986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners - View Single Post - Strange things at startup when headlights converted to HID

Pdwight · 10-25-2015, 11:51 AM

My headlights were converted to HID many months ago, I started to get some strange things to happen when I flipped on the headlights, oil light, battery light, and sometimes even a top error. It was always just one of these, never more than that. I replaced my headlight switch, found it to be in pieces inside and the problem got better but did not go away. I tried connecting a 100 MHz oscilloscope to a few points to watch for spurious ac signals and found several...some were probably too fast to catch with the scope but were probably like a sundial to the electronics inside the car. I thought about this long and hard and a several possible solutions came to mind. Possibly a capacitor in the right RF range to capture this spurious RF gremlin and send it to ( RF Hell) ground...but without access to a really fast Spectrum analyzer it made the calculations difficult. Besides the gremlins probably did not follow a definite frequency range....I am not an engineer.....just an old tech who used to do UHF and VHF board repairs. I did find a simple solution that has worked for me now for 2 months 100% of the time. You already have this installed in your car....so if you are having problems read on......

What we need is a big but kicking capacitor to suck these things up like a virus or a vacuum to dirt under the carpet. So I thought about it and tried this with great success. The giant wet sell in your car is a huge capacitor with tremendous potential.....it does start your engine right !!

Simply put the key in, turn on your lights, switch to the run position and allow the ballasts to ignite the HID envelopes, then start the car. The harmonics occur as the ballasts ignite after that the current drops and everything runs fine. I have been doing this for a while with 100% success......I hope this helps you out.

Dwight

10-25-2015, 11:51 AM	#1
Pdwight Registered User Join Date: May 2013 Location: North Alabama Posts: 2,079	Strange things at startup when headlights converted to HID My headlights were converted to HID many months ago, I started to get some strange things to happen when I flipped on the headlights, oil light, battery light, and sometimes even a top error. It was always just one of these, never more than that. I replaced my headlight switch, found it to be in pieces inside and the problem got better but did not go away. I tried connecting a 100 MHz oscilloscope to a few points to watch for spurious ac signals and found several...some were probably too fast to catch with the scope but were probably like a sundial to the electronics inside the car. I thought about this long and hard and a several possible solutions came to mind. Possibly a capacitor in the right RF range to capture this spurious RF gremlin and send it to ( RF Hell) ground...but without access to a really fast Spectrum analyzer it made the calculations difficult. Besides the gremlins probably did not follow a definite frequency range....I am not an engineer.....just an old tech who used to do UHF and VHF board repairs. I did find a simple solution that has worked for me now for 2 months 100% of the time. You already have this installed in your car....so if you are having problems read on...... What we need is a big but kicking capacitor to suck these things up like a virus or a vacuum to dirt under the carpet. So I thought about it and tried this with great success. The giant wet sell in your car is a huge capacitor with tremendous potential.....it does start your engine right !! Simply put the key in, turn on your lights, switch to the run position and allow the ballasts to ignite the HID envelopes, then start the car. The harmonics occur as the ballasts ignite after that the current drops and everything runs fine. I have been doing this for a while with 100% success......I hope this helps you out. Dwight