Strange things at startup when headlights converted to HID

[jpc763]

Originally Posted by Pdwight

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

I picked up a set of Fred's V1 from another member and installed them. They work great and I usually start them up before starting the car but last week I switched them on while driving and I got all of the idiot lights you discussed and my stereo head unit went a bit crazy. Everything went back to normal.

Originally Posted by JayG

I just changed to HIDs in my stock headlights and got some weird idiot lights as well. I was seeing the battery and oil level ones on.
Ended up changing out the ballasts to ones that were CANBUS compatible and everything is fine now

So Jay, these balasts you are talking about, do they work with Fred's HID upgrade? If so, can you provide some details on which ones you are using?

[JayG]

Originally Posted by jpc763

I picked up a set of Fred's V1 from another member and installed them. They work great and I usually start them up before starting the car but last week I switched them on while driving and I got all of the idiot lights you discussed and my stereo head unit went a bit crazy. Everything went back to normal.



So Jay, these ballasts you are talking about, do they work with Fred's HID upgrade? If so, can you provide some details on which ones you are using?

Can't tell you one way or another 100% with Fred's projectors, but my understanding is all HIDs can use he same ballasts. As i said, I could be wrong.

Perhaps Charles can chime in on that

In any case, these are what I have now and work great
DDM Tuning: HID and LED Lighting