HID installation
06-02-05, 07:40 PM
#16
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A foglight wirring harness for 25 dollers at napa or autozone or pepboys, which ever you have closer. Install that and you will never have to worry about damaging any part of your electrical system. Can you take pictures of the light pattern against the wall? I would like to see the perfromance of the halogen projectors.
06-02-05, 08:20 PM
#19
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Wow, im shocked at how even the cutof is, that is reallly amazing for halogen projectors, It looks as if there not as intense though, its hard to tell since there seems to be a good amount of light outside, maybe take 1 in the garrage ? with no lights, because it looks really good actually, just not sure they are intense, but hey even if they are not that bright you prolly wouldnt want to spend about 320 dollers to retrofit some nice projectors in there. And the harness they sell it at napa, autozone, pepboys, its a foglight wirring harness that uses a pilot relay. Ive seen different prices usualy a difference of 3-4 dollers, I got mine for $19.99 and man im telling you its better to be safe then sorry, and for 20 bucks you get the peace of mind. I mean would you care if you fried a 20 doller harness? what about the lexus stock one 
see the difference. If you cant find it I will get a picture for you but im sure its the only once there its around 20-24 dollers and the wires have a white plastic cover over them. But once again those projectors give out nice cutof, from all the halogen projectors Ive ever seen this is by far the best, although they dont look as intense, here is a picture of 1 lexus rx 330 modified projector that I have. Oh and the harness is very easy to install all instructions are on the box install time about 10 mins.
see the difference. If you cant find it I will get a picture for you but im sure its the only once there its around 20-24 dollers and the wires have a white plastic cover over them. But once again those projectors give out nice cutof, from all the halogen projectors Ive ever seen this is by far the best, although they dont look as intense, here is a picture of 1 lexus rx 330 modified projector that I have. Oh and the harness is very easy to install all instructions are on the box install time about 10 mins.
06-05-05, 02:57 PM
#20
$20 harness? How's it look like?
Vicestan,
If possible, can you get a picture of the harness you talked about? I have order the Xenon depot HID kit and waiting for it to arrive, so I am interested to know about this $20 harness. Thanks.
If possible, can you get a picture of the harness you talked about? I have order the Xenon depot HID kit and waiting for it to arrive, so I am interested to know about this $20 harness. Thanks.
06-05-05, 03:54 PM
#21
p.s. didnt GX's lights just get "best" rating among hundreds of vehicles tested (was it NTHSA?), while even factory HID's scored much lower - X5 w/hids was on complete opposite end of the scale.
06-05-05, 05:03 PM
#22
Originally Posted by spwolf
p.s. didnt GX's lights just get "best" rating among hundreds of vehicles tested (was it NTHSA?), while even factory HID's scored much lower - X5 w/hids was on complete opposite end of the scale.
06-05-05, 06:33 PM
#23
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Originally Posted by Joel888
Vicestan,
If possible, can you get a picture of the harness you talked about? I have order the Xenon depot HID kit and waiting for it to arrive, so I am interested to know about this $20 harness. Thanks.
If possible, can you get a picture of the harness you talked about? I have order the Xenon depot HID kit and waiting for it to arrive, so I am interested to know about this $20 harness. Thanks.
Sure, il give you a picture tommorow, I have to go to pepboys anyway, actually in fact I can take pictures of the harness installed in my gs if you want, if you do just pm me and I will post the pictures alright.
Last edited by vicestan; 06-05-05 at 07:01 PM.
06-05-05, 07:17 PM
#24
Originally Posted by vicestan
Sure, il give you a picture tommorow, I have to go to pepboys anyway, actually in fact I can take pictures of the harness installed in my gs if you want, if you do just pm me and I will post the pictures alright.
06-05-05, 08:49 PM
#25
Hey Tony...
Originally Posted by man8959
does anybody experience problems that vicestan is talking about. i'm a little scare now. and how do i prevent it from happening?
06-05-05, 10:48 PM
#26
Joel you dont need it
I have heard of cheap HID systems that would overload your factory harness but Phillips is an OEM supplier their parts are top notch and would never overload your factory harness. The HID kit from Xenondepot draws 35 watts the factory lights draw 55 watts. The kit comes with fuses and relays built in it will not overload your harness. I have been using philips kits on my other cars for over 5 years and had not one problem.
Its overkill to add another relay to the kit. Other members of this board will tell you the Xenondepot kit does not need another relay.
There are kits out there that make you tap into factory wires, cut them etc. I would stay away from these kits and would use a back up relay in that case.
Its overkill to add another relay to the kit. Other members of this board will tell you the Xenondepot kit does not need another relay.
There are kits out there that make you tap into factory wires, cut them etc. I would stay away from these kits and would use a back up relay in that case.
06-06-05, 09:34 AM
#27
Hmmmm, First Vicestan's post and now Tony's post... So, here's the $25K question, for someone who has already installed the Xenon kit, is it easy to get the $20.00 from pet boys/autobarn/R&S, etc. and INSTALL this on top of the existing kit?
On a seperate note, Vicestan, the CUTOFF you're seeing is VERY accurate on the GX. I've performed this same test before and after the HID Xenon kit and the CUTOFF is very VERY linear and sharp without any glare, this was done to "prevent" glares from hitting low riding car drivers from our TALL GX470 trucks, HID or Halogen...>
On a seperate note, Vicestan, the CUTOFF you're seeing is VERY accurate on the GX. I've performed this same test before and after the HID Xenon kit and the CUTOFF is very VERY linear and sharp without any glare, this was done to "prevent" glares from hitting low riding car drivers from our TALL GX470 trucks, HID or Halogen...>
06-06-05, 09:49 AM
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If, the xenon depot "kit" comes with a harness already which you route to the battary and trigger the relay though the stock harness then no you dont need a new harness. And tony even though the ballast say 35 watt they really draw 45 watt due to 10 watt loss through the wire resistance, and your statement that "haglogen is 55 watt and hid is 35 wat" makes a flawed comparison because you dont know the operational charectaristics of HID lights. As I wrote before they draw alot more current at start up and as they age, this degrades the stock relay and the wires.
06-06-05, 10:01 AM
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Ballasts
Ok, it has come to my attention some people think that if you use 2 different ballasts on the same bulbs, that one will look different than the other. Is this true? No. A ballast is a ballast (performance wise) as long as we are talking about 35W ballasts. As long as each ballast has the same exact style of connectors, they both can be used in conjunction with each other.
However, most aftermarket HID kit suppliers usually end up making their own sort of connector thus no longer using the oem style D-type connector. Thus that means some HID kits out there that use these different types of connectors, will no longer be able to connecto to a standard D2R or D2S based bulb. They make these kits like that to be universal with their rebased bulbs. If you ever plan on retroing projectors and using oem products, you aftermakret kit balast WILL NOT work and you will either have to replace the ballasts with oem components or be brave and splice in a new plug and oem connector.
So now you may be asking yourself, "so what all does a ballast do in general"? Well, here is a little bit of info on how flouresent ballast work and their basic simplicity. The same somewhat applies to automotive ballast. Our automotive ballast take in your cars DC power and converts it to AC current.
how stuff works.com wrote:
The simplest sort of ballast, generally referred to as a magnetic ballast, works something like an inductor. A basic inductor consists of a coil of wire in a circuit, which may be wound around a piece of metal. If you've read How Electromagnets Work, you know that when you send electrical current through a wire, it generates a magnetic field. Positioning the wire in concentric loops amplifies this field.
This sort of field affects not only objects around the loop, but also the loop itself. Increasing the current in the loop increases the magnetic field, which applies a voltage opposite the flow of current in the wire. In short, a coiled length of wire in a circuit (an inductor) opposes change in the current flowing through it (see How Inductors Work for details). The transformer elements in a magnetic ballast use this principle to regulate the current in a fluorescent lamp.
A ballast can only slow down changes in current -- it can't stop them. But the alternating current powering a fluorescent light is constantly reversing itself, so the ballast only has to inhibit increasing current in a particular direction for a short amount of time. Check out this site for more information on this process.
Magnetic ballasts modulate electrical current at a relatively low cycle rate, which can cause a noticeable flicker. Magnetic ballasts may also vibrate at a low frequency. This is the source of the audible humming sound people associate with fluorescent lamps.
Modern ballast designs use advanced electronics to more precisely regulate the current flowing through the electrical circuit. Since they use a higher cycle rate, you don't generally notice a flicker or humming noise coming from an electronic ballast. Different lamps require specialized ballasts designed to maintain the specific voltage and current levels needed for varying tube designs.
Ok, so now that you've read that, whats a electromagnet...
how stuff works.com wrote:
An Electromagnet
An electromagnet starts with a battery (or some other source of power) and a wire. What a battery produces is electrons.
If you look at a battery, say at a normal D-cell from a flashlight, you can see that there are two ends, one marked plus (+) and the other marked minus (-). Electrons collect at the negative end of the battery, and, if you let them, they will gladly flow to the positive end. The way you "let them" flow is with a wire. If you attach a wire directly between the positive and negative terminals of a D-cell, three things will happen:
Electrons will flow from the negative side of the battery to the positive side as fast as they can.
The battery will drain fairly quickly (in a matter of several minutes). For that reason, it is generally not a good idea to connect the two terminals of a battery to one another directly. Normally, you connect some kind of load in the middle of the wire so the electrons can do useful work. The load might be a motor, a light bulb, a radio or whatever.
A small magnetic field is generated in the wire. It is this small magnetic field that is the basis of an electromagnet.
With that being said, you now know the basics of what all is going on inside a ballast. The DC power from your car is being turned into AC power to supply the charge needed to power up the HID bulbs. The ballast throws out 23k +/-1-2k of volts to the HID bulbs upon start-up often refered to as warm-up. This is when you seeing HID trun on and start to change colors and get brighter as they warm. This usually lasts only around 25 seconds or so on OEM ballast. Cheaper aftermarket ballast tend to warm-up longer thus causing premature bulb life loss.
Sometimes when people first get HID, they tend to show boat infront of their friends turning their HID off/on rapidly. Is this good some say? The answer is no. If you've ever seen HID turned off and on you would of noticed a 4100k turns redish-orange for a second. This is the bulbs way of saying OUCH! What happens is the bulbs have already created Xenon gas to for the light but hasn't cooled back into salts and then when the bulbs are turned back on, the ballast are sending out a start-up of 23k volts which IS NOT a good thing. The bulbs already had enough Xenon in them to supply light and didn't need the 23k shot to them. This kills bulb lifespan.
So you've learned about ballasts and bulbs now. Lets move on to the wiring now shall we....
Some people out there just aren't aware of the dangers with wiring HID straight off of your existing oem wiring. Should a relay be used to power HID, yes and always needs to be used. Why you ask perhaps? Your oem halogen equiped car was never designed or intended from the manufacturer to use or run high voltage/high current/ high amperage HID ballasts. Ballast draw a imense amount of amps upon start-up and could very seriosuly damage your wiring and not just at where its connected. We are talking serious damage to fuse boxes, ecu's, or worse could short and cause fires on very old cares that even have a hard enough time trying to power halogen. The reason why is, that when the ballast "demand" power, your car has to supply it from somewhere. Lets say its tapped into your oem headlight wire ok. Now you power up the ballasts, the draw current from your wiring, your wiring might not be up to the task so its needs help, t searches for a source and before you know it, you've now weakend not only one source but two now just to try and supply the ballast good clean power. This is why a relay harness is needed. A relay harness gets its power straight from the battery via relays. These relays are then wired to go to your ballasts now.
(Provided in courtesy of Hidplanet.com )
Ok, it has come to my attention some people think that if you use 2 different ballasts on the same bulbs, that one will look different than the other. Is this true? No. A ballast is a ballast (performance wise) as long as we are talking about 35W ballasts. As long as each ballast has the same exact style of connectors, they both can be used in conjunction with each other.
However, most aftermarket HID kit suppliers usually end up making their own sort of connector thus no longer using the oem style D-type connector. Thus that means some HID kits out there that use these different types of connectors, will no longer be able to connecto to a standard D2R or D2S based bulb. They make these kits like that to be universal with their rebased bulbs. If you ever plan on retroing projectors and using oem products, you aftermakret kit balast WILL NOT work and you will either have to replace the ballasts with oem components or be brave and splice in a new plug and oem connector.
So now you may be asking yourself, "so what all does a ballast do in general"? Well, here is a little bit of info on how flouresent ballast work and their basic simplicity. The same somewhat applies to automotive ballast. Our automotive ballast take in your cars DC power and converts it to AC current.
how stuff works.com wrote:
The simplest sort of ballast, generally referred to as a magnetic ballast, works something like an inductor. A basic inductor consists of a coil of wire in a circuit, which may be wound around a piece of metal. If you've read How Electromagnets Work, you know that when you send electrical current through a wire, it generates a magnetic field. Positioning the wire in concentric loops amplifies this field.
This sort of field affects not only objects around the loop, but also the loop itself. Increasing the current in the loop increases the magnetic field, which applies a voltage opposite the flow of current in the wire. In short, a coiled length of wire in a circuit (an inductor) opposes change in the current flowing through it (see How Inductors Work for details). The transformer elements in a magnetic ballast use this principle to regulate the current in a fluorescent lamp.
A ballast can only slow down changes in current -- it can't stop them. But the alternating current powering a fluorescent light is constantly reversing itself, so the ballast only has to inhibit increasing current in a particular direction for a short amount of time. Check out this site for more information on this process.
Magnetic ballasts modulate electrical current at a relatively low cycle rate, which can cause a noticeable flicker. Magnetic ballasts may also vibrate at a low frequency. This is the source of the audible humming sound people associate with fluorescent lamps.
Modern ballast designs use advanced electronics to more precisely regulate the current flowing through the electrical circuit. Since they use a higher cycle rate, you don't generally notice a flicker or humming noise coming from an electronic ballast. Different lamps require specialized ballasts designed to maintain the specific voltage and current levels needed for varying tube designs.
Ok, so now that you've read that, whats a electromagnet...
how stuff works.com wrote:
An Electromagnet
An electromagnet starts with a battery (or some other source of power) and a wire. What a battery produces is electrons.
If you look at a battery, say at a normal D-cell from a flashlight, you can see that there are two ends, one marked plus (+) and the other marked minus (-). Electrons collect at the negative end of the battery, and, if you let them, they will gladly flow to the positive end. The way you "let them" flow is with a wire. If you attach a wire directly between the positive and negative terminals of a D-cell, three things will happen:
Electrons will flow from the negative side of the battery to the positive side as fast as they can.
The battery will drain fairly quickly (in a matter of several minutes). For that reason, it is generally not a good idea to connect the two terminals of a battery to one another directly. Normally, you connect some kind of load in the middle of the wire so the electrons can do useful work. The load might be a motor, a light bulb, a radio or whatever.
A small magnetic field is generated in the wire. It is this small magnetic field that is the basis of an electromagnet.
With that being said, you now know the basics of what all is going on inside a ballast. The DC power from your car is being turned into AC power to supply the charge needed to power up the HID bulbs. The ballast throws out 23k +/-1-2k of volts to the HID bulbs upon start-up often refered to as warm-up. This is when you seeing HID trun on and start to change colors and get brighter as they warm. This usually lasts only around 25 seconds or so on OEM ballast. Cheaper aftermarket ballast tend to warm-up longer thus causing premature bulb life loss.
Sometimes when people first get HID, they tend to show boat infront of their friends turning their HID off/on rapidly. Is this good some say? The answer is no. If you've ever seen HID turned off and on you would of noticed a 4100k turns redish-orange for a second. This is the bulbs way of saying OUCH! What happens is the bulbs have already created Xenon gas to for the light but hasn't cooled back into salts and then when the bulbs are turned back on, the ballast are sending out a start-up of 23k volts which IS NOT a good thing. The bulbs already had enough Xenon in them to supply light and didn't need the 23k shot to them. This kills bulb lifespan.
So you've learned about ballasts and bulbs now. Lets move on to the wiring now shall we....
Some people out there just aren't aware of the dangers with wiring HID straight off of your existing oem wiring. Should a relay be used to power HID, yes and always needs to be used. Why you ask perhaps? Your oem halogen equiped car was never designed or intended from the manufacturer to use or run high voltage/high current/ high amperage HID ballasts. Ballast draw a imense amount of amps upon start-up and could very seriosuly damage your wiring and not just at where its connected. We are talking serious damage to fuse boxes, ecu's, or worse could short and cause fires on very old cares that even have a hard enough time trying to power halogen. The reason why is, that when the ballast "demand" power, your car has to supply it from somewhere. Lets say its tapped into your oem headlight wire ok. Now you power up the ballasts, the draw current from your wiring, your wiring might not be up to the task so its needs help, t searches for a source and before you know it, you've now weakend not only one source but two now just to try and supply the ballast good clean power. This is why a relay harness is needed. A relay harness gets its power straight from the battery via relays. These relays are then wired to go to your ballasts now.
(Provided in courtesy of Hidplanet.com )
06-06-05, 11:27 AM
#30
You guys can install a back relay if you want
Hey you guys can do the extra work of installing extra gear on top of your HID kits if you want , I for myself think it is uneccessary. Its your GX do what ever you want to.
You guys should e-mail Steve from Xenondepot and ask him about this. IF 25 bucks of extra relays helps you sleep better at night then do it.
You guys should e-mail Steve from Xenondepot and ask him about this. IF 25 bucks of extra relays helps you sleep better at night then do it.
