Shop Installed HID Headlights

[Brodeisel]

just plug and go dont make things complicated they are easy as fuck

[armykyle1]

just plug and go dont make things complicated they are easy as fuck

plug and play isn't truly plug and play

[rusty959]

The idea of hid's burning cooler than normal halogens i can tell you is a total lie. I have FutureVision 4300k 35 and 50w HID's for my 04 envoy. They put out a lot more heat than the halogens ever could imagine. After just a few seconds the hid's are so hot you can feel their warmth with your hand being 3 inches from the housing of your light. For the high/low bulbs you can either get ones that just pop into the stock wires and housing and call it a day, you can get the same bulbs that are plug and play BUT get a relay for them as to not melt the stock wiring (highly recommend this), or if you want a fun project tear the lights apart and do a projector retrofit to make them high/low.

Not gunna comment too much here but this is just an fyi type of thing... If you can feel heat this soon you are experiencing a type of heat called radiant heat. Think of this like a laser. What it is being shined at will heat up. Just like your hand. Your HID does something similar just not so concentrated to one spot. What could melt the housing is conductive heat... heat transfer from items touching. Example, the bulb touching the housing. This takes time. In a couple seconds the bulb would not be able to heat up the air in the housing (a form of convective heat) which would heat up the headlight cover which would heat up the air outside the headlight to warm your hand.

Here is a site I found real quick that explains it more if you feel like reading. http://www.tapinsulation.com/heat.html

Long story short feel free to ignore what I just said, but learning things is always fun (also I probably won't ever look back at this thread)

[kickass audio]

That's pretty cool. Thanks for that info. I'm not worried about melting the housings at all, its been in for 3 weeks and it works great for me. And op, one thing to think about is like what another member mentioned with the bulb length. Some headlights come stock with a small metal cover that restricts the low beam light from shining totally in front of you and blinding someone, if you have this (doubt u do) it may stop the bulb from being fully I inserted.

[HHR Ed]

Hids are easier then f### to put in just do them your self bi$$$

Easy on the language please.

Its a family friendly forum

[kickass audio]

Also to elaborate on the plug and play not always working 100%, i ran into this with my fog lights. With the wire that normally connects to the back of the light, you can plug them into the ballasts themselves to power the HID's, well that stock harness wire would not connect directly into my relay or ballasts. I noticed it had a slight bump around the edge of the stock connector so i cut it off, still no luck. Upon further inspection i noticed that when i plug it into the relay connector, the leads wernt lining up to make a connection. So i had two options, i could use the wire harness that came with my hid's and plug the male pin into the female end of the hid and tape it up and hope it doesnt come loose and catch fire, or i could get some wire taps and tap into the stock wire to turn on and off the relay harness. I chose to get wire taps and tap into the wire to turn on the relays. When i did this it worked without a problem so i had no problems with it.

If you run into this, you MUST make sure you know which wire is positive and which is ground. If you hook them up wrong it wont work. It wont harm anything as long as you realize something isnt right but i knew which was the + and - and i still reversed the wires rushing to get them done before the rain came that day. I went to test my fogs and they didnt work, so i looked at the wires i tapped and they were on backwards, i switched them and presto i had fogs.

If you get stuck with this at all feel free to ask me, it really isnt hard. Just gotta know where to run the wires, how to wire up a relay (super easy since you just plug the stock harnesses into them), how to take your headlights off and screw in the new hid's, and possibly how to tap into your stock light wires to turn the new hid's on.

[armykyle1]

Also to elaborate on the plug and play not always working 100%, i ran into this with my fog lights. With the wire that normally connects to the back of the light, you can plug them into the ballasts themselves to power the HID's, well that stock harness wire would not connect directly into my relay or ballasts. I noticed it had a slight bump around the edge of the stock connector so i cut it off, still no luck. Upon further inspection i noticed that when i plug it into the relay connector, the leads wernt lining up to make a connection. So i had two options, i could use the wire harness that came with my hid's and plug the male pin into the female end of the hid and tape it up and hope it doesnt come loose and catch fire, or i could get some wire taps and tap into the stock wire to turn on and off the relay harness. I chose to get wire taps and tap into the wire to turn on the relays. When i did this it worked without a problem so i had no problems with it.

If you run into this, you MUST make sure you know which wire is positive and which is ground. If you hook them up wrong it wont work. It wont harm anything as long as you realize something isnt right but i knew which was the + and - and i still reversed the wires rushing to get them done before the rain came that day. I went to test my fogs and they didnt work, so i looked at the wires i tapped and they were on backwards, i switched them and presto i had fogs.

If you get stuck with this at all feel free to ask me, it really isnt hard. Just gotta know where to run the wires, how to wire up a relay (super easy since you just plug the stock harnesses into them), how to take your headlights off and screw in the new hid's, and possibly how to tap into your stock light wires to turn the new hid's on.

I soldiered leads to the back of the housing using the stock harness.

I still need a relay harness for my fogs lights

[kickass audio]

you can manually get a relay working for them, not necessarily a relay harness to make them work easier.

When i bought my hids from futurevision the projectors came with their own relays for each one. I have two relays for just my low beams so that way if one relay blows i have one light that will work so i can hop home with. For my fog and highs i have one relay to power both sides of the lights. I bought the relays for $40 each off my local audio shop.

[armykyle1]

you can manually get a relay working for them, not necessarily a relay harness to make them work easier.

When i bought my hids from futurevision the projectors came with their own relays for each one. I have two relays for just my low beams so that way if one relay blows i have one light that will work so i can hop home with. For my fog and highs i have one relay to power both sides of the lights. I bought the relays for $40 each off my local audio shop.

that's a good idea. kinda steep for relays uh? even the heavy duty ones I've seen are only like 3-4 bucks

[kickass audio]

actually relays you have to hard wire are super cheap compared to one that is pre made/wired and you just need to hook to the battery and connect all the wires to its connectors.

If you give me a min i can find the link to the site where it tells you how to wire up your hid's to normal SPDT relays you can get at advance auto for like $5-8 max. They do the same thing just are a tad bit more in depth for installing them and you HAVE to make sure they are not in a spot they can short out or get wet.

Edit: here ya go. this is different for the color of the wires but it is the same thing.

http://forums.vwvort...dependant-Relay

You want to make sure you use a SPDT relay (the guys at advance should know this) and get some wire from 14ga to 12ga. You could use 16 but the thicker the wire the better it will be for power transfer to your ballasts.

Now for wiring up the relay just to bring it here instead of on that site:

Pin 30 on the relay will go to the positive terminal of your ballast(s) (you can fuse this if you want with a 20-30 amp fuse but theres not much of a need to)

Pin 85 will go to your batteries negative terminal (or fender but preferrabily the batteries negative terminal for better power transfer)

Pin 86 will go to the positive wire of your STOCK wire harness that normally goes to your stock halogen bulbs. This wire will connect to the wire in that connector that is energized when the lights are turned on, but de-energized when the lights are not turned on. To find which of the two wires are the switchable wires simply do this. Take a Multi meter and set it to 20v DC and set the black probe to the negative or ground of your vehicle. Then take the red or positive probe of the multi meter and touch each wire on the stock plug one at a time. Note which one reads as +12v when the lights are engaged and which one will go to 0v when the lights are not engaged. Once you find this, you will tap into that wire and connect it to pin 86 of your relay.

Pin 87 will go directly to your batteries positive terminal (i highly recommend you fuse this wire with a 20-30 amp fuse just incase one of the wires shorts out or the relay gets wet it will blow the fuse before anything else happens)

Edit 2: If you wanted to use one relay for the left AND right side headlights you can just take the wire coming out of pin 30 and connect it to both ballasts positive wire. This will work just fine but has one problem. If your relay were to burn out or anything like this, you will NOT have any lights to drive home with. What i did to mine was install a relay for both sides of my low beams so if one relay were to burn out i can still get home with the other light working. My fog and high beam lights i didnt bother to do this with since idc if they burn out, i can see just fine without them and they arent really used by me too often.