Xenon Headlight conversion kit

[Lumpen]

I was just thinking about the ADR rules. If they bring in ADR rules after you modify a part, are these law retrospective?

It's like the Anti-Pollution laws or seatbelts etc? Only cars after 19XX are subject to these but do they only apply to OEM conditions?Like running a Pre-1969 Car with a 500Horse AVGAS no Pollution engine?

[Turbo6man]

I was just thinking about the ADR rules. If they bring in ADR rules after you modify a part, are these law retrospective?

It's like the Anti-Pollution laws or seatbelts etc? Only cars after 19XX are subject to these but do they only apply to OEM conditions?Like running a Pre-1969 Car with a 500Horse AVGAS no Pollution engine?

Generally ADR rules are not retrospective - your "standard" car has to comply with the rules that were in force at it's date of manufacture.

However if you modify an older car you may be required to "upgrade" certain things in order to get new compliance. A common example is to say fit a later model engine into a vehicle that didn't have that engine as standard fitment but was an option at the time - like a V8 into an XE in place of the original six. You would be required to also fit the front and rear springs and shocks from an XE V8 in order to pass compliance. And also any other parts that were fitted to the V8 like a LSD and rear disc brakes.

[Lumpen]

Thanks Turbo6man, That is pretty much what I expected, I can remember reading that if you put a newer engine into and older car (or vice cersa) the car has to comply with the emmison ADRS's of the newest component, so if you put a XR6 Turbo engine into a Cortina the emissons would be of 2002 levels and not 1975.

Sorry for the off topic example but it may be relavent?

Are ADR rules retrospective for Non-OEM mods to are car? hmmmmm?

[Zeke]

If the xenons are as good as I expect and

1. they are currently legal

2. they are likely to stay legal even if new adr's come into effect

then I still want some!

It's gonna be hard to establish 1 and 2 with any degree of confidence though!

Who'd have thought it would be so hard to make a car safer - all because of the safety regs?

[saleen]

Who gives a sh1t about ADR's? I never have and never will. Wanna puss around with ADRs's, go and buy a fuggin' Camry with luxury options and pi$$ all power. I'm so sick of legalities being brought into every thread that's created that involves modding a car. If you don't want to fit Xenon lights to your car. DON'T

TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blown BA]

Who gives a sh1t about ADR's? I never have and never will. Wanna puss around with ADRs's, go and buy a fuggin' Camry with luxury options and pi$$ all power. I'm so sick of legalities being brought into every thread that's created that involves modding a car. If you don't want to fit Xenon lights to your car. DON'T

TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What he said :lol:

[ms700]

Who gives a sh1t about ADR's? I never have and never will. Wanna puss around with ADRs's, go and buy a fuggin' Camry with luxury options and pi$$ all power. I'm so sick of legalities being brought into every thread that's created that involves modding a car. If you don't want to fit Xenon lights to your car.  DON'T

TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What he said :lol:

[FORDTECH]

Who gives a sh1t about ADR's? I never have and never will. Wanna puss around with ADRs's, go and buy a fuggin' Camry with luxury options and pi$$ all power. I'm so sick of legalities being brought into every thread that's created that involves modding a car. If you don't want to fit Xenon lights to your car. DON'T

TELL SOMEONE WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm with him.

[Turbo6man]

Who gives a sh1t about ADR's

Those who don't want to have a defect notice slapped on them.

Those who don't want their insurance company welching out of a claim.

Those who want to get a "pink slip" for their car after it is three years old.

Those who want to carry out mods to their vehicle in a safe manner, both for themselves and other road users.

XRBloke, Zeke, and Trumpy all raised the relevance of the ADRs in regard to this topic before I attempted to clarify the position. Several others also made reference to it in later posts. It is obviously important to some and they have a right to express their points of view.

It is also important to manufacturers/sellers of aftermarket equipment. Hence the effort of APS and such like. Also XenonOz who it seems are also wanting to provide assurance to their customers that the product is compliant.

I hate beaurocracy as much as anyone but ignoring it will not make it go away - it is an inevitability that we all have to deal with. The best way to deal with it is with knowledge of how it works. Without being negative towards the issue here, I have simply tried to answer people's questions and to ensure they have the correct information at hand so they can make a properly informed decision. Sorry that yet another thread has got tied up with this ADRsh!t.

[Phido]

To say ADR's are some of the worse bits of paper is a understatement. They are a mess, and even manufacturers can get caught out (Ford's Fairmont Ghia), although technically they are legal(IMHO) and perfectly safe (approved by Fords internal QA and passed for manufacturing by various authorities) they had to pull them out anyway, they aren't the only ones either! Yet they allow imported luxury cars to have extremely dark tint, that is illegal to do aftermarket. Infact if you have one of these cars and a window is broken, technically it is illegal to fix it in australia, the car would have to be fixed overseas!!!! Putting factory tinted glass window on this car would be illegal as well. Its insane!

ADR's reguarding Xenons are extremely vauge at best. To be completely safe and to have minium issues, you would need washers and auto levellers, most manufacturers do that anyway. However police could still defect your new M5 with factory Xenons, its a grey area.

Washers aren't a big deal, fitting light washes would take very little time. Simply tap into the window washer line or have a small seperate resoivour and motor (~$20) to run a line to aftermarket squirters at the front.

With a Xenon upgrade I would recomend washers fitted simply because its not that hard and you would be better able to argue they are in compliance. Even though the squirters are more for ice build up on the lights than anything else.

Auto levellers would take a bit more effort, I guess you could hook up stepper motors to the regular beam adjustment and get to a PIC and and maybe a few mercury switches to get some sort of auto levelling. Aust ADR's Im pretty sure they don't specify how much leveling, so that would be fine.. Also testing "auto-levelling" at the roadside is actually quite difficult, so would be harder to prove your in violation (jack up the car or something like that while someone is watching your reflectors, I doubt theres a procecure for it would make it easy to argue in court). If you have squirter jets, again your in a better position that you have a well thought out conversion, and if they know anything, they will proberly see the squirters maybe get you to test them and leave it at that.

As for if it would be worth it. Depends who you are. If you do Stacks of night driving, say you work night shift as a courier or something then if you spend all your time at night behind a wheel, $2k to massively improve your car is nothing.

Germany was very quick to adopt this technology (you can get it in most german sold cars now, even small cheap hatchbacks).

You can have a defect notice for anything. Many stock unmodified cars get defect notices just out of ignorance (ie WRX getting defected for scoop and vents back in early 90's)..

With Xenons, I would say consider investing in a decent set of fog lights as well...

German auto magazines often have a light comparison test (250+kmph at night in fog/rain you dam well *NEED* the best lighting you can get).. Tests proved very quickly Xenon can improve visability greatly.