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The RetroFit Source Morimoto HID install and Review (VT)

36K views 19 replies 9 participants last post by  Incognito 
#1 ·
I recently installed a Morimoto HID kit into my VT, and thought I'd share with all of you my install process and thoughts about the kit.

Individual Components:
Included in the kit were:
Morimoto 5Five (55W) Ballasts - These things are built to last. The look to have Aircraft Style seals all around, and they are hefty! The ballasts themselves are slightly larger than a deck of cards, but not by much. The leads for both the input and output connections are plenty long, and they are wrapped in a very OEM looking techmesh material. Mounts are included.
H11 bulbs - Ok, Ok, I know the VT calls for H11B bulbs, but after a quick discussion and some photograph exchanges with the folks at TRS, we determined that the H11 bulb is better for the VT in the case of HID install. It has to do with the position of the return wire inside the projector housing once its installed. The bulbs also have a rubber donut that seal the hole you will have to put in the dustcap behind the projectors themselves. The rubber donut also houses the wires you use for the relay to pick up its switch connection. Everything about this kit screams of quality thus far. I went with the 4300K color temp, and couldn't be happier.
Relay Harness - Again, this is the best harness I've ever seen with an HID kit. Dual Morimoto relays, plenty long, wrapped in the same techmesh material. The grounds for each ballast are local to the ballast itself, as opposed to having one ground for the whole relay. I like this setup personally. This relay harness feels solid and built to last. Definitely not an ebay POS.

Now, for the install, and pictures:
Bumper & Headlight Removal
I used the bumper removal found below. I really don't see a need to cover all of it again and make ANOTHER thread that covers how to remove the front bumper from our cars.
http://www.veloster.org/forum/38-hy...-headlamp-assembly-kdm-led-headlamp-swap.html

Your car should look like this!



HID Install:
Here's where the fun and pictures begin!
I'll go ahead and assume you have your bumper off and your headlights removed.

Drill your dustcaps:
Go ahead and pull the dustcaps and bulbs out of both low beam lights. Once you do this, you need to drill hole the same size as the interior of the rubber grommet into the dustcaps. (I don't have a drillbit this big, so I drilled with the largest bit I had then dremel tool'd it from there. The hole came out to be somewhere between 3/4" to 1")


Mount the Bulbs:
At this point go ahead and mount your HID bulbs. Be sure not to tough any of the glass portion with your greasy fingers! On the off chance that you do, TRS is nice enough to include a few alcohol wipes that you can use to clean the bulbs. You'll notice when you look at your projector housing that there are three "keys" that the bulb will fall into, and then rotate in place to stay solid. One of these keys is larger than the others, make sure you don't jam the bulb into the wrong clock position. I don't think it would be easy to do, just trying to give a fair warning. You'll also notice the little black box next to the bulb mount. It has a yellow and a black wire running into it. That is where the stock bulb would pick up power. This is where we will pick up the trigger voltage for the relay harness. The bulb has 4 total wires attached, two are the bulbs power, and the other two have little metal blades on the headlight interior side. These blades will slide into the slots where your stock bulb picked up its power. I lined the black wire on the relay with the black wire in the headlight, and the red wire on the bulb with the yellow wire on the headlight. NOTE: you only need to do this on whichever side of the car you will also mount the relay, not both lights. On the side where you will NOT use the wires, I just pulled them out of the donut.


Mount the Relay Harness:
I'm huge into NOT making holes in my car if I can avoid it while still doing a well thought out "done the right way" install. I chose to put my relay on one of the mount bolts for the intake. After that, I ran the wires to their individual locations. They're self explanatory! As you can see, this is on an intake bolt on the drivers side of the filter housing. It ends up just under the drivers side headlight where you can still see the red LED lights built into the relays.


Mount the Ballast: Again, looking to not put more holes than I need too in my car, I looked for a stock location to mount the ballasts. What ended up working is a piece of the headlight support bracket. Located to the rear of the headlight mounting area on each headlight, I found this bracket. I mounted the ballasts upside-down, and put a downward bend in the silver part of the bracket that came with the ballasts. The ballasts rest on the wheel wells. The bright gold colored bolt was included with the ballasts.
Passenger:


Driver:


Ground your ballasts: Guess what? More stock locations. Right in between the the ECU and the Fuse box, there is a stock ground point. I used it to ground the drivers side ballast. This one is a pain to find, so you get two pictures! You will need to disconnect and remove the battery to reach it.
Up Close:


Further Away:


Passenger Side: This stock ground point is just under the engine coolant tank. I don't have a close up, but if you look at the bend in the side of the coolant tank, its basically under that. I'll edit this picture with an arrow if anyone really needs it.


Power the relay:
I ran the power wire for the relay under the battery tray. You can drop it down in between the air filter box and the battery tray pretty easily, but there is a lot of slack! I just s-folded and taped the excess to the other battery positive cables, since this relay harness is pre-cut. I didn't want to cut the harness to shorten the power wire. Just run the open end of the wire up into the positive battery connection, and put it under one of the nuts up there that the car uses to distribute positive power.


Connect everything:
Now that you have all the wires in place, grounds connected, power connected, relay secured, ballasts mounted, and bulbs installed, Connect everything. The AMP fittings running from the ballasts to the bulbs are oppositely paired, so they're impossible to mess up. Now the relay to ballast connections are another story. You'll have to look closely at the ballast side of the connection because there is a little + and - imprinted on the connector, and you'll match that up with the + and - sides of the relay connection. Don't forget to attach the trigger wires on the left bulb to the trigger lines on the relay! Also, dont forget to plug the whole headlamp assy itself back into the car.

Testing: At this point, go ahead and just set the headlights back into their spots and re-install the battery. Take a minimum to two tequila shots, and test them out. Don't forget that in the turbo the ignition button must be rotated to at least the "ON" position for the headlights to work. If its off or in ACC, only the parking lights will come on. If they don't work, go through a few simple troubleshooting steps. The nice relay kit that TRS includes uses red LED's to let you know whether the relay is receiving power on the trigger line. If they arent on, then you messed up somewhere installing the bulb, or you forgot to the connect the trigger line in the last step. If the LED lights are on, but you still have no HID light, then work from the battery to the bulbs, making sure all your connections are tight and properly polarized. Once you've checked those items, they should be working.

Now mount the headlights properly, and re-install your bumper. Then, enjoy your newly installed HID lights! This is just a quick shot during the day with my garage closed. You can see that there are no shadows or dark spots in the beam pattern, and they are BRIGHT! I will update this post in the next few days with better pictures of the spill and the front end in the dark.

Thanks to TRS for such a wonderful product!
 
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#2 ·
I couldn't agree more about the TRS quality products. I have the Morimoto mini projectors in my NAV headlights, using 6000k H1 bulbs and their ThreeFive Ballasts. The advantage is that the mini projectors are bi-xenon, allowing four bulbs lit on high beams. If I had it to do over I would go for the FiveFive Ballasts. The projectors have a very sharply defined pattern, but the smaller lenses don't put out quite as much light as I had previously with 35 watt HID's in the NAV reflectors.
 
#4 ·
nice writeup.

one thing i don't agree with is mouting the ballasts UNDER the headlamps. it's obvious you will have to drop the bumper, and lamps, if just a ballast goes out versus a bulb. that turns a quick change into 20-30 minutes, or more in bad weather.
 
#7 ·
Thanks! It was just the best place I could think of at the time, however I am looking for a new mounting position. I can hear the ballasts rattle against the wheel well and it makes me sad. If you have any suggestions I'm more than open to listen, and if I do move the ballasts ill update the post. My bumper will be coming off again to shortly to do a brick delete, and the TS FMIC kit so ill probably do it then.


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#10 ·
I've had my HIDs in my VT for about a week now and when I'm at an idle I have a flicker where both lights turn off once every 10 or so seconds. It happens rarely while driving (maybe once every 20 minutes on a bad night) and I can't seem to find the cause of it. I've jiggled wires, tapped ballasts, tapped relays but none of it seem to provoke it. Is anyone else having this issue?
 
#12 · (Edited)
I have an issue with flickering, but the right conditions bust be met...
I'll describe the conditions that must be met for the flicker to happen-
1) Very Quick Movement of the steering wheel. The Veloster (all models) use an electric power steering pump. This thing has a very high current draw during quick steering wheel movement.
2) Audio turned up. I have the dimension system in the VT. (and two subs...) Again, relatively high power draw.
3) A/C set to "Max cool" This sets the blower to MAX, locks the A/C Compressor on, and starts the cooling fan in the engine compartment. Another source of high power draw.

Basically all of these load to a voltage drop which goes below the acceptable range of the ballasts to keep running. This effect s exaggerated at idle because your alternator doesn't produce as much current at idle as it does when cruising at higher RPM's. If memory serves correctly (so don't quote me on this), I think the Veloster's alternator hits maximum production capacity around 2500RPM and stays solid after that.

TRS provided a small anti-flicker capacitor when I let them know that I was having this issue. I haven't had a chance to install it yet, I'll post back when I do to let you know if it works.

Any chance you could take a picture of the cutoff on the side of a building or a garage door?

I really want to do this, but i dont want the blinding effect to be too bad for other drivers.
I'll take some good shots later tonight since you want them, but this is something I was worried about personally so I had my wife drive the VT at me opposite direction from my other vehicle and it was not bad at all. No worse than stock BMW's, Acura's etc. This was also after adjusting my headlamps UP quite a bit. Keep in mind that if you don't have RE:MIX or a Turbo that you don't have projector headlamp and your results will be greatly different.
 
#15 ·
#16 ·
Quick question..I get that flicker\blink when i press the gas and even sometimes when i turn on the lights it takes like 3 tries to get them both to light up or else it'll just go from side to side untill they both ignite.

Any ideas? And for the wires that go from the housing to the relay, what color goes where? black\white with black and yellow with red? If i do that i get a decently loud buzz on my relay and if i turn it opposite it quiets down but still works. So im confused :\
 
#17 ·
Get the flicker canceller from TRS. I ended up getting one about two weeks after my install- fixed all my problems. Mine stemmed from having an aftermarket audio system in my car, but with the NAV's weaker alternator maybe that's what's causing your issues. The flicker capacitor should solve your issues.
 
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