provided to them as heat, HIDs are more efficient and generate mostly light from available energy. These lights can also last up to 10x longer than standard halogen headlights. Meanwhile, muscle car owners tend to value the performance attributes of their cars, and with HIDs, the increased value offered is no exception. With lights that are potentially 3x brighter and customizable by color, you can certainly keep the main design of your car the same while giving it luminous, customized headlights.

Other Things to Look Out For

Muscle cars produced prior to the last couple decades may have to take additional time to adapt the new headlight components to the vehicles’ systems. This is normal, and the extra time isn’t of extra concern in terms of eventual performance. For instance, HID headlights will often display slightly different hues when first installed, but after a few hours of active use, the colors should even out. Also, a light humming noise may protrude from the front of the car when first using HIDs. This, again, is normal, provided that the humming doesn’t last longer than 10 minutes. Should either of these happen, wait the required time first to see if the problems correct themselves, and if they don’t, then you may want to check for loose ballasts, wire, and other component hookup issues.