For those of you who know me from posting on here, I was probably the first person to do the LED taillights upgrade (and do it right). Now I have decided to do my front end, thus completing my entire upgrade of all exterior lighting on the XFIRE.

I'm taking a trip this Wednesday and I've had the bug to add something new and exciting to the Crossfire for the ride. So after reading tons and tons of stuff on how HID rocks, I decied to go for it. I've been using the fake xenon bulbs up front, with hyper white corner lights too. Basically they look cool but the light output is HORRIBLE. I'm especially excited because when I bought the car, the light on the road was incredible with the stock bulbs. It pretty much SUX with fake xenon bulbs, so by buying the kit, I expect to have about 500% more light on the road. The front turns will also be changed to LEDs like the back end.

I went with 6000k output. A lot of people on here have been talking about 8000k. For those of you who don't know, 8000k might look cooler, but the higher you go, the lower the output. Max HID output is achieved at 4300k. 6000k will have less (but more color), and 8000k has even less light (and more color). Overall I'm sure its still more than stock. But from doing research I found that most people say 6000k is the best balance between looking cool and putting maximum light on the ground.

The kit I ordered is with Hella Ballasts, its plug and play. It's getting overnighted here for Tuesday. Hopefully I should have pics up soon.

I also wanted to let everyone know that I bought some PIAA ION YELLOW bulbs for my fog lights this past weekend, and they look AWESOME and light up the bad weather great. Prior to that I had Silverstars. The PIAAs mostly a clear bright yellowish/white light with a hint of purple. It looks whiter or yellower depending on what angle your at. It's not AMBER like regular halogens, its YELLOW/WHITE. But the ground is pure yellow. It's a good and semi cheap mod for anyone whose interested in upgrading their fog bulbs. AND it should look AWESOME with my HIDs. Pics will be up along with the HIDs in a few days time.

 

i have the 8000k hid kit in my crossfire and the brightness and dispensed light is identical to the stock bi-xenon's in my old 02' M3 and wifes X5. the only change is the blue tint/color is greater with the 8000k but brightness is the same. i love this kit in the crossfire...i can finally see again!

 

Ohh yeah I'm sure 8000 still looks incredible compared to stock. However 4300 would be even brighter, I just wanted to make people aware of a common misconception that the higher you go, the better color and more light you get. You get better looking color but less light, if that makes sense. Theres guys on Ebay selling kits up to 12000k or even 14000k, which is basically like a black light purple. They won't light up the road anything like a 6000 or an 8000, let alone 4300, but from what I've read you get the illusion that they do, because signs and things reflect from far away (due to the blacklight effect).

 

Its done! The HIDs look awesome, unfortunately its still daylight out. The only problem I had was figuring which wire was ground and which was power, on the stock harness. Finally I had to take a guess. I actually took two seperate trips to Home Depot to buy a voltometer, only both times they gave no reading when I put it into the headlight plug with the headlights switched on. Strange.

The really wierd thing is on the stock headlight harness, there is two black wires going to one side of the plug, and one black wire going to the other. Makes you wonder why they couldn't color code it, what a pain. So hmm the question is which is ground and which is power?

Finally I was like this is ridiculous, the one with two wires going to it has to be the power, so I took a leap of faith and plugged it in on one side, and it worked!

SO FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, IF YOU INSTALL HIDS, DONT BUY A VOLTOMETER.
-LOOK AT THE STOCK HARNESS.
-THE SIDE WITH TWO WIRES IS THE POSITIVE.
I'm sure at some point along the line, someone will do a search for HID and actually use this information.

BUTTT, I can't figure out why it's like that.

Could the wiring perhaps be a leftover from the Mercedes SLK? An H7 bulb can actually be used for both high and low beams, but our cars aren't set up like that.. makes you wonder why they used the H7 at all. Perhaps the SLK was set up to use it for high and low, and the second wire feeds in addittional current when the high beams are turned on. This also leads me to think our cars might possibly be able to handle 100w bulbs, for those of you who want to get brighter headlights without going HID. I don't care enough to actually look up how the SLK is set up, but I think this is a good hunch.

Oh yeah I also upgraded the stock headlight fuses to 20 amps, which my kit recommend. As a side note, although HIDs run at 35w, they actually pull far more than that when first fired up.. then it slowly drops down to 35w.

Anyway I'll have pics up by this weekend. The yellow fogs with the purple HIDs looks great in the day.. can't wait to see it all together tonight. I'll finally be able to see. It's gonna be an incredible improvement over the crap blue bulbs i had.

 

Sounds great. THAT is one of the things on the agenda.

 

i've had hids since may of '04. autoillumination leds and swapped out the fogs. i also added the tsw wheels so good luck.
been there done that.
g

 

Finally! This was the info I have been looking for! Thanks for posting about the 2 wires vs. 1 wire. Installing my 6000K McCulloch kit tomorrow!

 

Where are you guys buying the kits? I would prefer plug and play (If I ever get my X-Fire back)...

 

I got mine off of ebay. Great experience, love the lights! Here is a link to the seller:

http://motors.search.ebay.com/_W0QQf...sassZsupervtec

Oh by the way, the two wires are the negative.