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Originally Posted by lockstock
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edit... Okay, so it's clear retrofit HiD are completely illegal in the UK unless you do a full retrofit with Xenon Hedlight, washers and self leveling. Provided the Xenon headlight was type approved you are good to go. All retrofits into halogen headlamp assemblies are deemed illegal.
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yes, pretty much you summarised it up perfectly. Technically, its almost impossible to make it fully legal (retrofitting washers is possible but self levelling - never heard of succesful implementation) but you can make it as close as possible, as long as you understand the possible consequences.
your C30 has clear lenses so your projectors are much more suitable for HID bulb than 05-08 milky lenses. You can put H7R HID burner in there, and it will work, probably even pretty well but its not gonna be as good as if you replaced projectors with D2S version that can take good and quality-made burners. Even then it will be illegal, but light ouptut and cutoff will be much better than on H7Rs. And you will gain bixenon feature.
D2S ofcourse make this mod a "burnt bridge" for future MOTs so I would recommend doing what I did - get a second set of headlamps and swap them over for MOT. FOr the cost of 60-70e for pair and a 4 minute job (Volvo couldnt make it easier!) its worth it IMHO. Gives you freedom to experiment and will never leave you with "oh sh*t I have no headlamps but I have to go to work" situation.
Are you aware of HID-related possible problems? (DRL issie, WMM failure, extra grounding etc?) If yes, and still want to experiment - I see no reason why not to. HID kit can be used for H7 and D2S versions, so if you try H7R first and decide to go full on swap, you will only "loose" 15e worth of parts.
For me, experimenting with lamps and testing it is part of fun, but for others - not so much so bear in mind it do require a bit of fiddling and testing to make it right.
As for bench-allignment -well, cant help much, you really need to allign lights while ON the car. You can make it easier when you are swapping projectors, but for actual halogen/hid adjustment, you need to follow the guidelines or just go to diagnostic station. PS - be aware, quality of H7Rs is a bit... well... it varies so properly alligned helogen beam may need a minor corrections for H7R burner. Variations in hotspot and actual saddle/base of bulb may make require for lowering beam further to make sure the light leak does not bother oncoming traffic.