Started installing the Osram Xenarc lights...

[dotorg]

A number of people PMed me about them, and the install, so I'll post a running documentary of my flailing around.

No pics yet, none needed.

The kit itself is very well designed, it seems. There are the two 6024 light units themselves, with what is aparently an H1 high-beam bulb at the bottom, with its power and ground lines coming out the back, and the D1S (or maybe D1R, I can't remember) 35w 4100k HID bulb up above. Its got a custom sealed connector in the back for a special cable to go to the ballasts. There are a right and left side (or rather long distance from battery, short distance from battery) wiring harnesses, nicely bundled, fused, with relays. The basic install is to crimp connectors on the three stock wiring wires in each light, ground and high-beam for the H1, and the low-beam is used as a "trigger" line for the relays, to deliver power straight from the battery to the ballast. The ballasts are 3a running, so its less power than the headlights, but need 12a in the brief second they're firing.

It took me the better part of an hour to remove the light mounting frames, and to drill out the screws holding the light surround to the frame, to get the old bulbs out. Three screws came out okay, three wouldn't budge even after two days of using penetrating oil, and sears' worthless stripped-screw-remover. The old screws were M4-sized. Tapped the drilled out holes to M5. Not crazy about that, but whatever. The new hardware is hex-head, so I can use a socket to undo them. They'll never strip again!

The first problem (serious one) I found at that point was that there was no way in the world I was snaking the ballast line from inside the trunk to the light bucket via the original conduit. Its too far of a run, and the (non-removvable) plugs are too big to fit through anyway. There's also too many other wires (also not long enough) in the harness to put the ballast in the bucket, even if there was room to securely mount it there.

Solution? Trip to Sears Hardware for a 1" steel-cutting drill bit. I figure four deliberately drilled holes is better than the nice "oh, I can see the ground through my gas tank support" discovery when i pulled the spare tire out!

So the plan for today is to drill a 1" hole in the back of each bucket, and in the side of the trunk. The ballast wire and trigger wire will be bundled in a plastic wire loom, and wrapped in black hockey tape (it'll keep the loom on, and its water proofish). I've got four 1" strain reliefs, so the ballast/trigger harness will go into those with a dab of silicone caulk to fully seal them, then they'll be put in the two holes and sealed again with some caulk of some variety, to keep the water/weather out. (Given I rarely if ever even drive in the rain, I doubt it would've been an issue, but it'll make me more comfortable knowing they were done better that way). The other advantage is I can crimp back on the stock connector and seal those holes with plugs and go back to stock if need me.

The wiring beyond that is pretty basic. There's power and ground which go to the battery and chassis near the battery. Then just screw the ballasts into the side wall of the trunk. Hopefully they'll just fire up!

I'll take step-by-step pics as I do the work today and post them this evening on this thread.

[dotorg]

Okay, my first update. 1/4 done, I think.

First thing I learned: bimetal 1" hole cutting drill bits aren't all that durable. Drilling the two holes for the passenger side light killed both the bit and the hole saw. Time to spend another $20 for the other side. Is there some trick to this I just don't know? Even liberal use of cutting fluid didn't help.

So first off, the headlight bucket with all the headlight stuff removed:


It kills me drilling a hole in the first rust-free area of my car I've found. Oh well, thats the price of progress!

Here's the first hole. The bit looked good after this one. Aparently the bucket metal is softer than the trunk metal.


And now the hole in the trunk. This one destroyed the bit.



Finally, to keep the holes from rusting, I cleaned them and hit them with a quick spray of flat-black rustoleum.


To properly protect the cable bundle, again with the ballast cable and the green trigger wire, I sheathed them in some Autozone-aquired plastic wire loom.


And finally to protect the whole bundle, I braved the mysterious odors coming from my hockey bag and got out my roll of black friction tape. I doubt this is insulative, but I'm kinda screwed if the plastic loom and the insulation is taken out anyway, so whatever. This just keeps the loom around the wires. Two layers of tape:


So thats it for now. The paint is drying, and when its dry I'll be installing the cable bundle using the 1" strain reliefs, sealed with black silicone caulking, installing the ballast and wiring everything up. More photos to come.

[dotorg]

Victory!! Almost. 40% done. I got excited and wired the light up even though I haven't mounted the ballast yet.

Here's a shot with the strain-relief thing around the cable. With it fully seated and sealed, I can still wiggle around the wires in the loom, handy to keep as little slack in the bucket as possible.



I wired the harness straight to the battery. I think I'll probably leave the hot lead there, and ground it on the chassis.


Ballast isn't mounted yet, but I plugged it all in, popped in the fuse and...

Voila! (Yes, my garage is a huge mess...)



I should've taken these shots without the flash. With the lights off, the car looks very vintage, flip them on and you get a nice cool white light. The kit has a "bridge" that I installed behind the passenger light that wires the high-beams into the low-beams (I think its just a diode in a case), since the HIDs need both lights on -- this trips the relay with the high beam line as well.

[scottb]

I've been considering this upgrade, but it sounds like a ton of work for a weekend toy. Are you happy with the results, and do you suggest others do the upgrade?

Thanks.

[dotorg]

Well, I haven't driven it yet -- I've finished the passenger light (mounting the ballact, routing the wires, using black silicone caulk to seal everything), and I bought a new 1" drill bit and have cut the holes on the drivers side and pained them.

My other car has nice HID lights in it, and once you've got a car with them, its worlds different driving a car without them. There's nothing about this install that is terribly difficult. It took me an hour if measuring and poking around to decide how I was going to do it, and took a couple trips to the store to get some different screws, bits, etc. In general its one of the easier non-bolt-on mods I've done to a car. The only hard part is making the decision to cut the holes.

It took me about two hours total to do the passenger light. Given that this Lowes-purchased hole bit seems a lot stronger than the Sears one, the cutting of the drivers side has gone a lot faster. I doubt the drivers side will even take me an hour total.

I'll not likely drive the car until Wednesday with them, but I'll definitely post my opinions on them when I do.

Another plus is that I found and sealed a half of a dozen small old screw/bolt holes into the wheel wells, too.

[scottb]

Well, this is all very interesting. Keep us posted.

[dotorg]

Okay, one final update for the day. I'm exhausted.

It took about another 45 minutes to finish installing the drivers side light, mount the relay and ballast and seal everything with the silicone.

Although I haven't driven with it, I flipped on the S4's headlights in the garage too, so I could compare color temp, brightness and light pattern. In general the two seem nearly identical in brightness and color temp. The Xenarc bulbs have a much brighter "hot spot" immediately in front of each bulb. That might make for slightly better distance light than the S4, that remains to be seen. It also seems to have more dispersion downwards and to the side. I drive with the driving lights/fogs on in my S4 all the time as "cornering" lights -- the HIDs on there just don't give me enough light up close to the side. That looks like it may not be as necessary with the Xenarc lights.

Not sure whats different about the bulbs between the two cars. My S4 is silent with the lights on, you can definitely hear the Osram lights. Its got a high-pitch whine coming from the bulb that reminds me of the HIDs on my parents GS300.

My last comment until I've actually driven with them... these seem nice, and at $300 the price can't be beat. Recommended, unless you have issue cutting your car -- I really don't think there's any way to install these in a 911 without doing something similar to what I did.

[scottb]

It's the car cutting that has me hesitating. I'll wait to see your finished product before I decide. Thanks for the info.

[reed930]

Very nice. Would you mind telling me where you were able to purchase the kit for $300? I've been casually looking into this upgrade for some time, and the kits generally run from $400 - $600.

I think it's alot easier to justify this upgrade for $300. I might even try it on my old 4Runner the next time a headlight burns out.

[Randy Webb]

Can you hear the whine from the seat or only next to the headlight? And if from the seat, can you hear it when the motor is running?

The way I test headlights is to find a location on a lonely hwy with multiple signs at different distances. I park in the same marked place with each set of headlights or in each car I'm testing, and see which sign (i.e. at what distance) I can see. I usually can't read them so I count whether I can see 4, 5, 6 signs...

[dotorg]

Originally posted by reed930
Very nice. Would you mind telling me where you were able to purchase the kit for $300? I've been casually looking into this upgrade for some time, and the kits generally run from $400 - $600.

I think it's alot easier to justify this upgrade for $300. I might even try it on my old 4Runner the next time a headlight burns out.

Here you go.

[dotorg]

Originally posted by Randy Webb
Can you hear the whine from the seat or only next to the headlight? And if from the seat, can you hear it when the motor is running?

The way I test headlights is to find a location on a lonely hwy with multiple signs at different distances. I park in the same marked place with each set of headlights or in each car I'm testing, and see which sign (i.e. at what distance) I can see. I usually can't read them so I count whether I can see 4, 5, 6 signs...

No, I can't hear it from inside the car. With the engine running, if you're not shouting next to me I'm not likely to hear you in the car, much less a quiet whine from the headlights.

I was hoping to take the car for a quick drive this evening to check them out, but its raining, and I don't like to drive it in the rain (bad rear window seal, things tend to get wet in the car).

[scottb]

Dotorg:

Rather than drilling holes in the car, did you consider cutting the cables, running them, and then re-splicing them?

Scott

[dotorg]

Thats not something I wanted to do with the ballast cable -- the bulbs run at very high voltages, especially when first firing the initial discharge. I wouldn't have known where to start doing that. There are three conductors in that cable, and the cable is solid (ie, its not three wires in a sheath, its three conductors that appear to be embedded in the cable itself). It would've also meant pulling the wiring to the turn signals out, pulling the stock harness back into the trunk, seperating out the turn signal wiring and feeding the whole bundle back through again. This was a lot less work, and I have doubts about how easy it would be to remove one of those connectors and get it back on again.

[c2 rower]

I finished the install. I spent most of the weekend doing it. It probably could have been done quicker but I am very fussy. Some quick comments while at work:

The routing of the wires to the buckets required that I enlarge the existing 3/4" hole to 7/8" in the bucket. That was easy. The hole in the trunk was already 7/8" so no mods there. New grommets and rustoleum paint used for the 2 enlarged holes.

Runing the high voltage wire to the buckets could not be done with a pull wire. On the the right side I worked thru the fog lamp opening and from underneath. This really slowed me down. Removing the horn helped here. Removing the bumber would help a lot but it’s a PITA.

I spent a lot of time just figuring out where to mount the ballasts and relays and bridge module. I would not consider putting the ballasts in the buckets. That is way this kind of job goes. A also spent time securely mounting things, i.e., no cheesy self tapping screws, just stainless button head screws and nuts and locktite.

I re-cut and re-covered the harnesses; there was lots of extra wire.

The inner headlight bucket (not the fender bucket) needed filing for the headlamp high beam wire and top vent. With rustoleum, this takes time.

I got to get a digital camera so I can take pictures.

This is NOT an evening job, although converting to high wattage H-4’s with relays is not either. The biggest difference in the install is that there are more components and the schematic is a little more complex.

With the engine off and you are standing next to the car you can hear the high freq arc.

I had time for a quick drive in the rain. They need to be aligned. The low beam pattern is not like the H4 lows in that it is not as uniform. If its not raining tonight I will work the alignment and get better feel for what the ilumination is like. My initial impression is much better than US spec halogens. I do not think they would be as good as euro H4 running 80/100 or 100/130 which I have used. The HIDs should have much longer life (3000 hrs quoted) and much lower current draw. The best test would be a side by side next to another car.

[dotorg]

Hmmm the light brackets must be different between a '68 and an '86 -- I didn't have to do any filing or cutting on the brakets to get the housings to fully seat. I wonder if there are differences in the conduit pipe between the bucket and the car, too. There was no way the ballast cable was fitting through mine as-is... it looked like it could've just fit at the ends, but the L-bend in it wasn't a mandrel bend and the radius gets a good bit smaller on there.

Good to know with later cars with some work it can be done with less cutting.

For me the lower current draw is a big plus, especially when I add high-power rally lights to the car. Us SWB guys have a very small alternator, and a little bit of power-envy

I'd definitely love to see pics of your install, too.

[rennch]

Dottorg,

What's the color of your car? Riviera blue?

[dotorg]

No idea. I think its Mexico blue, but I'm open to other suggestions!

The original color was white, and the previous owner had no idea at what point it was painted blue.

[rennch]

I might be painting mine something close to that. Can you post a full pic of the car?

[jhelgesen]

For drilling big holes in sheet metal, you can't beat a Unibit. Steps up in size with each notch, make great holes. Worth the few extra bucks to get the different sizes on one bit too.