moody07747 said:
took a look on ebay
**broken link removed**
maby i could swap in for some HID fog lights...
Fraud! "*Gives your car the HID look bright light"
Most of that stuff on eBay (such as this one) which mention "HID" isn't HID. It's just halogen, uses standard halogen bulbs, and will work no different than the 35W halogens you have now. In fact they often use a blue filter on either the lens or the bulb itself to change the beam from yellowish to bluish, which reduces the total light output.
HID has only 3 classes of product on the market. There's the little bike/SCUBA helmet lights like I mentioned. There's 12v 35W ones which are always takeouts from very high end cars. Sadly even on eBay these are not cheap, and you need to get a ballast/starter, cable, tube, and projector housing that all match so putting it together with loose eBay parts isn't practical or cheap. Plan on at least $100 for a single. And anyways these are just too powerful, it takes 35W so your battery life is still screwed. The third type is 110v/220v stadium/gym lights, these have used HID for many years which is obviously not what you need.
So basically the only thing that does your job is the $140 helmet light head. I think I may have seen them for $100 somewhere but I'm not sure and there may have been something questionable about them.
Battery size is obviously an issue. Li-ion is much better in terms of power-to-weight ratio but it's also quite expensive. Evens still, trying to power a halogen of 35W for 12hrs would take a larger battery than anyone has ever put on a bike. 4.4 amp-hr is the biggest li-ion commonly used for bikes. That will get you around 4 1/2 hrs out of a HID but only 1 1/2 hrs out of a 35W halogen.
Compact flourescent efficiency is quite high, better than halogen and LED, but less than HID. The difficulty is since the light is emitted from a large surface area it cannot be focused with a reasonably sized reflector thus generally not useful for headlight or flashlight.
Basically the only thing that will help is that HID head, but it'll help a lot!