Gentlemen,

Allow me to preface this thread with this warning first: STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY ON EBAY JUNK HID KITS. My first foray into HID kits was a cheap $35 kit from eBay user HIDGATE (now defunct). That kit was 'blue' and admittedly looked pretty cool but the light output was terrible. There was no real cut off, everything was blue, I had less visibility in distance than the stock halogens. Then the final straw was the kit worked intermittently. Anytime the car was hot the kit would quit. Needless to say this was an exercise in frustration and an effective way to vaporize time and money. So I did some research, and found HIDPlanet forum. I wanted OEM quality and aftermarket price; this excluded all eBay kits due to quality and the McColluch/Phillips systems due to price.

Enter the Morimoto Stage II HID AMP kit.
Morimoto Stage II HID Kit: AMP - HID Component Kits from The Retrofit Source Inc


This kit strikes the balance of quality and price perfectly. During the ordering process the customer service is phenomenal and they can help you choose the right options to make your kit correct. I chose the following options for my Crossfire: Ballasts - Morimoto 3Five 35W, Bulbs - H7 Morimoto 6000k, Wire Harness - Canbus H7.

I received the kit about a week after I ordered and it included the following:

• 2x brand new Morimoto 35w digital ballasts w/ integrated igniters
• 2x Morimoto polished ballast mounting brackets with hardware.
• 1x ballast test lead
• 2x brand new Morimoto 3Five bulbs (H7, H11, 9006, 9005, H3C, 880, D2H)
• 2x Alcohol prep pads to clean the bulbs
• 1x Wire harness

Since I already had the old crappy HID kit in, I went ahead and pulled that out of both my headlights and threw it in the garbage can. I felt better already. For those of you that haven't any experience in removing the headlight bulb from the projector I'll sum it up in short. Remove the weather cap from the outer projector (low beam), push bottom of spring loaded clip and over toward the outside of the car, this should release the bulb from the housing, now simply pull out the bulb and remove it from the connector by firmly pulling until it pops off. Rinse and repeat for other side.

Time for this install depends hugely on how long it takes to remove the overflow tank as you'll read below. I have done one other HID kit install which took me perhaps 2 hours, this time around I did this entire install in 30 minutes. Tools needed will be a flathead screwdriver, 10mm wrench, 10mm socket on long extension. On to it...

To install the HID kit these are the steps I took:

I first unpacked the kit from the box. The Retrofit Source does a great job of packing the kit, with lots of styrofoam peanuts and especially with bulbs that are both encased in styrofoam and hard plastic. I then laid out the pieces and show here in this picture on the right how the connections will go in the car, and on the left the pieces separate.

MorimotoHID001.jpg

Before starting the install I decided to cut off the rubber grommet on the wires. I did this because I remember from the last kit that they were impossible to shove through the spring loaded clip and didn't feel like making the job harder on myself by trying. This also frees up one of the wiring pieces and now that doesnt have to be threaded through the clip. On to the steps...

1) Attach bracket to ballast with hardware provided. Start with the driver side as it is easier to get a feel for and there is a lot more room to work with. I chose to mount the bracket onto the empty threaded stud that is on the inner wheelwell as seen in the picture. For reference I used a 10mm nylon threaded nut to secure the bracket to the stud.

MorimotoHID004.jpg

2) Take your bulb that now has only the two wires hanging off (red and blue). Now what I did to protect the bulb while I threaded the wire was to masking tape the styrofoam protector to the bulb. Fast, and effective. See pic. You do not want to touch this bulb or hit it on something while threading the wire. Take your blue and red wires, and wire them UP through the opening in the clip. I find if you hold the clip up as you feed it through, and then bring it down to pull the rest through it works the smoothest. It is fairly simple to thread as seen in pic.

MorimotoHID005.jpg







MorimotoHID008.jpg

3) Carefully unpack the bulb from the styrofoam and, with a steady hand, feed the bulb into the hole with the flat part of the metal base of the bulb to the BOTTOM of the hole. Pull back on the wires now and you'll see you'll be able to fasten the clip now with the wires coming through the center. Neat huh? Now you're going to want to fiddle around with the bulb until you can feel it seat deep and flat into the hole. Now you will do the "plug and play" wire connections, its quite simple just clip male connectors into the female connectors hanging off the ballast. The only somewhat tricky part is with separate wiring piece that came separate when we cut off the rubber grommet has to be connected to the old base the halogen bulb was connected to. You'll see on the old black base one side has two black wires and one side has one black wire. Connect the red positive cable to the side with one black wire, and the black negative cable to the side with two black wires. This will make sense when you're looking at it. Look again at the first pic that shows how the wires are connected.

4) Moment of truth. Go turn on your headlight and see how it looks. Do this in front of a wall so you can see how the light looks. It should have a sharp cutoff thats blueish even a bit rainbow. If the cutoff looks yellow your bulb isn't seated correctly, fiddle with it until it is sharp and blue on the cutoff. Congrats, you're done the easy side. Now on to the side that'll make you swear, bleed, and probably cry like a little girl.

MorimotoHID010.jpg

MorimotoHID011.jpg

5) The passenger side offers considerably less room to work. You need to remove the overflow tank for the radiator as it is in the way of where you're going to mount the ballast. It has two 10mm bolts as seen in the pics. Now there is also a spring loaded prong in the bottom that goes into a rubber grommet. There is also an electrical connector on the bottom. The connector is easy to come off. The prong in the grommet is not. I spent literally 45 min pulling on the stupid tank the first HID kit install I did, try to soak the grommet with JiggaLoo or something similar and just keep rocking it back and forth it will come off eventually. Use this time to use all that colorful language you've picked up at R-rated movies. You may also cry if no one else sees. This is the most frustrating step of the entire install. However if the tank has been out once itll pop off in literally 30 seconds. Go figure.

MorimotoHID013.jpg



MorimotoHID016.jpg

6) Rinse and repeat the steps used above to remove the halogen bulb from the outer lowbeam projector on the passenger side. Next I mounted my ballast on the threaded stud that holds a clip for a hose of some sort. I found this an easy place to install. I used the nut provided in the Morimoto kit to fasten down, this is a 10mm for reference.

MorimotoHID017.jpg

7) Thread your bulb like on the driver side, connect your wires like on the driver side. You may choose to clean up the wires with zip ties to keep them away from the alternator. Probably a good idea.

8) Stick the overflow tank back on and fasten the two 10mm nuts.

9) Go turn on your lights. You should see two sharp blueish cutoffs, with the passenger side being aimed higher (this is exactly the way it should be in left-hand drive countries).

EDIT 10) To allow the weather caps to go back on the projector I just a small hole in the bottom of the cap above the ring area with a new razor blade. I then pushed the red and black wires IN to the cap and connected with the old halogen bulb base, and pushed the two HID connector male and female connectors OUT of the cap to connect to the ballast wiring. I then used electrical tape to close the hole from the inside. Looks quite slick and almost OEM.

MorimotoHID021.jpg

I have to say, for the price this kit is amazing. The light output is atleast twice as good as that crap eBay kit. It is SO crisp. Easily better than stock halogen lighting, it appears blue (6000k bulbs) when seeing the car coming up the street...looks very OEM like any Mercedes or Lexus coming up the road. However, when driving the light is white and very much like daylight. It is amazing how far you can see ahead and how much of the passenger side of the road you can see now, great for driving at night with wildlife in the ditch beside the road, etc. This is a big difference from the eBay kit that turned everything blue and was quite glare-y, and had no side of the road visibility to speak of. The cutoff is amazingly sharp on this kit, it is amazing how great it is considering our projectors were actually made for halogen lights. It has a great OEM look that doesn't blind traffic at all.

The bottomline is this: you need to buy this kit. It may cost $100 more than eBay and I can honestly say it is worth easily 3x that. I may sound like a total fanboy but the Morimoto product is flatout phenomenal and I can't recommend it enough. Don't be dumb like me, save your $35 you were gonna spend on eBay and head over to the link I posted above. I dealt with Matt throughout the process and he is great. I believe they do group buys so if 10 or so people get together you may be even able to get a better deal. If not mention you saw this review on Crossfireforum and maybe you'll get a bit of a discount.

Thanks for reading, I'm going out to drive in the dark because I can't get enough of these lights.

Cheers guys!

 

https://www.crossfireforum.org/forum...ng-engine.html

 

wow that light output looks so much better than my DDMtuning kit!

 

Honestly my point & shoot camera combined with my total lack of photography skills do not do the lights justice. The light below cut off is pure white with a beautiful blue/rainbow cut off. Do yourself a favour and give the Morimoto a shot, our cars deserve it. Leave the eBay stuff for the Civics.

 

yup I think I will be purchasing shortly, I'm so disappointed with the light output from my current projectors. DDMtuning stuff has always served me well, but they aren't focused for halogen projectors like yours are.


EDIT: Do they sell just the bulbs? I don't think I need new ballasts.

 

Hmmm... I might have to look into these. I'm all about quality.

Excellent writeup, by the way.

 

LOL ..........

 

I'm sure they sell bulbs separately but I do recommend buying the full kit. As with anything in cars, the weakest link will soon show itself when paired with higher quality parts.

 

And to the dirty engine comments. This car is my daily, and the bottomside of my weekend car is quite likely cleaner than the top side of your Crossfire.

 

You can attain greater light output with the 55W. However, I have the 55W and I DO NOT suggest it. It is too bright, it literally masks my high beams. There is a reason lows = lows and that HID kits are technically ILLEGAL!. But, a 4300-8000k 35W HID will be brighter than your stock halogens (8000k isnt great) by a good bit.

I think Morimotos are AWESOME and I love them on the car 604. The price does reflect the quality in my opinion.

The only reason i use VVME instead of these is that the HID market is a risky one and I know that with VVME ill probably get two years (1yr warranty btw) out of the digital kits. At 55 bucks a pair I wont cry too much after 2 years or so... Plus I like switching up colors!

 

I guess it is worth mentioning this kit has a 18 month warranty included in the price, though I don't feel it will be necessary it is nice peace of mind. Oh and guys, watch in the next few weeks for my retrofit of Morimoto blazer projector foglights. Should be a great alternative to paying Chrysler $350 after the glass lenses get cracked.

 

The Morimoto's referenced are a 35w kit, the same as my DDMtuning ones. The only difference is the focal point of the bulb, which is made for halogen projectors.

 

Ah hmm didnt realize they adjusted the focal point for halogen projectors... didnt even know that there was a large difference between halogen projectors and HID projectors? O.o... Actually, why wouldnt everyone set their bulbs to the halogen projector focal point since HID kits are almost exclusively used in a halogen projector or by someone with no projectors at all.. bah!

Either way, more light output can be a bad thing at a certain point was my overall point... Ive been asked by an officer (during a... sigh...speeding related pull over) why my high beams were on.. not to say these morimotos would cause that... they do look pretty sexy i gotta say

 

I think you missed the point.

 

I'm wondering if you did the same...

 

excellent information guys! thank you!

 

Really?

Guys?

 

Really? I don't have a car in my stable, even the ones I hate, that look like that.

My forklift is cleaner.

 

cough... *scrambles to find his engine cleaning materials*... yeah uuhmmm.. terrible.. gah!!!... *scrubs his engine area*

 

As a matter of fact, I do. Every piece of equipment I own or control in my lab is kept immaculate.

I find it easier, and more satisfying, to clean any equipment beforehand instead of my hands after using them. As a future physician, you should be able to relate to this.

I hope?