MikeyMcFly

Hi all,

Mini-rant with a question here. Why are our cars SO tempermental when it comes to headlights?

I had (have) the RadioFlyer ACA setup and have had it in the car for approximately (1) year and it's been largely flawless. I had what I suspected was a bad gear (turned out to be the arm pin backed out and went missing), so I pulled apart the whole setup to replace the gears with the brass gear setup.

I reinstalled the motors and put my ACA setup back together. When I went to put the headlights on, they would pop up, but the HID would not ignite. When I clicked to the high beams, those would come on as expected. However, when I turned back to low beams, still nothing and turning the switch off would not drop the headlights. I had to click the high beams for the headlights to go down.

Since I'm overdue for an inspection and I want to drive the car I threw my stock setup back together and everything works fine for now, but I have been reading all night that it's not uncommon for the HID to go wonky.

Now, I did have a very low battery because the car had been sitting, but I was measuring 14.1V at the low beam socket with the car running, 12.2V with the car off, and actually 8.7 with the switch off and the lamps still popped up.

I checked to make sure I had solid connection at the headlight module, which I did, but I'm at a loss here. I've got the proper voltage to use the HID, I can't believe I've got blown bulbs because a visual inspection shows they're fine. It seems unlikely both ballasts have blown.

Ultimately I ripped the whole setup out and I'm not sure if I'm going to put it back in or sell it (the shaky cutoff which is endemic to these setups was a bit annoying, although there are fixes now which I have bookmarked).

There's got to be something here I'm missing. The setup worked prior to pulling it apart, although I did have the occasional time it wouldn't work properly, but I had assumed that was just my multifunction switch acting up, but now I'm thinking it was something with the pop-up system.

/rant.

ZO6 cracker

As much as I would love to have these in my Z06 that is my biggest fear with dealing with them having issues. I would like just to have a brighter bulb for my factory head light. Don't get me wrong I think there awesome just don't want to deal with lighting issues.

chasboy

Had similar problem on my Z. The voltage sensitivity involved with the popup doors creates the problem.(simple answer)
I replaced my hid stuff in that car with what was PIAA's best super duper bulb at the time and they were pretty good. I now have HIR bulbs #'s 9012 and 9011 and they are an improvement.

Mickeyrx70

I don't want to jinx myself, but I've had RadioFlyer's Bi-Xenon setup for 2 or 3 years now and the only issue I've had was one faulty ballast, which I replaced without a problem. I'm really happy with it.

bluewire

I feel your pain, I had the ACA HID's and ended up going back to stock and selling the HID's. It was more BS than I wanted to deal with, especially at night when one of the lights didn't want to come on.

I think I am going to give the HIR II bulbs (9011 & 9012) a try, seems like the best option for trouble free operation.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

acuevo

Well thats sort of disheartening news, I didn't know there were bugs with these set ups. I was planning on grabbing a set of these as one of my next mods... how widespread are the issues with these? Are they very common or more isolated?

mickey_7106

Check your relays. i had a similar issue when i had the original ACA's on my car. i had them poorly placed in the battery compartment. they would get wet when i washed my car and they got to corroded after some time.

dork

I'm not raggin' on you guys. I'm posting to offer another alternative... You might consider GM OEM E-code headlights. They cost about the same amount of money but the headlamps are GM OEM thick glass (like the old 60's-70's vehicles) and the hardware is made in Germany or Switzerland (depending on their [GM's] sourcing). They're built to European-code DOT standards, which are much more stringent than US DOT. All the aftermarket HIDs available are either made in China or Taiwan; none of the HID aftermarket vendors will claim anything else.

It seems those of us who installed them haven't had any complaints about their qualities (manufacturing quality, reliability, durability, etc). They don't look as "modern" and the light they cast is "old-school", too, but I think most of us who own them are very well-satisfied.

We have a 2013 Suburban and a 2014 c7 besides the 2003 c5, and though the '13 and '14 are equipped with HIDs, we actually prefer the old-style halogens--the E-code versions are at least as bright (low and high beam) but they don't have the severe horizontal cutoff that's typical with HIDs. In rolling-hills terrain, that can be a real advantage over the HIDs.

There are two big disadvantages to E-code halogens, though--they don't look "trendy" (no offense meant; I can't think of a better word); and they're much more expensive than just runnin' down to the auto parts store for bulbs that are a bit brighter than US OEM issue. As someone once said to me--they're bright for Germany's Autobahn speeds.

GCG

With a battery that low there's no telling what could go wrong. Take a look at this chart:

If the battery is
12.5 = 85% charged
12.4 = 65%
12.3 = 50%
12.2 = 35%
12.1 = drained

Those voltages must be directly taken at the battery posts with a multimeter. You should begin by fully charging your battery and having it load-tested at an autoparts.

On the other hand, your alternator seems to be fine

knewblewkorvette

GCG

That table is definitely interesting. The values I posted are the ones that have been cited here every time this subject has surfaced. Perhaps this merits a deeper research

MrGary2011

I have a set of the low profile ones (Sunguns). I may look at upgrading the HID set and am going with LED highs. I don't like the warmup time where it takes like 15 seconds for them to get to full brightness once turned on. Also for some reason sometimes mine will not come on (one side or the other) and after cycling the headlights the HIDs will then both light up. I love these headlights though and they blow away the **** off of a light system GM came up with.

MikeyMcFly

My system didn't have any additional relays. It's a true plug-n-play setup. My ballasts are mounted under the pop up assemblies so it's unlikely they get wet.

Also, the headlamps worked fine prior to disassembly.

I'm not worried about my battery being at it's end of life as the car had been sitting 2.5 weeks at that point, so it's not surprising the battery was a bit flat. I fully understand that the 12.2V would cause headlamp issues as far as having enough amp draw to ignite the HID setup, but once the car was running and I had full voltage, I don't see why the required amp load would be unmet. The headlamps don't have an auxiliary battery connection like a amp / sub setup would as far as requiring extra juice. So long as my alternator operates as expected, I wouldn't think I'd have issues.

I suspect I simply have an older car with likely tired wiring and connections and it's simply a case of that.

I think I'm going to use a friend's car with 9006 headlamps and confirm the ballasts and bulbs work and just list the headlamps for sale and go with HIR bulbs, unless someone can chime in with a way to make these headlamps work as expected every time. The only way I can really see something working is using a relay setup with a heavy gauge wire to supply power directly to the ballasts, but that's more work than I want to do right now.

What's frustrating is that my driver's side headlamp motor is wonky again. The motor powers the headlight up fine, but when it goes down it just slams down. I had run into that on both sides initially and ended up rearranging the spacers so there was no play in the shaft that connected to the arm which seemed to solve the issue, at least initially but it's back to being broken. This car's issues that seem unfixable (the motors being stupid, the harmonic balancer being replaced twice and still chirping...yes, I know ultimately anything can be fixed with time and patience) are going to be the death of me.

jrprich

"The only way I can really see something working is using a relay setup with a heavy gauge wire to supply power directly to the ballasts, but that's more work than I want to do right now."

In my experience with HID, using a direct battery connected relay wiring harness for each HID relay has always worked. I had an original set of ACA projector assemblies a decade or more ago. The ACA kit came with dedicated relay wiring harness for each side. The OEM wiring only acted as a switch signal. NEVER had any of the "won't pop up" issues. Very quick warm up. I now have a set of Sun Guns and installed them the same way using a relay harness for each side.......no issues. I do the same for my HID fogs.
Installing a relay harness is really simple and pretty inexpensive at under $10 a side on eBay. IMO, a much better choice than using inline resistors.

Jim

jackthelad

As others have said, C5's are ultra sensitive to battery voltage. Years back, I had the dreaded column lock. I got it loose by hooking up my charger (a proper charger, not a battery tender), setting it to boost so the voltage was artificially high, and voila!, the column unlocked. Got a permanent fix afterwards, but it's an example of strange things that can happen.

As an aside, my wife's previous car had projector low beams, but non HID from the factory. After changing out the bulbs a couple of times due to failure (including Silverstars, I think they lasted like 6 months), I put in HIR bulbs. Better light and to my pleasant surprise no failures since 2012 when they went in. And this on a vehicle that uses the low beams for DRL's. Thank you Candlepower.

We recently replaced her car with a new one with HID's. Subjectively, it's hard to tell much difference between these and decent projectors with HIR bulbs. Light is a bit further up the white scale, but that's it, no great improvement in night vision when driving.

MikeyMcFly

I agree that it would be an easy way to do it, but I don't know if I have the patience to rip it all apart again, swap it back over to the ACA setup and then go through the method to try and firm up the popup so I don't have the cutoff shimmy.

In a perfect world with infinite time and $$$, I'd tear it apart again and rewire it so that it would work and rebuild it so it wouldn't shake, but with a baby on the way and summer halfway over, I don't know if I really want to go through it. I lost 2 weeks of driving the car trying to fit in the time to get the headlight not popping up squared away just to get an inspection. I suppose I'll sit on it for a bit and go from there.

Since I don't drive the car daily, my battery will understandably drain a bit throughout the week. It's crazy to me that the drain is enough to disable my headlights. The HIR is looking more appealing, even if the C5 OEM headlight assemblies are probably junk.

Sam Handwich

Sorry to hear of these problems you are having. I have no complaints and no problems with my Radio-Flyer Bi-Xenon headlights (touch wood).
I figure that with George's great reputation on this forum that if I have a serious problem he will be there for support. And I hope it never comes to that.
Good luck on getting a solution.

MikeyMcFly

Thanks. I should clarify I don't feel it is a failure of the part of should reflect poorly on anyone merely a failure of the car itself. Everything wrong can be explained, it's just frustrating when the high quality well engineered part doesn't play well with your particular car.

I also made this post after a marathon 8 plus your day going into 2 AM trying to fix everything. I was more frustrated that everything did work and then it didn't.

chasboy

Acuevo, as you can see, there are lots of stories, and it's easy to see that everyone here has done their homework and tried to do what they liked best, yet some still have problems. From what I've seen being on this forum since 2011, the higher priced setups from vendors like Radioflyer can be depended on to perform and last. Most of us have been burned by "price too good to be true" products, and are appropriately suspicious of new stuff, yet we still try anyway.
I ended up going the HIR route on both my C5's, the aggravation of too many marginal products isn't worth it.
I was also advised to get the Euro spec lights, I just haven't followed up on it.