Do you have projector or reflector type headlights? Being an older civic I'm going to go out on a whim and say they would be conventional reflector type lenses?
If that is the case please, please do not put HIDs in them. You will not get anywhere near the same light output as your mum's car that has the proper lenses tow ork with the HIDs, and they will throw light everywhere. For the record the arc in a xenon bulb actually runs length ways through the blub, not across it like the filament in a halogen bulb, for this reason the reflector will not direct most of the light properly as it's completely the wrong shape, on top of not being able to cut it off properly at a desired height as detailed below.
It is the one singal most inconsiderate thing any motorist can do to install HIDS into a reflector as they are blinding for everyone out there. I have nothing against the technology myself so I'm not one of the people that hates them blindly, just trying to give you some proper information here as to why you shouldn't do it. For the record 2 of the 3 cars I have driven on a regular basis have had HIDs and we installed them into mum's XR6 Turbo when she got that.
Once I saw the way they threw light everywhere, and also noticed that the light output was nowhere near as good in the other 2 cars I removed them, so I do have experience in this matter.
For the record a projector type lens has a shield in it that provides a hard cutoff so the beam isn't able to shine into other motorists eyes, a reflector has nothing like this. See the Images below to hep detail this better.
I really hope you take this into consideration and do the considerate thing, you won't see a large improvement yourself and it really is a bastard thing to do to everyone else on the road, it really makes me angry when I see all these pieces of **** buzzing around with cheap ebay 8-10 000k HIDs in the old headlight housings, throwing a limited amount of bright blue (And once I even saw 12 000k purple) light onto the road in front, and the rest into everyone elses eyes. Not only does it provide little benefit to the driver but a lot of people don't know the difference and just hate everyone who has xenon headlights in general because they think they are all blinding, which is not the case if properly implemented.
What the inside of a projector housing looks like:
And here you can see the very hard cutoff of the light they output:
NO Aftermarket HID kit is ADR Compliant, as to meet those guidelines you need projector lenses, auto levellers and headlight washers. That's not to say I am 100% against conversions provided the right lens type, but they will never be legal.
Edit:
Please note this isn't just hype, HID lamps and reflectors REALLY Don't work well together at all.
And for the record one of the cars I drive with HIDs is a Supra which comes with halogens as stock, but does have projector type lenses and works well with the conversion, as I said above the other car I tried to convert an XR6 Turbo had reflectors and from personal experience it really worked badly, and I reverted to Halogens almost immediately.
