Too Many Cars
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This past weekend I went to a car show/swap meet at Raceway Park in Englishtown New Jersey. One of the things that I bought was a HID conversion kit for cars that uses 9005 headlight bulbs such as the first gen MK8's. Actually it was a very hard decision because someone was selling a dual quad tunnel ram with twin 750 Edelbrock aka Carter AFB carberaters and a really nice polished aluminum intake scoop for a 4V 351 Cleveland and I didn't feel like buying both in the same weekend. As I haven't run the 82 Mustang much during the year I decided on the HID kit. The HID kit came with two ballasts (aka high voltage supplies) and two bulbs that plug into the original socket in place of the original 9005 halogen bulb. The total price for the kit was $150. Well after setting it all up it in the car it didn't work! After thinking about it I figured that since incandesent bulbs are non polarized it stands to reason that there probably isn't a standard for the polarity of the connector. I decided to bench test these assemblies and sure enough they work with the positive on the blue wire and the GND return on the black wire. Thank god that they seem to have reverse polarity protection on these kits because otherwise I would have blown out the ballasts! I can only assume at this point and I will confirm that the MK8 has the opposite polarity than this kit requires.
I was told by the guy selling the kit that he sells these things on CraigsList. Have any of you tried these HID lights out (I can't find a brand name but the instructions are written in definite Chinglesh! and they come in a real nice metal case) and have you had good luck with them? Replacement HID bulbs run about $75. One thing that bothers me about them is that they are ROHS compliant. That means that if they have fine pitch Ic's in the unit they will fail in a relatively short period of time due to "Tin Whiskers" developing in the reletively harsh automobile environment! Maybe I should reflow some SN63 solder on the joints and call it a day!
I was told by the guy selling the kit that he sells these things on CraigsList. Have any of you tried these HID lights out (I can't find a brand name but the instructions are written in definite Chinglesh! and they come in a real nice metal case) and have you had good luck with them? Replacement HID bulbs run about $75. One thing that bothers me about them is that they are ROHS compliant. That means that if they have fine pitch Ic's in the unit they will fail in a relatively short period of time due to "Tin Whiskers" developing in the reletively harsh automobile environment! Maybe I should reflow some SN63 solder on the joints and call it a day!