HID high beam wiring problems - Exterior Forum

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HID high beam wiring problems
Saturday, August 06, 2011 10:58 PM
I have a set of HID's. After spending several hours, a bunch of Rolling Rocks, and alot of frustration, they still didn't work with the supplied relay kit. My fiance and I spent time checking everything but nothing worked. I drove for a couple weeks without the relay kit with no problems but there is a right way to do things and a wrong way, and not using the relay is the wrong way sooooo, we finally figured out that the relay kit socket wiring didn't match the stock socket. After changing the relay socket pins, guess what, now the lights work on low beam. But since the 9007 headlight is a dual filament and the HID's aren't, there is also a halogen bulb attached to the HID socket. The instructions say to tap the (halogen bulb ) wires from the bulb to the high beam wires of the stock socket in order for them to work. They do but they aren't getting enough juice so they're yellow. The obvious solution is to put them on their own relay and use the high beam socket wires as the switch. BUT IT DOESN'T WORK!! This really bugs me!! If the high beams provide enough juice to turn the halogens on (yellow), then there should be more than enough power to trip the relay. We have spent way too much time on this and right now, I'm ready to say screw it, but my anal fiance wants them to work. Lol. We even gave the bulbs their own ground, but nothing seems to work. Anybody have any ideas?

The relay is a 40 amp relay so it is plenty strong enough. The relay is good, we tested it in the HID relay kit and it worked ok there.
Here's how the relay for the high beam halogen bulbs was hooked up and it didn't work. I can see no conceivable reason why.
Pin #87 from the battery with a 25 amp fuse in the line.
Pin #85 to a ground which was tested and was a good ground.
Pin #30/51 out to the positive lead of the lights. The lights were also grounded to a good ground.
Pin #86 was the hot (positive) high beam wire.

Sorry if this kinda long, but I wanted my explanations to be clear.

Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Sunday, August 07, 2011 7:48 AM
Assuming that the lights are for the Cavy in your profile, they will use a standard 9007 style HID bulb. The difference between high and low beams are controlled by an electromagnet on the bottom of the bulb base. There will be a small pair of wires separate from the larger ones that control that magnet. If your lights have those, then keep messing with the pinout on the harness where it plugs into the headlamp socket. They are almost never set right when u get them. Also, if you haven't already, do the DRL disable so you don't burn up the ballasts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Sunday, August 07, 2011 8:28 PM



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Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Sunday, August 07, 2011 9:40 AM
I am thinking they do not get an actual hi/lo HID bulb. It sounds like they have a regular HID lo beam that also has a small foglight size bulb attached to it to "act" as a hi beam.

What kit did you get and from whom. I would break out the multimeter and see what kind of voltage you are seeing at the wires for the hi beam portion of the bulb. More than likely a low wattage bulb is used for the hi beam and that is why its giving a yellowish color to it. I would honestly find another kit that uses an actual bi-xenon bulb that uses the HID portion for both lo and hi beam purposes. I have a set in my Mercedes and will always continue to use bi xenon bulbs in any car that uses a hi/lo beam single bulb setup.

If you have enough wire I might try suggesting grounding to the battery and seeing if that might help the problem as well. It may have a decent but dirty ground causing the lights to not work properly. Its just something to check. Plus you should not really need a seperate relay for the high beam bulb because the halogen bulb used for the hi beam should not draw anymore power than a normal 9007 bulb. You also might have a problem with the wiring from the factory wiring that is causing a problem as well.

When I had my 99 cav (4 bulb setup I know) my hi beams operated on the factory wiring and my lo beam HID's were setup on a seperate circuit so as I did not take a chance in burning up the factory wiring. Just a suggestion. You could try wiring the hi beams seperate from the circuit and testing them that way and seeing what results you get from the bulbs.
Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Sunday, August 07, 2011 9:57 PM
Roofy wrote:Assuming that the lights are for the Cavy in your profile, they will use a standard 9007 style HID bulb. The difference between high and low beams are controlled by an electromagnet on the bottom of the bulb base. There will be a small pair of wires separate from the larger ones that control that magnet. If your lights have those, then keep messing with the pinout on the harness where it plugs into the headlamp socket. They are almost never set right when u get them. Also, if you haven't already, do the DRL disable so you don't burn up the ballasts.


I'm not using a standard 9007 style bulb. I guess you could call it a hybrid bulb as it consists of 2 bulbs in one socket. The HID bulb is for the low beam and the halogen is for the high beam. Therefore the electromagnet issue is mute. Interesting though. Seems like a rather complicated way to do a simple task. Anyway, all I want is from the hot lead of the stock socket is for it to trip the relay. Just had an ah-ha moment.........since it seems that the real purpose of the hot lead is to trip the electromagnet on the stock bulb base, maybe it actually doesn't have enough power to trip the relay? Time to get the multimeter out. It never occurred to me to test it for the actual voltage level. Thanks.

And disabling the DRL was the first thing we did. Course now the check engine light is on all the time. Following the How To about fixing that didn't work for me, at least not yet.
Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Sunday, August 07, 2011 9:58 PM
anne shaffer wrote:
Roofy wrote:Assuming that the lights are for the Cavy in your profile, they will use a standard 9007 style HID bulb. The difference between high and low beams are controlled by an electromagnet on the bottom of the bulb base. There will be a small pair of wires separate from the larger ones that control that magnet. If your lights have those, then keep messing with the pinout on the harness where it plugs into the headlamp socket. They are almost never set right when u get them. Also, if you haven't already, do the DRL disable so you don't burn up the ballasts.


I'm not using a standard 9007 style bulb. I guess you could call it a hybrid bulb as it consists of 2 bulbs in one socket. The HID bulb is for the low beam and the halogen is for the high beam. Therefore the electromagnet issue is mute. Interesting though. Seems like a rather complicated way to do a simple task. Anyway, all I want is from the hot lead of the stock socket is for it to trip the relay. Just had an ah-ha moment.........since it seems that the real purpose of the hot lead is to trip the electromagnet on the stock bulb base, maybe it actually doesn't have enough power to trip the relay? Time to get the multimeter out. It never occurred to me to test it for the actual voltage level. Thanks.

And disabling the DRL was the first thing we did. Course now the check engine light is on all the time. Following the How To about fixing that didn't work for me, at least not yet.

Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Sunday, August 07, 2011 10:12 PM
black sunshine wrote:
If you have enough wire I might try suggesting grounding to the battery and seeing if that might help the problem as well. It may have a decent but dirty ground causing the lights to not work properly. Its just something to check. Plus you should not really need a seperate relay for the high beam bulb because the halogen bulb used for the hi beam should not draw anymore power than a normal 9007 bulb. You also might have a problem with the wiring from the factory wiring that is causing a problem as well.

When I had my 99 cav (4 bulb setup I know) my hi beams operated on the factory wiring and my lo beam HID's were setup on a seperate circuit so as I did not take a chance in burning up the factory wiring. Just a suggestion. You could try wiring the hi beams seperate from the circuit and testing them that way and seeing what results you get from the bulbs.


I put in the relay because the halogens were lighting up yellow. I figured they weren't getting enough voltage to light properly. If everything else fails, I'll just put the halogens directly to the battery and see it they work. Thanks, guys.

All sorry for the double post. After I saw it, I looked but didn't see any option to delete it.
Re: HID high beam wiring problems
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 11:05 AM
Here's how the relay for the high beam halogen bulbs was hooked up and it didn't work. I can see no conceivable reason why.
Pin #87 from the battery with a 25 amp fuse in the line.
Pin #85 to a ground which was tested and was a good ground.
Pin #30/51 out to the positive lead of the lights. The lights were also grounded to a good ground.
Pin #86 was the hot (positive) high beam wire.

I noticed after looking at how I connected the relay and looking at a website concerning 12vdc 4 pin relays, I may have switched the connections for terminals 30/51 and 87. I'm not sure that this would have made any difference, but I'll obviously try it this weekend to see if it matters. Since a relay is nothing more than a switch with an electromagnic is activated by power coming across 86 to 85 which then connects 87 and 30/51, I'm guessing my error doesn't matter. But then again, the schematic says to do it a certain way for a reason. We'll see.
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