I picked up a set of HID's for the high beams this week and wanted to know what you did for mounting of the ballasts/ignitors? I was looking at mounting them near the fire wall and extending the lines. Let me see what you have done.

Jimmy

 

where did you get these HID's if youi dont mind me asking. I am worried about the ballasts myself...
did it work out ok?
Thanks

 

I got 5000k HID's from Jim Powell at Apexcone.com. I paid 170 for them over the summer when they were having a big sale. Bulbs and ballasts both come with lifetime warranty and apexcone's customrer service is top notch. I decided against mounting the lights in the Mini and will be sending the bulbs back to get the correct bulbs to mount in a Ducati I bought this week. If mounting in the Mini though, I wouldve put the ballasts against the firewall and extended the lines. Shouldnt be hard at all, just not as plug n play as they were designed.

Jimmy

 

ILLEGAL

In virtually every first-world country, HID "retrofits" into halogen headlamps are illegal.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/t...nversions.html

 

Well at least it's just the high beams, which shouldn't be on whenever someone is in front of you anyway. And you don't need special modified bulbs to fit HID into an H7 socket anyway. All you need is an adapter and standard H2S bulbs: http://www.hidplanet.com/H72D2.html

The only remaining question is if the resulting beam pattern is any good. Anyone put 35w HIDs in their high beams (or fogs) yet?

 

Yeah, so? who cares?

mounting auxilliary lights higher than 15 inches off the ground is illegal too!

 

Read DanielSterning. Not only illegal but unsafe. Of course, you are free to do anything you want. That is, until you get that fix-it ticket but maybe you never had one before?

As to aux lights, wrong. Each state is different. Usually its not more than 18" for FOGS, not Driving lights

 

Troopers dont care out here, they just write bogus speeding tickets, lol

 

Its been my experience that staties in all states don't care. I would be far more worried about locals .... county, city, town, whatever as its "their" town. Depends upon in what kind of mood they are.

Fixit tickets aint fun because not only you got to fix whatever is in violation (cost $) but you got to go somewhere to PROVE its been fixed ... a pain.

Fixit tickets are not about improving revenue but about safety.

 

Since this is a high beam replacement I have to ask. How many of you put your high beam on when oncoming traffic (especially police) is present? So how would police evr know about your high beams?


I only see it being a problem at the Inspection Station.


Paul

 

What's an inspection station?

Only thing that ever gets "inspected" here in Alabama is the vin# when you bring a car in from out of state!

 

it sure is nice isnt it? I love not having inspections!

 

Some states do it annually, bummer

My state ONLY when you buy a used car AND they ALWAYS find something wrong. I think its a kickback system!

 

I guess my quesiton is, can I ORDER even from Mini the replacement Xenon's that would have come with my Mini when I bought it, eveh though I do no have those units mounted. in other words are the only things different are the bulbs or also the wiring in the mounts? I just want to upgrade with OEM Xenon's as if I got that package when I bought my car.
has anyone done this?

 

oh BS....its illegal for a reason. It blinds oncoming drivers and makes driving unsafe. Its not like some of the other sillier laws like dark tints.

you know better than that rick...

 

yes you can order them, and install them. But you will also need the auto-leveling parts that attach to the suspension and the ZKE module (goes behind glovebox) if you want them to auto-level (legally required as well). I dont know what happens if you dont have the auto-levelling stuff....maybe it still works sans auto levelling.

Technically you also need all the stuff for the washing system (resevoir, pump, tubing)....but you could just clean them yourself and be fine in my opinion.

 

oh, wow I didn't know that there was also an auto level part to those. That is slick. I need to get the manual for the mini so I can see the breakdown of these parts.

and the autowash part wouldn't concern me, I would probably just leave that inactive.
I might dive in to this purchase and let everyone know how it comes out!
thanks for the info!

 

The '02 xenons do not have auto-leveling or washers, so would likely be easiest to retrofit. Ballasts and igniters are built into the bottom of the housings, so you'd need the entire lamp assemblies.

 

Why do you care about legality?? Do you think there is a high possibility that he will get in trouble for this?? People put HID's in bimmers all the time...I did it on my e36 back in the day...someone even put hid's in their e36's fog lights...really cool...anyway..

Instead of debating about the legality can someone answer his question??

 

the question was answered already....

and we are debating legality because it makes it DANGEROUS for other people to drive towards him. I dont care if a cop can pull him over....chances are they wont ever do it. What i care about is that it would make it more dangerous to be on the road, just to save some money by not buying the xenon housings

 

That's just fully incorrect. The 02 xenons have both auto-levelling and a washer system.

 

Well the auto-level may have been broken on all the '02s I saw, but headlamp washers were definitely optional in 2002.

http://www.gomotoring.com/pdf/xenons-washers.pdf
http://www.gomotoring.com/pdf/2005_headlights.pdf
http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthread.php?t=79088&

 

Legal issues aside, the ballasts need to be as close to the bulbs as possible to work properly. You may have noticed, the factory Xenon ballast is mounted directly on the headlight assembly. No different than building HID lights.

There are other safety issues involved with mounting them too far from the bulbs as well due to the MUCH higher voltages involved.

 

I have a set of 6500k HIDs as my high beams and they work great.
I mounted the ballast on the rear side of the main headlight housings. The smaller fuse box is then attached to the underside of the bonnet. Both are attached with industrial strength double-sided tape.

 

Anyone can do anything they want. Its their money, their car. Thats not the point. As RALLYmini said, its DANGEROUS.

Cops might not care less unless your in a small town ... their town.

Have you ever gotten a 7 or 10 day fixit ticket. The ticket is cheap. The aggravation is not. Besides going back to the original you got to go back and PROVE its back to OEM. Who needs that aggravation? Get caught again and then it wont be Cheap.

Its to help you and other other drivers ...