EliteCM.net

Guys,
Can anyone help me out with why my retro's wont turn on? It's been cold (teens) here in Michigan the last 36 or so hours, I also took my car through an automatic wash yesterday afternoon, but then parked it right into my garage afterwards. The lights were still fine and the car looked dry. This morning the pass. side was working, but not the drivers side. After driving to work and school and turning it off along with the engine, and then back on, only the drivers side worked. I did it again and then nothing on the lo beams.   hi-beams work and so do signals/parking. I have matsushita OEM ballast. I need some advice because its too damn cold to be working on my car. I hope it's just the cold, but this shouldnt be happening to OEM masushita ballasts. TIA.

Relay harness installed? Or straight off factory wiring?

matsushita is not waterproof so could be that water got in there

Relay harness, fuse still good.


Matsushita is not waterproof??? but I've taken it to the wash so many times since winter started here. If water did get in there shouldnt the problem have happened right away? hmmm just seems hard to swallow that. wish it wasnt so damn cold so I could go check. So is the cold ruled out then???

Maybe the water got in there, and then when it froze the expansion caused an issues.

check your relay harness fuse. I had that problem a while back. like that one day the whole hid died and I skip 1 day of class trying to figure out what happen. anything thing u could do it is connect the ballast directly to the battery using jump cables and see if it will fire. If it doesn't fire it will be the ballast. GL man.

If you're using a relay harness, does each ballast have it's own relay, or is there only one relay for both ballasts?  Here's what I would do to test this.  Check the harness with a DMM to make sure you're getting 12 volts before the ballast.  If that checks out, you may want to try swapping the bulbs.  If the problem moves from right to left, then it's the bulb.  If the issue remains on the right side, then it's the ballast.

I believe he said both sides are dead Tim.

As of the OP it was both. It started with the pass. side then moved to the driver's side. Misha may be right about the ballasts not being waterproof and he could've fried them. He could also be running one of those plug and play relay harnesses that only have one relay to fire both sides. There's some details missing here. I guess I'm glad I'm running DDM ballasts with my setup so I don't have to worry about waterproofing. One thing I forgot to ask, where are your ballasts mounted Mitch?

I didn't catch that one where the problem moved from the PS to the DS.  I guess I should have read it again after having my morning coffee.  I'd still like to know more about the relay harness before making any more assumptions.  My guess is that it's in the harness somewhere.  If you have two relays (one for each ballast), then the relay probably got damaged by the water and cold temperatures.  This is merely speculation, but since a relay is an electromechanical switch, it can fail.  I've PMed you my number, so feel free to text or IM me when you have time to troubleshoot this problem.

Same thing happened to me today.  Right side TSX ballast seems to be dead.  YAY!!

POS!!! Facker! This is what happens when you try to work on your car in 10 degree F weather, on a time crunch. Broke about 4 of those special plastic push screw and stripped both the phillips one while I was trying to remove my front bumper.

Can anyone tell me how to test if the xenon bulbs are dead or if the ballasts are dead? My DMM probes are too fat to fit into the ballast adapters, unless they were really reading zero. I also determined that the relay harness was fine so it boils down to the bulbs and/or ballast. If I can determine that the bulbs are fine then its the POS ballasts. 12V rail on the PC???


Ballasts are mounted under the headlights with 3M double sided tape which amazing works well contrary to what others say. The relay harness is the "plug and play" single type, but I determined that the Vsource read 0 when the headlight switch was off and then >12V when the switch was on so the problem occurs after that in the circuit.

I'm not sure if you can test the bulbs for continuity.  I'll have to break out a set of D2S bulbs I have lying around and see if it's possible to test for continuity.  If you need new bulbs, let me know.  I have a few sets.

Dead ballasts... both sides amazingly. could be water, could be the cold, could be both. Was able to test my bulbs in my neighbors TL, so that ruled them out. Now I need to prevent this situation from happening again. Are there any ballast that are waterproof, cold start, lifetime warranty, etc. out there???

I've never had any problems with my Philips Gen 3 ballasts.

Or even DDM.

sucks. I have a set of DDM and Bosch and they work fine. "supposedly" the OEM ballast should work really well in negative degrees temp. If you need a set of ballast let me know.

Also where did you mount your ballast? I have mine directly under the headlight to shield it from water. I also used a ton of Silicon glue to block off the holes where water "might" get in.

Because Rich did my HID retro. He offered to take care of the problem. His old technique was to do what you did, but he said he has a new and much better and cleaner technique.

Does anyone know about Rich's whereabouts? I have not heard from him after two weeks of trying to get a hold of him through PM's, phone calls and VM's, emails. I sent him my old retro and new OEM housings so he could redo it, and he knows about it, yet no word back from him. I'm staring to get worried and PO'ed.

From what I know, Rich is a reliable guy.  I have not dealt with him in person myself though.  I have been trying to talk to Bjorn about a fog light retrofit, but have found that he is hard to get a hard to get a hold of and takes a long time to respond.

i just sent rich supplies to do my fog retro.  he has sent me several emails.

So this is what they have completed of my 2nd retro w/OEM housings:
http://hidillusionz.blogspot.com/2010/03/accord-sc430-minigun-hid-retrofit.html

However I believe those are not my original OEM housings (look at the bottom ball/socket joints). Can someone help me confirm this? The OEM Honda/Stanley look like this from my experience:
(http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j221/shonnv/retro/DSC_7143.jpg)

I've seen other "OEM's" look like that first one... Did Honda change the design of those bottom holding joints on the chrome housings? I will be super pissed if they did not.

I'm 99% sure that's an aftermarket housing.  It's kind of a bummer that I haven't heard back from Bjorn about doing a fog light retro.  I really wanted to get that done, but their slow/lack of communication makes me not want to have them do my retrofit.