No prob !!

 

I emailed him about this as well. He replied that his kits DO NOT come with relays. The OEM wiring will be supplying voltage to the HIDs. I believe HID kits come in either 35 or 55 watt trims, however, I am not sure how many amps they require. I'll see if Omar can work in the price of relays with his kit.

 

yeah - won't work with the units I have. I'm still leery of sending the ballast voltage across the stock switch, but of they're really only 35 or 55 watts then the amperage is easy to calculate:

35W divided by 12V = 2.9A per unit, or...

55W divided by 12V = 4.6A per unit.

SHOULD be OK with the stock switch, even... I'll wait for someone else to be the guinea pig though...

 

My real concern would be the initial ignition of the ballasts. I think the ignition voltage for HIDs are very high. I recall figures like, 4000volts to start the arc, and something like 7-10 volts to maintain the arc. Although it seems like we need more information (or I may need to take a read into my old physics book), I dont know if I'd be absolutely comfortable running HIDs off of the stock rocker switch. Relays, I'd be perfectly happy if the kit had the relays. I might just go out to autozone/pepboys to see how much relays are (Cant imagine them to be over $10 each).

 

Get these - they're high-capacity, high quality 40A, SPDT units:

http://www.oznium.com/relay40

Even 400V if spike voltage is still only about 34A in a 12V system so this is more than sufficient. I plan to use these, triggered by the stock headlamp current with my replacement H4 units.

Oznium also sells a very nice matching wiring harness to go with them - I've used these several times before, and they're MUCH beefier than the ones you typically get form the auto-parts store.

 

btw its actually anywhere from 4,000V (thousand) to 15,000V (thousand) initial voltage to "strike the arc" .... I'll be running relays for sure, lol. I might as well place the order with Omar and run out to pick up some relays. I'll let you all know how it goes

 

Um... 15 THOUSAND? That's... (punches calculator)... 1250 AMPS! That much juice would melt the relay, the wiring in-between and practically anything else in the car - you sure that's right?

 

just to be complete, I googled for "HID voltage spike" and "HID ignition voltage"

This is the one that quotes 25,000 volts for ignition for a 35watt HID bulb.
http://www.preciseflight.com/ufiles/...ticle_Main.pdf

This is one that quotes 4,000 volts for ignition.
http://powerelectronics.com/mag/610PET22.pdf

And there were a few more that were ballparking "from thousands of volts up to tens of thousands". Keeping in mind it is really just a split second voltage spike, but I'd rather not melt my switches :p

 

Hmmm... that's disturbing. The unit sold by Norm's guy uses a "plug and play" ststem that uses all stock wiring, which is only set up to handle the dim, British incandescent bulbs. I assume he's tested everything thoroughly, but you might want to run your Googled sites past him just to see if he's done a spike test on the ballasts that are part of his setup. Like I said: I ASSUME he's already done so, but you know the old saying about the true meaning of "assume", right?

And yeah - IF the amperage is so high, it only takes a fraction of a second for such massively overloaded wiring to melt and/or catch fire... I'm not even sure what would happen to the battery under such repeated conditions either.

 

still worth the money if all you need is a relay to get them optimal......you could prob email him and ask him to include the relay and he would prob do it, if he has them

 

Well - at that amperage, it would blow right through the relay as well, if those numbers he Googled are accurate. The spike voltage won't pass through the cabin switch (good since your finger's on it), but it WILL pass through the relay, which is ony rated to 40A. Nothing in the classic Mini is capable of handling anything CLOSE to 1250 amps...

I'm banking on the fact that Lenn Googled a ballast unit that draws MUCH more current than the ones your contact employed in his HID setup, seeing as how he obviously engineered the circuit to keep the stock wiring. It's worth getting a confirmation on that though, I think, before one starts plugging stuff into Lucas wiring... Maybe that's just me though.

 

I don't think it's a simple calculation to figure out the amps these things draw. They are using some kind of electronic converter to get the 15k volts from the 12 volt system. It probably uses the 15K volts at a low amperage to get started. It's probably more than the normal operating draw but I doubt it's that much more. You would need oh maybe 2 gauge wires to keep from burning up if it was really 1250 amps.

 

Maybe... All I know is to calculate amperage you divide the total wattage of your accessory by the the voltage (12V). You can't get something from nothing, so I'm not sure how the "converter" you speak of would work.

 

You're thinking about it wrong its 15k volts not watts.

When they say that the HID lights are 55 watts they mean they are comparable to the amount of light a 55 watt filament bulb creates. How much they actually use is a different story. The HID's look brighter than a 55 watt bulb because the light takes longer to diffuse so you can see farther.

You cant create energy from nothing so if the lights actually use 50 watts to operate they draw 4.17 amps from the 12 volt system and then when you convert that to 15k volts the amps are almost nothing.

 

When talking about wattage here, we're talking about the amount of work each amp does at a given voltage. We compare a 55w halogen lamp and a 55w HID bulb to say that they operate at the same level of electrical efficiency, not brightness. 55watt HID lamps put out about 4000 lumens, a typical 55watt Halogen bulb puts out about 1000 lumens, and a 35watt HID lamp about 3000 lumens.

Regarding the start up voltage, think of how a multiple thousand volt tazer runs off of a 9v battery, or how your camera flash (hundreds of volts) runs off AA batteries. It is very likely the ignitors use sizable capacitors to reach start up voltage.

Anyway, putting down the highschool physics book, I plugged in a spare HID kit into the stock harness. The stock wiring cant fire the HIDs I had on hand. I tried 2 different types of ballasts, the bulb would only flicker when plugged in the stock harness. I was able to fire the bulb when connecting it to the battery terminals. We need relays for this...

 

I understand the watt being for energy. Usually the cheap knock off lights they sell at the local parts stores use the watt as a measure of the amount of light mainly because most people don't know any better.

So these lights truly draw 55 watts from the battery. I saw a few different HIDs on the web that said around 12 amps start-up required. Which the stock wire should be able to handle but the connections to switches, ground, etc. probably can't handle that much.