Bi-Xenon precise definition please - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

I have a 2000S that shipped with the halogen headlights stock. I bought a set of used Xenon's that happened to come from a 996. This winter I intend to tackle project 85 in 101 projects., In addition I am looking at the retro labs retrofit kit; https://retrofitlab.com/collections/porsche-911-996-1-986-1/products/porsche-911-996-1-1998-2001-litronic-xenon-headlights-bi-xenon-retrofit However my confusion starts here. Does Bi-xenon mean? That both high and low beans become xenon gas bulbs. Does this mean that both high and low beams are on in the high bean selection? I am not really clear on the nomenclature and exact definitions. Help me out please. David

I believe that kit is for headlights that are already Litronic/Xenon. For your halogens you would need this kit. As for your question, yes, bi-xenon means a single Xenon bulb that serves both purposes. Most of the ones I have seen use a deflector, but I think more modern ones are in the housing itself.

am looking at doing project 85 in Wayne's book.

Do you have the full 996 headlight, or just the internals?

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David, bi-xenon means that the low beam and high beam are HID based lights. Now, there are two approaches and one is the better one. You can have two separate assemblies - low and high beam. They could be reflector type or projector. The latter is much more common. Or you can have one projector that will serve both purposes. When you look at the the cut-off line of the low beam light pattern, you will see it is a neat straight line, although the projector is round. The way it works there is a shield that blocks part of the beam. Now, the shield can be slightly moved away from the center of the beam what will move the cut-off line. As a result you have high beam. So basically, you have one HID assembly and one projector. This setup is better for night driving, because the high beam lights up right away. HID has a long warm up period. Long means 15-60 seconds. You get light right away, but it takes a moment to establish the right colour and intensity. Finally, the kit you listed is for upgrade of existing Litronics headlight. OEM setup is low beam HID, high beam halogen. This kit converts it to bi-xenon in one projector. However, you can retrofit a bi-xenon projector, or bi-LED projector into a regular assembly.

The way I read your post, you bought a factory set of litronic/Xenox headlights that you want to up grade with the kit you posted a link to. It's a good kit, I did it and it works great. It converts the dull factory xenon low, halogen high beam to bright xenon high and low beams. Definitely worth the money and easy to install.

Thank you for your response. Did you do project 85 at the same time? Did you go with a LED high beam bulb? David

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How is opening the headlight? I started thinking of doing LED by Morimoto (TRS) https://www.theretrofitsource.com/bi-led-morimoto-m-led-2-headlight-projectors-P-M-LED2?quantity=1 I had done bi-xenon FX-R 3.0 a while ago, so I am not afraid... but I am not sure about glue used and opening this assembly.

However I am going this this mod; https://retrofitlab.com/collections/porsche-911-996-1-986-1/products/porsche-911-996-1-1998-2001-litronic-xenon-headlights-bi-xenon-retrofit I do not intend to rem0ve lenses as this kit doesn't require it. This is the YouTube video I am using for guidance; https://www.theretrofitsource.com/bi-led-morimoto-m-led-2-headlight-projectors-P-M-LED2?quantity=1 I have used set of Litronics (Xenon to work with. David

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Getting the new projectors and getting rid of the halogens is a great improvement.

HiD burners are arc lights that require a warmup period to come to full brightness. Therefore your headlight units contain halogen bulbs to serve the flasher function. It wouldn’t be good to have slow reacting high beams either, and the solution here is to use the same bulb for both beams … your headlights include a motor to raise the projector to high beam position … still a delay but those halogens are there. You can see the motion if you look for it. There are two new German legal requirements when HID lighting is fitted 1 Headlight washers must be fitted. 2 Automatic headlight leveling must be included Boxsters factory fitted with HID have washing standard and there is a sensor unit at the rear underbody to signal the leveling motor in the headlight of body level changes. The presence of two motors in each headlight means the wiring to the HID versions is different. Incidentally, HID units use H6W (halogen) rather tha W5W bulbs for park/city lights.

…the Litronic ride height sensors are little arms on the front suspension.

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See PET fiche 501-01 item #18 996 631 121 00 sensor is at rear axle as fiche shows. Group 5 is rear axle

…the “sensors” are little arms on the suspension that move up and down with squat & dive that send the signal to the “computer” you speak of in the rear.