HID Headlight Bulbs / HID Projector Retrofit

[morrislee]

I have an issue with my hids. I got my whole kit maybe close to a year ago from ddm tuning, my passenger side seems to turn off after a while, sometimes when I hit a bump and sometimes just flat smooth roads. I have a few ballast laying around so I switched the ballast and drove it and it turned off again. My connections are solid, I can rock the headlight switch off and on and it fires back up with no problems. I haven't tried switching the bulb, do yall think it could be the bulb? I doubt is the relay because the driver side is still getting power and that's the last place the power goes.

 

Does your relay harness have 1 or 2 relays? if you think it is the bulb, switch the bulbs not the ballasts. see if now the driver side will turn off.

[NitroDatsik]

 

Does your relay harness have 1 or 2 relays? if you think it is the bulb, switch the bulbs not the ballasts. see if now the driver side will turn off.

It has 1. I was reading some troubleshoots and some say the bulbs do that when they are about to go out but I feel like I haven't had them long enough for this to happen.

[Mike1220]

I have an issue with my hids. I got my whole kit maybe close to a year ago from ddm tuning, my passenger side seems to turn off after a while, sometimes when I hit a bump and sometimes just flat smooth roads. I have a few ballast laying around so I switched the ballast and drove it and it turned off again. My connections are solid, I can rock the headlight switch off and on and it fires back up with no problems. I haven't tried switching the bulb, do yall think it could be the bulb? I doubt is the relay because the driver side is still getting power and that's the last place the power goes.

Could be the relay, mine was having issues with the lights going on and off intermitanly and sometimes one side just wouldn't want to turn on at all. Relay was rusted a bit cause I had mounted mine in a bad location. [emoji28]

[loganbent]

I have an issue with my hids. I got my whole kit maybe close to a year ago from ddm tuning, my passenger side seems to turn off after a while, sometimes when I hit a bump and sometimes just flat smooth roads. I have a few ballast laying around so I switched the ballast and drove it and it turned off again. My connections are solid, I can rock the headlight switch off and on and it fires back up with no problems. I haven't tried switching the bulb, do yall think it could be the bulb? I doubt is the relay because the driver side is still getting power and that's the last place the power goes.

 

Similar issue with mine has just come up over the last week, installed my HID's in January of 2014 and in the last week they've started to not always turn on, as of this morning I can't get methe low beams to turn at all. I haven't checked with a multimeter yet(I'm out of town at the moment so don't have my normal tools) but the fuse is visibly good and the (1) relay clicks as I pull it out of the socket so I think the issue is downstream of that. 1.5 years for bulb life seems a bit low to me but I do have approximately 22k miles on them, they're both out nearly simultaneously which seems odd compared to bulb life for non HID units

[NitroDatsik]

 

Similar issue with mine has just come up over the last week, installed my HID's in January of 2014 and in the last week they've started to not always turn on, as of this morning I can't get methe low beams to turn at all. I haven't checked with a multimeter yet(I'm out of town at the moment so don't have my normal tools) but the fuse is visibly good and the (1) relay clicks as I pull it out of the socket so I think the issue is downstream of that. 1.5 years for bulb life seems a bit low to me but I do have approximately 22k miles on them, they're both out nearly simultaneously which seems odd compared to bulb life for non HID units

I also went out of town, vacation. I took my lights off and unplugged the hid bulbs from the factory wire and is just some male pin that goes into the headlight wire, I had them electric taped when I first intall them. I also switch the bulbs from side to the other. I then drove like 15 miles to drop off my truck. I made sure to go through bumpy roads and hit some pot holes. Lights worked fine, I guess the male plugs I had plugged into the factory wire were coming loose. I won't know for sure until I get home next week.

[badbowtie572]

After reading several posts on this thread I went ahead and got the fxr GMC Sierra retrofit kit from fast headlights. I'm still waiting on the brackets that adapt to the fxr projectors right now but they should be in any day. Anyhow I opened the box that had all the other components listed in the kit but there is no diagram for hooking all this stuff up. Most of it is labeled and I got most of it figured out from the wiring diagram on the first post but I have two small harnesses I'm not sure what they go to and also is it common practice that everyone is using the passenger side to control the relays? Also I ready somewhere in here about reversing the polarity of the capacitor for our trucks. Does anybody know if this kit has already done that for the capacitor? Hopefully the pic I tried to upload actually works the two harnesses on the left are the ones I have no idea where they go and the one on the right is the capacitor harness.

[morrislee]

After reading several posts on this thread I went ahead and got the fxr GMC Sierra retrofit kit from fast headlights. I'm still waiting on the brackets that adapt to the fxr projectors right now but they should be in any day. Anyhow I opened the box that had all the other components listed in the kit but there is no diagram for hooking all this stuff up. Most of it is labeled and I got most of it figured out from the wiring diagram on the first post but I have two small harnesses I'm not sure what they go to and also is it common practice that everyone is using the passenger side to control the relays? Also I ready somewhere in here about reversing the polarity of the capacitor for our trucks. Does anybody know if this kit has already done that for the capacitor? Hopefully the pic I tried to upload actually works the two harnesses on the left are the ones I have no idea where they go and the one on the right is the capacitor harness.image.jpg

 

The top one is the capacitor, needs to be between the stock headlight signal to the harness relay is attached to. Capacitor evens out the PWM from the headlight to keep the relay not flicking on and off relative to the PWM 12v/0v high frequency switch. This is to prevent HIDs to flicker or premature wear and stress on relay and the ballasts.

 

The other 2 I believe are for different purpose, it is used if you want to keep both headlights on when blinker is blinking on one side (some vehicles disables the headlight on the side the blinker is on to improve visibility of the blink), I do not think this applies if you have a single relay.

 

Get a picture of the whole kit if you still have questions when they arrive, I should be able to tell you what goes where etc.

 

As for reversing polarity, dont worry about it unless you hear flickering on the relay or the the lights not working at all.

Edited June 9, 2015 by morrislee

[badbowtie572]

Ok so this is pretty straight forward from what it sounds like. This thread had me worried because so many people have posted up asking questions about the problems they are having. I Think I have everything else figured out. I'm not sure what my truck does with the headlight when I put the blinker on. I'll have to go look when I have time. For now all those boxes are sitting in the corner starring at me begging to be installed. I will try to get some good pics of the install. Every project starts out the same for me where I take a bazillion pics at first and then as the job progresses I forget about taking pics and before I know it I have a finished project and pics of half a job.

[jetfixer737]

I came up with kind of an off the wall idea that I wanted to run past you folks. I'm sure I'm gonna get shot down, but I have to ask. With so much of the Sierra headlight system being considered as...substandard, obviously there are a lot of ideas here to improve the system. What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever considered retrofitting the projectors, but staying with the halogen bulbs. (If this is even possible)

 

When I picked up my new Denali 1500 I was bracing myself for the headlights to be horrible, and although they could certainly be better, they aren't as bad as I expected.

 

My reason for asking is because although factory installed HID lights have been around for quite awhile, and are very good, from what I've read on here I'm still not entirely convinced of the long term reliability of the aftermarket systems.

 

Considering the GM factory projector is, to say the least, DE-tuned I'm curious as to how much improvement can be had just from better projectors...

[Dunc]

I came up with kind of an off the wall idea that I wanted to run past you folks. I'm sure I'm gonna get shot down, but I have to ask. With so much of the Sierra headlight system being considered as...substandard, obviously there are a lot of ideas here to improve the system. What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever considered retrofitting the projectors, but staying with the halogen bulbs. (If this is even possible)

 

When I picked up my new Denali 1500 I was bracing myself for the headlights to be horrible, and although they could certainly be better, they aren't as bad as I expected.

 

My reason for asking is because although factory installed HID lights have been around for quite awhile, and are very good, from what I've read on here I'm still not entirely convinced of the long term reliability of the aftermarket systems.

 

Considering the GM factory projector is, to say the least, DE-tuned I'm curious as to how much improvement can be had just from better projectors...

Halogen bulbs would not fit in in a good HID projector. The bases of the bulbs are different shapes. It would be a huge waste of time and money to do a retrofit and keep halogen bulbs. All halogen bulbs are garbage. I am one of the people who will never spent a dime on aftermarket HID systems. I just don't think the quality is there, but to each their own right? If you're concened then get an OEM setup. With OEM ballasts and OEM bulbs it will be far less likely you'll ever have any issues as compared to aftermarket systems. You could even go as far as making your own wiring harness to use quality parts and make it fit your vehicle perfectly. It gets expensive fast going this route though. I spent about 2-2.5 times more than the average retrofit so if you are concerned about cost then this might not be the option for you.

 

I just finished mine this past weekend and the Denso ballasts were easy to hide. You can still access them if needed without taking the front end apart as well. They fit under the extra battery tray and air box tray. I spliced in a set of AMP connectors on the Densos so that I could put the D2S connector in the housing and run the wires out of the housing underneath so that no holes were visible before putting the plugs on the wires. My housings have a single 1/2" hole on the bottom of the housing instead of going straight out the back of the dust cap. The stock dust cap also fits on it with no modification. I also created my own wiring harness instead of using the typical Morimoto harness. The reason is that the premade harness has too many connections that are points of failure in the future plus it didn't fit well. Wiring should fit the car, it shouldn't be the car that has to fit the wiring. The premade harness had 3 separate grounding connections, the capacitor just flopped around on the harness, there were adapter plugs, and some of them didn't have the (+) wire on the correct side of the plug so you'd have to plug things in backward.

 

Anyways, I consolidated everything down into just 1 ground and 1 positive that go to the battery, bought quality parts/wiring/braided sleeving, and put the capacitor inside of the harness so that it doesn't flop around and is streamlined, and also don't have any adapter plugs now. It wasn't difficult, just tedious and time consuming...although I'm also extemely anal with wiring being perfect so that always adds time for me. All the wiring is nearly hidden as well and it just fits the truck a lot better. By doing it this way each headlight is its own independent circuit and both are driven off of the single (-) and (+) connections.

Edited June 9, 2015 by Dunc

[morrislee]

I came up with kind of an off the wall idea that I wanted to run past you folks. I'm sure I'm gonna get shot down, but I have to ask. With so much of the Sierra headlight system being considered as...substandard, obviously there are a lot of ideas here to improve the system. What I'm wondering is if anyone has ever considered retrofitting the projectors, but staying with the halogen bulbs. (If this is even possible)

 

When I picked up my new Denali 1500 I was bracing myself for the headlights to be horrible, and although they could certainly be better, they aren't as bad as I expected.

 

My reason for asking is because although factory installed HID lights have been around for quite awhile, and are very good, from what I've read on here I'm still not entirely convinced of the long term reliability of the aftermarket systems.

 

Considering the GM factory projector is, to say the least, DE-tuned I'm curious as to how much improvement can be had just from better projectors...

 

If you are retrofitting, I doubt that any projectors you buy actually accepts any halogen bulbs. halogen bulbs has their own sockets, but HIDs have aftermarket non-standard bulbs with base that is compatible with popular halogen bulb's base. And why would you even consider....

 

Halogen bulbs would not fit in in a good HID projector. The bases of the bulbs are different shapes. It would be a huge waste of time and money to do a retrofit and keep halogen bulbs. All halogen bulbs are garbage. I am one of the people who will never spent a dime on aftermarket HID systems. I just don't think the quality is there, but to each their own right? If you're concened then get an OEM setup. With OEM ballasts and OEM bulbs it will be far less likely you'll ever have any issues as compared to aftermarket systems. You could even go as far as making your own wiring harness to use quality parts and make it fit your vehicle perfectly. It gets expensive fast going this route though. I spent about 2-2.5 times more than the average retrofit so if you are concerned about cost then this might not be the option for you.

 

I just finished mine this past weekend and the Denso ballasts were easy to hide. You can still access them if needed without taking the front end apart as well. They fit under the extra battery tray and air box tray. I spliced in a set of AMP connectors on the Densos so that I could put the D2S connector in the housing and run the wires out of the housing underneath so that no holes were visible before putting the plugs on the wires. My housings have a single 1/2" hole on the bottom of the housing instead of going straight out the back of the dust cap. The stock dust cap also fits on it with no modification. I also created my own wiring harness instead of using the typical Morimoto harness. The reason is that the premade harness has too many connections that are points of failure in the future plus it didn't fit well. Wiring should fit the car, it shouldn't be the car that has to fit the wiring. The premade harness had 3 separate grounding connections, the capacitor just flopped around on the harness, there were adapter plugs, and some of them didn't have the (+) wire on the correct side of the plug so you'd have to plug things in backward.

 

Anyways, I consolidated everything down into just 1 ground and 1 positive that go to the battery, bought quality parts/wiring/braided sleeving, and put the capacitor inside of the harness so that it doesn't flop around and is streamlined, and also don't have any adapter plugs now. It wasn't difficult, just tedious and time consuming...although I'm also extemely anal with wiring being perfect so that always adds time for me. All the wiring is nearly hidden as well and it just fits the truck a lot better. By doing it this way each headlight is its own independent circuit and both are driven off of the single (-) and (+) connections.

 

I managed to hide my DDM ballasts under the plastic trim on top of the radiator. only bits of the wires comes out and goes in the cap. not as elegant as yours but nothing is dangling

[jetfixer737]

 

If you are retrofitting, I doubt that any projectors you buy actually accepts any halogen bulbs. halogen bulbs has their own sockets, but HIDs have aftermarket non-standard bulbs with base that is compatible with popular halogen bulb's base. And why would you even consider....

 

 

 

Like I said in my last post, from what I've read on here I'm just not completely sold on the long term reliability of the aftermarket HID systems. Yes, I've heard good things from guys like T.R.S. but it seems like all too often here somebody has some sort of malfunction. I'm probably overreacting, but I have recurring nightmares of my headlights going dark in the middle of nowhere on a cross country road trip.

I completely agree though that it would be a big waste of time/effort to tear the front end of my brand new truck apart to retrofit the projectors only to do it all over again to install a HID system...

Edited June 11, 2015 by jetfixer737

[morrislee]

 

Like I said in my last post, from what I've read on here I'm just not completely sold on the long term reliability of the aftermarket HID systems. Yes, I've heard good things from guys like T.R.S. but it seems like all too often here somebody has some sort of malfunction. I'm probably overreacting, but I have recurring nightmares of my headlights going dark in the middle of nowhere on a cross country road trip.

 

I completely agree though that it would be a big waste of time/effort to tear the front end of my brand new truck apart to retrofit the projectors only to do it all over again to install a HID system...

 

 

If you have a kit that is defective, it will fail within the first couple of days or the week. if it continues to work, they will outlast any halogen bulbs. Just get 2 sets of like DDM or something as they are the cheapest. you will get a second set to replace any part that breaks and dont need to wait for DDM to sent you the replacement.

[FastWS6TA]

After reading several posts on this thread I went ahead and got the fxr GMC Sierra retrofit kit from fast headlights. I'm still waiting on the brackets that adapt to the fxr projectors right now but they should be in any day. Anyhow I opened the box that had all the other components listed in the kit but there is no diagram for hooking all this stuff up. Most of it is labeled and I got most of it figured out from the wiring diagram on the first post but I have two small harnesses I'm not sure what they go to and also is it common practice that everyone is using the passenger side to control the relays? Also I ready somewhere in here about reversing the polarity of the capacitor for our trucks. Does anybody know if this kit has already done that for the capacitor? Hopefully the pic I tried to upload actually works the two harnesses on the left are the ones I have no idea where they go and the one on the right is the capacitor harness.image.jpg

Here you go bud. Below is a link to the instructions for the retrofit kit. The last page has the wiring diagram for you. The diagram will also work for anyone hooking up an HID kit as well. Your bracket kit should be to you soon as well. Thanks!

 

https://docs.google.com/a/fastheadlights.com/file/d/0BzwI7I8tBeJSdTRmRTI5YU9zdUk/edit?usp=docslist_api

[FastWS6TA]

You also don't need those two splitter wires. Not sure why my sales manager sent that to you......... lol. That capacitor link is real important though:)