I first talked to Tim at Import Hookup just asking questions about Lumens and the different levels of bulbs you can buy.

Not everyone knows that I am a search engine optimization expert, so I know how to find the best information. I noticed right away that this company answered it's message boards visitors quick, and most importantly, accurately. I showed Tim the Spyder and he agreed it should go HID.

Aftermarket HID kits are relatively new, and I personally had never seen one. The Import Hookup (importhookup.com) price was fantastic... a full $400 bucks lower than I had been quoted once, and $200 less than the cheapest I had heard. I'm pretty skeptical, as you might expect a cheap "kit" thrown together instead of OEM quality parts at that price. Being sponsored didn't hurt my confidence, and we closed the deal that sent the "Bright Star" HID kit to my house.

The packaging was great. The box for the kit was placed inside another box with foam popcorn protecting it. So far, so good.

I opened the interior box to find more good packaging, and some good looking parts. I picked up the pieces and immediately felt the wire. It was well insulated, quality stuff. Being skeptical, I expected thin gauge wires, but I was impressed with the solidness of everything.

Here's all the parts:


Back when I was a kid we would get lego kits, but we never opened the instructions... we just put them together. I did the same with my ballast, ignitor, HID bulb, and harness. Well, that was a fascinating 1 minute to hook them all up.

I thought to myself there's got to be something more to this... something a little more complicated.

Tim had sent along a troubleshooting guide I could tell was printed up afterwards, and it was a nice guide. It had a much better handle of the English language than the included instructions which were obviously translated by someone who didn't have all that much English experience. But the illustrations were flawless, and if it wasn't so easy to hook together myself, I may have used them.

So I took the kit out to the car. With it all connected together, all I had to do was disconnect the bulb already in there from the harness. Then I connected the harness end to the harness in my car, and plugged in the bulb.

It can't be this easy, right?
If I wasn't snapping picture for you all it seriously would have taken me 3 minutes to snap together the ballast, ignitor, harness, and bulb. Connecting it to my car was a whole 2 minutes more. I turned on the car, flipped on the headlights and snap... the ignitor went to work.

Seeing a HID bulb light for the first time is pretty cool. A bright flash is followed by it drooping down in brightness, till it starts warming up. A brilliant purple/blue is followed an intense white light. I thought that was intense till it fully came "online" and then the light was blinding.

For a comparison, I popped out my regular bulb, and the white vs. yellow light was immediately apparent. The HID was blowing it away. What's funny was, I was comparing my high beams @60watts, not the 51 watt low beams!

Now to mount the unit. The packaging came with all sorts of mounting things to use. Zip ties, a mounting bracket, screws, bolts, etc. For the 3000GT, I needed only the mounting bracket. Like Mitsubishi expected me to do it, they had 2 perfectly placed bolt holes right behind the headlamp unit. I screwed on the mounting bracket the the ballast, let the wires lay below it, and screwed in the bolt. It was a perfect fit.

I can see the beam pattern on the wall of my garage. The projector lights of the 3000GT cast a nice tight line of light that really focuses the light. None of that glare people sometimes complain about with aftermarket HID kits going into cars with regular headlamp setups.

When Tim agreed to sponsor the Spyder, he asked if I would be willing to write an install manual. I thought it might take some time. I was really wrong. It's taken me more time to type this than it did to install the unit.

I just can't wait for it to get dark so I can go drive around and really check out the difference.

Import Hookup can be found at importhookup.com. Go check them out!