Finished! (Grab your reading glasses)
Well made the trek home Friday in well under 4 hours (personal best) and finally installed everything on the car. I estimate if I ever had to do this again that I could mount and wire everything in under 2 hours. Not even going to say how long it took me but I'm just going to say I took my sweet time this weekend.
For starters the install guides I followed were spot on the Retrofit Source and it's pretty cut and dry. So easy, a caveman like myself can do it.
Morimoto Elite HID System Install Guide
Heavy Duty Relay Wiring Harness Install Guide
The only thing extra that I needed for this project besides what came in the box was electrical tape (tape off two unused ends), push on wire connectors (replaced the eye terminal connectors), and a 7/8" hole saw (do I really need to say why?).
I started with the hi-beams (9005 bulb and wire harness). Here are some pics with their descriptions I guess would be the best way to do this.
First, once removed, I prepped the headlight for the install. This simply involved just boring/drilling a 7/8" hole in the hi-beam access panel. This hole allows for the bulbs wires to go through without a chance of letting moisture in. It's one helluva tight fit and I'm more than happy with it.
This plug will not fit into said 7/8" hole so it needs to be taken apart. Remove the clip and using a pair of pliers I pulled on the wires. It's very firm but to my surprise I didn't break them.
Clip and wires removed from plug.
I then fed the wires through the access panel. and put the plug back together. I wish I would have put my thinking cap sooner because I had no idea how I was doing this so I filed a little bit of the cover and housing to run the wires through.
Prepped bulb with alcohol pad and Installed the 9005 Hi-Beam bulb and attached wires per install guide listed above. These will fit very tight which I don't mind. The first one I filed away some of the flange on the bulb but the second one I didn't to see if I could get it in. I got it to fit in with some effort, I didn't Wheaties in the morning of the first one.
Then attached the access panel back on to the headlight assy.
My boo boo is the brown on the bottom. Was just making sure I covered the hole that was there and then some. You learn from your mistakes as this was the only snag in the install I had.
Next I mounted the ballast on the core support. There are plenty of holes to pick and choose from but this one was the best fit for me. I think this is a good location to keep it away from the weather. Only concern its location relative to the radiator and the stress on the wires to get them where I could plug in the bulb and ballast input. (Passenger's side)
(Driver's Side) Tight squeeze with the factory ground but I don't think the headlight assy would fit if I installed the ballast there.
After mounting the ballast, I did passenger side first as it's the most difficult (not saying it's hard), I mounted the relay harness. Per Retro Fit Source they needed to be mounted upright to avoid problems with the relay getting water into it, so that's what I did. The relay for the hi-beams is located on the ground wire that is attached on the core support right next to where I mounted my ballast on the passenger side. Again, I saw this and I was going through hell and high water to mount it there. Took a solid 10 minutes to get the screw off as it's a tight area to get too.
I then plugged the wires in there place as mentioned in the install guide so all that was left was power and ground. Remember how I mounted the relay to a factory ground, BOOM! that's where I grounded my relay. The power on the other hand I tapped into the fuse box. Again thanks to Alax and 1LoudLS I weighed in on the options and took Alax's way as I couldn't find the positive screw that was being mentioned and if it was what I though it was there was no way in hell I was getting it off the fuse box to attach my power wires. The threads I got this info from are
HERE and
HERE. Amazing what a proper Google Search can bring up. I cut and replaced the eyelets with female push connections and put the one for my hi-beam relay into fuse holder 17, for my fogs fuse holder 18. These are fused with 30 amp fuses, they came with them already wired in. Didn't notice at first but the relays have LED's in them to tell you if they're getting power, this will help diagnose later if there is a problem.
Next up was simply installing the headlight and checking if everything worked. It was all good and I moved onto the fog lights which were much easier.
The only difference between the fog light install and the hi beam is that I didn't have to drill a hole and these are more in the open. The ballasts and relays are away from the heat of the engine compartment but are more susceptible to weather. I mounted my ballast to the fog light bolt that is to the top towards the bumper angling the ballast towards the bumper for added protection (probably not). The relay harness for the fog lights is attached the bottom bolt of the windshield washer tank/reservoir. After wire wheeling the surface for a solid ground contact I again attached my ground to this location for the fog light relay ground. The power for this relay is run up to the fuse box fuse holder 18 in the box.
It's a bit of a mess of wires. But I tucked them into the wheel well piece directly behind the fog light bumper mount.
(Driver's side)
(Passenger's side, showing ballast location)
I wired everything for the passenger side first. The only other wires that I need to find a place to tuck away were the ones going to the driver's side. For the hi-beams I zip-tied them to the hefty run of wirst going along the core support in front of the radiator.
For the fog lights I removed the plastic cover on the bottom (I'm not calling that a skid plate). If you're going to remove it it's a 5.5 mm size screw and one push clip. We had one surprisingly from the one time we replaced an oil pan in my dad's Bronco. Probably the second time this size socket was used in the past 10 years. Anyways, I tucked the wire from the fog light relay to the driver's side in the slot that this cover slides into, reinstalled then installed the cover again.
Lastly, I just repeated the ballast location and access cover hold drilling from the passenger side to the driver's side. It's much easier on this side as you won't be messing with the relay harness. Per pair of ballasts only one relay harness is required. I opted out of the plug and play in line capacitor since I was advised by Retro Fit Source that these are you your best bet to avoid problems and since they are running off of a power source they make for a better install, so I was told. They were the same price either way so I wanted the sure thing. If I were to do it again though I'd probably go with the plug and play capacitors if I was concerned with flickering or a bulb out message, although our cars don't have those for the fog lights, hi-beams, or lo-beams.
Well if you're reading this you got to the point you've been waiting for, comparison shots. If you didn't read everything above you still reached the same end result, comparison shots. All of these pictures in this post were taken with my mom's newly acquired Nikon P510 which was the first awesome digital camera I've used. Big thanks for that.
I will have more pics next weekend with the hi-beams as I forgot to take pictures of those. No comparisons just what everything looks like. As mentioned by 1LoudLS in another post if you don't want light output from your hi beams, then install HIDs in them. He wasn't lying, the halogen bulb has more usable light coming out compared to the HID, I was doing it for the color match but holy cannoli you lose a lot of output in the switch. The fog lights were the opposite though as I'm getting more out of them but there is glare created from it not being a projector or a HID reflector housing.
Overall this went well for me. Being my first major modification I'm pleased with the results and now I'm looking to wire in the relay to make the fog lights stay on with the hi-beams, not as impressive as I thought with the loss of hi-beam output but I think it will still be cool to do. I asked my brother about it and he did it in his SRT4 Neon with 2 SPDT relays, equivalent to 1 DPDT relay I'm assuming. I asked him how he did it and he wouldn't spill the beans but he said he would know how if he had to do it again.
With this install I wonder why I didn't do HID fogs sooner, it's easy as cake fellas! If I can do it anyone can. This was a courage booster. When the time's right I'm seperating these bad boys installing some angel eyes, clear reflectors, possible color matched bezel, and refinishing my lenses; my lenses are downright terrible!
Thanks for checking this out guys and gals, hope this helps others down the road if they choose to do this or even motivates some of you to do it! Thanks to those who've had input thus far in this thread and previous threads; the info is out there newcomers if you search for it! Will have more pics to come next weekend, stay tuned.
*Edit - Just realized all those links are to pictures in my photobucket. Found out all those pictures are in the wrong folder, FTW! they're staying where they're at.
