HKSevolutionNYC

iTrader: (2)

i have an aftermarket set of HIDs i took out of my integra that was working perfect and wanted to install them in the evo. they are both 9006 sockets and it is a plug and play kit. the DC2 i had i just put in a 20amp fuse for the headlight in place of the old 10 amp

now i installed them last night in the evo and they blew the fuse for the headlight. then i installed a 20 amp just to see if if it would go on and it blew that. so just to see if it was taking alot of power i put in a 30 amp fuse to see if they would blow it and the fuse did not blow but they still didnt turn on. any suggestions of what i should do? maybe install a relay for them? how would i do that? please help

HKSevolutionNYC

iTrader: (2)

wow no1 can help me out on this one? thanks

SilverStreaker

EDIT:

Electrical - wiring related
Why can't I power HID systems from stock headlight wiring?

Lets start off and show how it really looks like under the hood:

Imagine that we connect the HID ballast directly to where the low beam halogen bulb is connected. Some vehicles might be are able to power up HID systems normally without problems at install time. Most probably, it will not last long. The inrush load can be up to max 13 amps per ballast, compared to 7amps inrush when using halogen. The factory design parameters for headlight curcuit is 7 amps inrush and 4.5 amps continous load. So over time, connectors, multifunction switch, headlight switch, wiring and fuse holders will slowly degrade, beacuse of heat buildup. These components are very time consuming to troubleshoot becuse they are usully well hidden behind dashboards and other wiring looms. Parts easily reaches several hundered dollars. Add 8h labour to that and it becomes obvious that a $50 wiring harness is a cheap insurance.
How can I ensure that I do not fry my cars internal headlight harness?

During normal HID operation, you use only 42 watts (35W to run the bulb plus 7W in heat losses in ballast) instead of the 55 watts that the halogen bulb uses, which is less, but, during HID cold startup, and for the first several seconds during warmup, the HID system can draw up to triple the normal operating power to run the ignitor circuit during that time. As the bulb warms up, the current draw tapers down to the normal running level. By powering the ballast through a relay straight from the battery to HID ballast, the heavy load is removed from stock headlight curcuit. Triggering the relay only requires 0.1 amps, so stock headlamp curcuit has no problem powering that. A relay is just a remotely mounted heavy duty switch, and the trigger power that goes to it just draws a small amount of current through the headlight switch to run an electromagnet that mechanically closes the contacts inside the relay which in turn hooks battery power strait to HID ballast power terminal. This insures that you wont ever overdrive the ratings of your vehicle's harness.
Name an example of an insufficient wiring harness?

Most HID kits comes with some sort of relay. The important part is that the relay is powered through a high current curcuit like directly to battery. In this picture, relay works as a polarity converter. (As a side note, correct polarity is a neccesity to make the ballast work, so that is not bad.) The bad part here is that the relay does not releave the stock headlight curcuit from the start current peaks. Also the ground connection in this example goes through stock headlight wiring, which on most cars has too thin wires. This harness will function properly for a while, all depending on how oversized your headlight curcuit is. It might start failing after 100 start/stop cycles, it might take 1000, but on most cars it will eventually prematurely wear out at the weakest point. The parts mentioned in above DIY relay only cost a fraction compared to truouble shooting labour and parts in the headlight curcuit.
My HID bulbs turns off when I am using my high beams

Most halogen headlights (not only dual filaments) are designed to turn off low beams when high beams are turned on. This is more of a engine overheating precautionary thing from the manufacturers than a result of a lighting law cotaining of too bright total headlamps.
In theory, using a diode from each of the high and low beam harness in series to trig relay so that low beams gets power even if low beams turn off will prevent this. It works great if you have halogen low beams, but not for HID low beam system. The downside is that if you are driving during the day with your HID low beams off, and do a couple of flashes with your high beam, you will notice that your HID system will be working like crazy. Startup time for HID system is up to 10 seconds, so flashing like this will only decrease life of your HID bulbs.
My HID bulb restarts when I am using my high beams

The actual "dark" time interval between low/high beam shifts might not be visible when you run halogen bulbs. Halogen bulbs react a little slow, so its hard to notice. We are talking of maybe 1/10 of a second. But any HID system will turn off and restart. What you experience on the road is dangerous pitch dark, 3-5 seconds.
This can be solved in a few ways, the first one is the most elegant:
# Connect triggers wires of the relay(s) that feeds ballasts directly to headlight switch, electrically before multifunction stalk. Having wiring diagram availble is recommended. If not, you can simply obtain access to rear of headlight switch, and try out the different terminals using a 12V test lamp.
# Adding a large capicitor between + and - on the trigger terminals of ballast relay. The size of the capicitor will naturally vary with size of interval. A starting point could be a 4700uF/minimum 20V. Yes, I know, this is not a small component.
# If you dont live in area with fog and you have been driving around with foglights on because your headlights are poor, you might find that you can use the fogligth switch to trigger your HID low beam. After all, you wouldnt need any "fog" ligths now that you have HID.
# Simply wire up a new switch. The cool thing is that the switch can be physically very small, since it only need to be rated for 0.3 amps.
# Connect trigger wire via a 4 second delay to ignition curcuit. The delay will turn HID system on after you have started engine, regardless of night or day. So this would serve as a DRL function as well.
# Connect trigger wire to the park lamp curcuit. This will eliminate all problems related to high beam usage. Park lights are always on regardless of "flash to pass", and low beam/high beam mode.
My HID system does not turn on the bulbs, or bulbs flashes/flickers, or needs the engine to run.
# Start power is up to 13Amps. If power is fed from stock wiring, a voltage drop will happen and 12volt system voltage at ballast goes under 9volts. Install wiring harness as decribed below.
# If you have a proper wiring harness installed, look for corrosion in contact elements.
# If bulb, ignitor or ballast is of non OEM quality(typically HID kits), some or all parts will break within 3 years.
# If you have quality HID parts, you could swap parts from one side of the car to the other. Downside of doing this is that a any defective component can destroy other perfectly working parts.

Sometimes one of the bulbs dont ignite when they are warm!

Igniting warm bulbs will draw more amps than compared to cold ones, so it is most probabaly insufficient 12V power feed. This could also be a sign of too low igniting voltage which means ignitor is defective. The ignitor in most HID setups is integrated in the ballast.
Can triggering relays/Bi-Xenon solenoid directly from headlight connector harm headlight switches?

Yes. Activating relays is done by connecting voltage to a coil, which in turn creates a magnetic field that pulls over the switch. When voltage is removed from the relay, the energy that is stored in the coil will send current the other way by increasing voltage to several hundred volts, and a small arc will be visible between the contact elements of the headlight switch. Over time, the switch will only work intermittant, and will eventually totally fail. Thats why a serial diode is essential to protect the headlight switch. Both relay and Bi-Xenon solenoid (if equipped) needs to be triggered through diodes. There is no rule of thumb of when to use diode or not without doing a throughout internal study of entire internal headlamp curcuit, which is wasted time.
(An internal study means removing all related wiring, fuse and fuse sockets, connectors, M/F switch and headlamp switch. Then connect it together with 15 amps load at headlamp connector in a lab and let a robot turn it on and off for 5000 times.)
Note that relay needs a minimum 1A/100V diode, solenoid needs a min 3A/100V diode, because of a more powerful coil. Both of them are like $1.50 or something (less than 0.1% of budget), and if inserted at the right time of install, there are no extra time to do so.
Where can I buy a premade harness?

It can be had from several places for $35 - $65. Just type in "Headlight harness" on yahoo.com and you will get at least 3 places on the first page. 99% of them are intended to decrease voltage drop in an Halogen headlight setup. This means in most cases you have to solder the connection to the ballast plug yourself. This is because halogen harnesses are ment to connect from and to the same socket (9006male -> 9006 female, 9007 male to 9007 female, H4 male to H4 female, etc). Better quality HID kits (like autolamps-online.com) comes with harness of various quality. A premade harness is designed to be long enough for all vehicles so be prapared to experience up one meter extra wire here and there.

Be aware that most aftermarked headlamp harnesses are made in Asia and does not have OEM quality and will detoriarate within 2-5 years. This is definatly an example of a product where u can say that you get what you pay for. $65 or less is not enough to manufacture and distrubute a high quality harness. If you want the best setup, make one yourself.
How do I make my own low beam HID harness in a car that has quad ligths?

This description will work for low beams with a single filament (H1, H2, H7, H9, H10, 9006) bulb. Diode is inserted to protect vehicle headlamp curcuit. This makes polarity important. The polarity of headlamp connector in vehicle harness is not standardized, so you would have measure first before inserting diode in the positive wire. It only takes 1Amp to kill a 1N4005 diode, so do not short it.
# wiring diagram
# photo
How do I make my own low beam HID for Bi-xenon harness in a car that has quad ligths?

Note the inserted 1N5404 diode. It protects high beam curcuitry:
How do I make my own low beam HID harness in a car with dual headlights?

Dual headlights means that original headlamps uses H4, 9004 or 9007. You might think that below diagram looks too complex, and wonder why factory headlight connector is NOT utilized to trigger relay curcuit. If relay was triggered directly from headlamp connector, ballasts would turn off when turning high beams on, which is an unlivable situation when using HID system, because of start up delays. This diagram will pick up relay trigger signal directly before high/low beam switch and will eliminate this problem. By combining a typical headlamp stock curcuit diagram with our single filament diagram, we will get the following diagram:



Can I make a harness out of an "over the counter" available high quality harness?

Yes! Painless Performance has an H4 headlight harness ( P/N 30815) that can be used a basis. By replacing the three H4 connectors with the style of halogen bulb connectors (9006, H1, etc) you use in your car. Those connectors are available in male and female types directly from suvlights.com's website. The Painless Performance harness contains two relays. One is ment for low beam and the other is for high beam. Even if u did not have in mind to upgrade your high beam as well as your low beam, this is your chance to integrate it. Halogen will dominate on the high beam scene for many years to come, so decreasing the voltage drop with a better curcuit will give more light output. It is probably the fastest way to get a quality harness for any retrofitting of any upgraded headlamp.
What do I need to build my own harness?
# Assembly Time. A skilled soldering person will take 3-4 hours to make it.
# Testing time. This should be done with a 100W bulb and then measure that there are no voltage losses, and that ploarity is correct.
# A few days to gather all parts. Below is a detailed list of needed parts:

If you like fuse integrated relays, buy them from Hella.

Here is a table over easily obtainable single automotive high quality relays:
Max Continous Load (Amps) Brand Model Example of Retailer: ~price in USD Herman's notes:
20-40 (100 inrush) Omron G8J series digikey.com 5 P/N Z983-ND, sealed container. Picture.
30 Siemens micro size relay, Series V23086 newark.com, 3.50 with 1mm diameter pin PCB tabs - excellent for soldering followed by silicone potting!
40 Tyco VF4-series newark.com 6 with quick connect tabs
70 Tyco VF7-series newark.com 8 with quick connect tabs

Waterproof relays (P/N 050453), socket (P/N 050455) and contact elements (P/N 050460) can be had from http://www.jpcycles.com. The waterproof relay looks alot like the Omron relay mentioned above.

Solid State relays will probably take over production of mechanical relays in the future when production numbers go up. Solid state relays have no moving parts and will therefor have a much smaller chance of breaking. They do not have a trigger coil that sadly has dreaded inductive current peaks, so there is no need for a switch protection diode. In 2004, there were relatively few manufacturers of solid state relays.
Where to buy them: Hella has them in various versions. Very few exists on the marked: Route66 Supply.com Rallylights.com
Hamsar Diversco - they have 6, 12, 20 and 40 amps versions available. Parts are orderable through Canadian Tire stores in Canada.

Fuses. "Littlefuse" has several versions of hanging and bracketed fuseholder, which is a standard in vehicle electrics since the 1970s: For the 15A fuse, use a blue colored "ATO" fuse:

For the 30A fuse, use a green colored "MAXI" fusible link:

Fuse holders. Place fuses in waterproof holders. ATO holder is pictured below. (Holders for the MAXI is way bigger in volume than ATO)

Herman likes using goldplated wire terminals simply because of their resistance to harsh liquids and fumes normally found underhood. Wire terminals are typically available from car audio shops and online. Ideally you would select a ring terminal for 12 gauge wire, but they tend to not have big enough to hole diameter, so go up to 10 gauge. Hole diameter must be identical or slightly larger than battery posts screw terminals. Terminals are typically of "crimp" style, which means that wire is "squeezed" onto terminal. Do not crimp terminals under hood. Soldering is the way to get good electrical connection.

Wires must also meet certain specifications. Hardware stores sells 12AWG wire, but its not suited for automotive use: It may not contain more than 6-10 twisted copper wires. That low amount makes it too stiff and prone to internal breaking. Also, they might only have standard PVC electrical insulation, which is only good until 80C (176F). There are many places (like radiator, engine, oil cooling ducts) that are hotter than that. When temperature drops below freezing, these wires becomes even stiffer and impossible to handle.

A good automotive cable has a minimum of 15 thin wires of copper or even better: silver plated copper. Insulation should be marked with minimum of 105C (221F). This way you can actually connect ground wires to the engine block without risking insulation going up in fire, and you are not limiting yourself when it comes to cable routing. Higher insulation temperaturs than 105C are available, but very hard to get a hold of.
If you have a hard time finding good cables new, Herman have found out that it is actually better to rip out some 3-6 year old cables from the junk yard, than to buy some half decent ones. Just make shure you cut off a few inches at the end to make shure you do not have any corrosion.
Another good source for 105C and 135C rated wires are old micro wave ovens and dryers.

KJCO (California) is a good online place to buy automotive electrical stuff:
# 12 gauge GXL wire in red and black.
# 125C Split looms in varios diameter.

Wires must be protected against mechanical wear. This is basically a thick walled flexible tube. Use conduits (also known as looms). Place a bundle of isolated wires inside. Action2k has this and accessories (loom retainers, tees and terminators).

Digikey.com (or .ca) has 1amp and 3amp diodes. Just search for 1N4005 respective 1N5404. 1N4005 is almost too tiny in comparison to diameter of 12-14 gauge wire, so using the 5mm diameter 1N5404 for all diode needs is a good choice.
How do I get a hold of a connector that plugs into standard Halogen connector?

Suvlights.com has single connectors for sale. They are in California, so it might take a few days before you get it.
Very often just crushing the glass of an halogen bulb in a newspaper or thick rag will do the trick. Solder wires to the metal wires that was formerly filament leads. Then weatherproof it with a glue gun or dip in silicone, Plasti-Dip, epoxy or similar.

Ground switched headlights
Most cars on the market use positive side switching. However, there are a few models (Toyota, Datsun, Nissan) that has ground switched headlamps. The above wiring diagram can still be used, the most important is to make shure current goes the right way through the diode.
Here is more info on ground switcing: http://store.yahoo.com/bcssales/grounlowsids.html

Will incresing the supply voltage to the ballast give more light output?
No. After igniting, the ballast will generate the needed voltage to the HID bulb regardless if the ballast is powered with 10 or 15 Volt. The ballast compensates itself for voltage variations. At 10V, the ballast will draw more current than at 15V.
"Bulb out" warning light shines up in the dash - now what?

Generally, a quality HID setup that originally came with halogen bulbs would use relays to get the power directly from battery. Which would mean that after you install your kit, load will go down from 55W to ~1W on headlight curcuit. This will most likely be recognized as a "bulb out". There are several generic ways around this and here are some work around suggestions:
# Cut off wires that goes to "bulb out detector" unit from headlight.
# Remove bulb from dash or the monitor black box itself. Cars have received bulb monitoring during since early 1980s, hence cars have existed with lights since 1910-1920s. A true car enthusiast knows if one or two headlights are lit.
# Wire up a separate switch for HID, similar to what you would do with foglamps.
# There is solutions out there that will emulate the load of bulbs, but not give any light. That is a waste of energy, why would someone take 150W from the engine, then get 110W out of the alternator, then transform those 110W to heat in a resistor, so that a stupid bulb in the dash can be happy???
# Reprogram vehicle electronic logic. A trend started around year 2000 for some vehicles to be able to have a correct "bulb out" light in the dash regardless if it was equipped with Xenon or Halogen headlights. The sensing of the situation "bulb out" is always that a voltage drop across a resistor goes beyond a certain value. Then there would be 2 values to store, one for Halogen and a one Xenon, wherea Xenon would have the lowest drop. This would typically be stored into the PCM and reprogrammed using a special reprogrammer tool at a dealer. This is basically just a special version of E-PROM burner. Around 2001 there was also a also a trend for an increasing amount of PCM programmers (mainly developed for engine tuning) on the aftermarked.

SilverStreaker

And more

How do I wire up solenoid of the 2002+ Bosch Bi-Xenon projector unit?

Just like all other Bi-Xenon units with moveable cutoff shield to get high beam, this one also has a solenoid to operate the shield. Solenoid is only pulling one way, there is a spring that will move it back. Solenoid operates after "pull" and "hold" principals. Which means that solenoid must be activated in pull mode and held in place by the hold mode. There is three wires coming out of the solenoid. Color coding varies, but it seems like these colors are the most common:
# red - positive
# black - ground (pull)
# green - ground (hold)

An electrical abd hookup diagram will look like this:

By using an ohm meter, it is possible to determine what wires goes where, even if they all have same colors.

When high beam voltage (12volts) is applied, the capacitor will shorten for a brief period of time, pulling the relay and giving power to the pull coil of solenoid. The hold section of solenoid will then maintain its position until power is removed. It should be mentioned that if coil resistance in relay is lower than 60-100ohms, capacitor might need to be increased. Maybe 2200uF/25V or 4700uF/25V. This will increase hold time. Note that a 4700uF/25V is probably larger than relay itself.

If you do not like to use relay because of reliabilty issues, an exmple of using a MOSFET switch will come soon.

Warning: Attempting to connect red and black permanently to a vehicles high beam will make almost 30W of heat to be emitted from solenoid. Solenoid is not designed for that and will start fuming up all cold (reflector, lenses) surfaces in your headlight.

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silex

iTrader: (26)

Hahah pwowned!! Read up!!!

Reducer

iTrader: (1)

Wow, that is a lot of info. Good Stuff.