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HIDS w/stock wiring

I just upded my fuses for the initial start up and haven't had any problems with electrical since. I even went for a road trip (10 hours) 8 hours were in the night and nothing melted or flickered. And this is using low beams, high beams AND driving lights. (all true HID of course)
 
yeah it was popping the 10 amp stock fuses so I put in 15. It probably wouldn't blow a 12 amp but they don't make 12 amp atc fuses. For the milliseconds the amperage is running throught the wire, it doesn't do any harm to the electrical. had to do the same for the foglights as well, but nothing is hurting the electrical. I ran the ballasts through the stock relays.
 
How long have you guys been running the larger fuses? In my ,97 Dodge Ram it took 1 year and then the switch finally fried. I think I'll be safe and get a relay and wire it directly to the battery.
 
I don't know about the other guys, but I've been running for 3 years without any problems. ford actually uses a relay after the switch so the switch never gets destroyed from accessive amperage. For the milliseconds that amperage is actually going through the relay is very little cause once it is started the ballast drops down to 35 watts and doesn't demand from the system. The main light fuse is 7.5 amps and I haven't changed that fuse. Only the main headlight fuse (once from a 10 up to a 15 amp)

http://www.autozone.com/addVehicleI...pping/repairGuide.htm?pageId=0900c152800a8d24
 
But adding a relay from the battery would also give it the correct voltage that it may or may not need.
 
Adding a relay has absolutely nothing to do with voltage, only amperage. If you were to change the voltage you would be adding or removing a resistor.

The Hella HID is a 35W lamp - which means it draws about 2-3 Amps when lit. There is an initial surge of about 15 Amps for less than a second to kick it off, but then it rapidly tapers off to the 2-3 Amps. the ballast can handle anything between 10-16 volts or continouse or fluctuating power no problem.

Halogen (regular bulbs at 55 watts (@12volts) about 4-5 amps when lit. No initial surge but the amperage is still higher than HID.
Halogen (regular bulbs at 60 watts (@ 12 volts) about 5-6 amps when lit. No initial surge but the amps are higher yet.
Halogen (Aftermarket at 90 watts (@ 12 volts) about 7-8 amps when lit. No initial surge but the amps are getting even higher.
Halogen (aftermarket at 100 watts (@ 12 volts) about 8-9 amps when lit. No initial surge but the amps are really high and are starting to weaken the plastic and wiring that your bulb is being held and powered by.

When you add a relay you are bypassing your factory wiring and using the factory wiring as a switch to activate the relay which will allow direct voltage and amperage to your lighting system (or whatever you have connected to your relay). I looked at the factory wiring and determined that the factory wiring was more than sufficient to hande the small burst of amperage at the beggining of the ballast start up and was not a problem at all.
I don't know if this changes at all through the contours life, but my 'tour has 14 gauge headlight wires.


"Wiring quick guide"
http://www.rallylights.com/useful_info/sensible_wiring.htm


It doesn't matter how many volts you have running through the wires, (hell, you could have 100,000 volts)(not rerecommended btw) as long as you don't have more than the rated amperage going through, you arn't going to burn out your wires and cause a fire. Even with 16 gauge wires you could have 15 amps going through for a short time. It may heat your wires up (and eventually burn them) but if the amperage gets below 7 amps your wires will go back to normal and everything will be fine again.

Think of this for a second. If Ford put a 10amp fuse on a wire that could only handle 7 amps, would that be safe for you to use? But if they put a 10amp fuse on a 15 amp wire, and all you have to do is replace the fuse, this protects the wire, and is in a specified saftey margin. All I've done was remove the safety margin. If I could put a 12 amp fuse in there I would, this would give me a 3 amp saftey margin. However since I can't find a 12 amp fuse. I'll just run with a 15. But still perfectly safe because the wires can handle it.
 
genesis14 said:
Adding a relay has absolutely nothing to do with voltage, only amperage. If you were to change the voltage you would be adding or removing a resistor.
Click to expand...

You're right to a point. You lose some voltage through the headlight and high beams switch on almost all cars. Measure the voltage at the bulb and you probably wont see the same voltage as the rest of the charging system. Add a relay to power the lights from the battery by using the stock wire as the trigger and you'll see around 14v. If thats not the case on the Contour than I apologize but I've done probably a dozen headlight re-wiring jobs and always notice a marked improvement in light output with the same bulb.
 
Well I'm thinking that sometimes at night I let the revs drop a little and see the headlights dim and then brighten back up. Would the HIDs do that as well or would the ballasts sort it out since I know they supposedly hate dimming real quick.
 
HIDs will not dim... They will just shut off if the voltage gets too low.(leaving lights on, engine off) The ballasts will take away any surges. i.e. subwoofer
 
With normal lights I don't have that kind of problem when the revs drop. I only see that when the A/C compressor turns on.

When I switched to HIDS, No light dimming occured at all, even with the A/C compressor turning on. Everything was smooth and bright.
 
Hids use sort of the same technology as fluorescent lighting. Very high voltage, very low amperage. This is why dimmer switches on fluorescent lights end up killing ballasts, voltage becomes too low.

In HIDs the ballasts simply switch off when current drops too low.

For anyone on the fence about wiring a relay, if you run anything different than stock (55w) 9006 bulb you should use a relay. After all there is a reason the fogs use relays.
 
The headlights are already powered directly from the battery via a relay.

Headlights1.jpg


Headlights2.jpg
 
striker2 said:
The headlights are already powered directly from the battery via a relay.
Click to expand...

So they come from the factory wired directly to the battery? I just want to confirm this as it seems that's exactly what I needed to know. I did see an extra wire or two connected to the battery terminal now that I think about it. Do you know if this applys to all years? Mines a '99 SVT.
 
What striker said is true, but it is a 10amp relay, not the 40a ones that come with HID kits. The stock wiring (relay or not) is not designed to handle the increased load HID's draw at startup. Period. Also almost everything is run though relays, interior lights, headlights, fogs, defroster...
 
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