Fog Lights?

[CMNTMXR57]

That was a quick turnaround? Or had you already set the wheels in motion before posting your dissappointment with the LED's?

[300sflyer]

I knew the LEDS were not going to work 1/2 hour after receiving them. Yesterday I did some research, and I ran out early this morning and bought the kit locally. I paid a bit too much for the kit, but I had a bit of spare time today, so I just bit the bullet and got er done!

[300sflyer]

Here are some more pictures, with just the parking and fog lights on. They are every bit as bright as the stock H3s, if not more so. As long as they do not burn out, I'm happy.

[CMNTMXR57]

They're way more lumen output than the H3's. That is much better.

[Juggernaught]

I just bought a DDM HID Kit, 55W, H3, 6000K with dual harness. Does anyone have any instructions or advice on how to install this kit? It didn't come with instructions. Thanks!

[CMNTMXR57]

It's simple plug and play.

[Juggernaught]

O.K. Please excuse my ignorance, so the bulbs will plug in place of the current H3 fog light bulbs. Do I hook the ballasts between the bulb connectors and the lead-in wires? Or do the lead-in wires plug directly into the ballasts and the wires coming from the ballasts connect directly to the bulbs? Thanks for your help and advice.

[CMNTMXR57]

Ok, please excuse my meager MS Paint skills.



This image is one of their (DDM's) generic HID kit so it isn't specific to the H3 bulbs, which *may* throw some grey area into how the plug the kit has mates up with the 12v feed from the car as with H3, they're two separate wires on the car. Also, HID kits are polarity sensitive. Meaning positive to positive, negative to negative. For the regular halogen setup this isn't an issue as long as one side provides the voltage feed and one side is ground, anyway, sometimes they're wired reverse (My van and the Cadillac had someone smoking illegal substances the day they wired my fogs as those two are reversed and I have to flip the factory plug to the ballast to get them to fire. Go figure...). But with specific wires on the H3 as they are, this may not be the case.

One thing to note, you said you did a 55w kit. You *may* need to purchase a specific relay harness to help deliver sufficient power from the car to fire a 55w ballast. 35w kits aren't an issue providing sufficient electrical power through the OEM wires to fire it all. 55w can sometimes be too much on the OEM voltage feed wire. With that said, I have a 55w kit in the highs on my GTO and while I purchased the harness just in case, I never used it and it fires on the regular headlight wiring.

[Juggernaught]

Thanks again, you are the best! I did purchase the special relay for the 55w system and will install it as well. I know there has been some discussions about 55w being too hot for the OEM fog light housings. I'll try to drill some holes into the caps for ventilation. BTW, do the tubes covering the bulbs remain in place?

P.S. We used to have an '04 Pontiac GTO 6-speed in Impulse blue. It was totaled when some young girl ran a stop light and hit my wife head on. We do miss that car.

[CMNTMXR57]

Thanks. Mine was one of the first 465 made and sent to the states. Sorry to hear about the loss. Friggen little girl...

No, those plastic tubes/cans are there to simply protect the bulb during shipping.

[gmichae]

Greetings. I'm new to this forum, and have (painfully) read through this topic. I recently purchased a set of HID fogs from XenonSupply for my '05 GXP. What I'm having some trouble with is determining if the ground wire that connects to the mounting bracket for the fog light needs to be connected to the ground connection from the main harness, or can it be ignored in lieu of connecting the ground connector to the ballast?

The HID lamps have 2 male connectors for the supply feed, so I'll need to modify the ground side one way or another, but I'm trying to determine if I need to double up the connection with the bracket or not.

Thanks in advance for your help, and a great number of thanks to all that have posted on this forum. I've used it several times for repairs that would have been expensive otherwise.

Greg

[J Wikoff]

Is that ground part of the stock harness or part of the HID harness?

[CMNTMXR57]

It needs to go to ground somewhere, so yes, you will need it. Whether it runs to ground through the factory wiring or you make your own. Not having seen a H3 Hid harness (the pic I posted above is a generic one, probably from a 9005/9006 kit), I can't speak to what you have and what needs to be done though.

It seems odd that you have two male connectors though. I would think that whatever kit you got would be all self servicing. The only thing you need to do is put the bulb in and then connect to the factory wiring (the positive and negative leads from the car). The bulbs themselves will connect to the HID wiring harness post ballast, however that kit is set up to from that manufacturer.

[gmichae]

I erred on the side of caution and included it in the wiring. I ended up buying a wire tap connector that joins the ground lead from the HID harness to the existing ground lead of the factory fog lamp bracket.

The harness of the HID system was indeed a little odd in that it used two make connectors, and two different sizes of them. The new fogs work fine, but i think i need to realign them. Anyone know if any links here that discuss that process?

[CMNTMXR57]

I don't recall any adjustability in them. Keep in mind, a HID bulb has a different burn pattern than a halogen bulb, hence why sometimes using a HID bulb in a halogen housing doesn't provide optimal results as the housing for the Halogen bulb and it's mirrors/reflectors are aimed for the burn pattern of a Halogen bulb. You still put out more Lumen output, but aiming isn't optimum.

I had to do something similar on my old van two weekends ago, someway, somehow, the ground for the passenger side fog light (Which I have converted to HID), went bad. It didn't even work with a regular bulb in it. So I spliced in my own ground to work until I can tear into it and find where it (the original wiring ground circuit), is open.

[gmichae]

The challenge for me was that to OEM cap to the fog light incorporated the factory connector on the outside and the male and female push-on connectors on the inside. As it stands, the cap wouldn't go back on even if i wanted it to - the HID body sticks out too far. I was able to eliminate the need for the rubber grommet. The burn pattern seems to be a bit more off to the sides than I'd prefer, but if there's no distinct way to adjust them, then i can live with it. My primary use is in dimly lit or wet roads at night. We'll see how long i can make them last! For the sake of simplicity, i would highly recommend to anyone that is planning on converting their factory fogs to put the effort in and remove the headlights and then the fog light assembly to swap the bulbs.


The fogs are held in with 2 10mm hex bolts and one of those plastic pop-in things from underneath. This makes it far easier to disengage the retaining clip from the housing.

[CosmicVagabond]

So am I understanding this right? Are people having issues with HID's fitting into the fog housings without modification?

[gmichae]

I don't know about others, but my HIDs from Xenon Supply fit fine with the exception bring that the factory cap on the back wouldn't fit if i wanted to attach it because the wiring and the base of the bulb stick out

[96 SSEi]

hi, if the enemy of Gxp fogs is heat, has anyone tried to install a tiny fan? - I'm thinking cpu fan for a cheap amd motherboard - I have seen them close to 1 inch so it should have room and most are powered by 12v and use very little current. so it maybe can be spliced into power wire of fog.

something like this.....http://www.ebay.com/itm/15x15mm-Super-S ... 1673938098

[CMNTMXR57]

Just leave the cap off and most the heat vents.