I wasn't able to get my fat fingers behind the headlamp enough to do the total installation, so I wound up pulling the front end off, unmounting the headlamps, and doing the job sitting in the driveway with the headlamp in my lap. Took all of five minutes to convert both dipped-beams from incandescent to arc-light. Call it a half-hour, start-to-finish, including pulling and replacing the front panels. (This wasn't an irritation to me, as I wanted to re-work my Nautilus horn mount anyway.)
The kit comes with replacement spring clips to hold the lamps in the projector element. I couldn't get them to work worth a tinker's damn, so I just recycled the OEM H7 lamp holders, with a twist: You remove the spring holder, put the HID lamp into the reflector base, *then* reinstall the spring clip and clip it into its hook, holding the arc-lamp in place. Others' mileage may vary; that's just what I found worked best for me.
Aside from that, putting the hose clamp around the seal between the headlamp housing and the HID ballast cap was *far* easier with the headlamp out of the car. Those with less than "extra-manly" fingers may find it just as easy (or vexing) to do it with the headlamps still in the car.
That said, here's how I did it:
The kit comes with two ballast caps, two discharge lamps, two ginormous hose clamps, and two lamp-holder springs. Here's parts for one side, ready to install.
First, remove the H7 lamp and replace with the discharge lamp. Have fun figuring out the lamp-holder springs.
Next, connect the ballast cap. Pay attention to correct polarity; the red wire on the ballast power input needs to line up with the yellow wire on the headlamp harness.
(continued in next post)
Last edited by The Rigger; 09-11-2009 at 08:10 PM.
Hide the wiring as you want, and shove the ballast cap onto the headlamp housing neck.
Slip the supplied ginormous hose clamp over the cap/neck junction and tighten it down to seal the connection. Then re-mount the headlamp housing on the car, and you're done.
Before and After: On the left, a SilverStar Ultra. On the right, the Smart Madness HID, at 4300°K. Quite the difference.
Since it was not yet dark when I processed and uploaded these photos, I have yet to report on how well (or not) the new lamps perform. That'll be determined on my way home from the WiFi Diner tonight. I will say that they do *not* strike and immediately come up to temperature, as was reported here earlier; there is (as usual with discharge lamps) a slight delay as the arc stabilizes. Call it two to five seconds, depending on if they're dead-cold, but no slower than OEM discharge systems in luxury cars I've seen. I'm also curious as to how well (or not) that the new lamps focus in the projectors, as compared to the H7s they replace. In theory, I should not have to touch the alignment adjusters, but we all know the difference between theory and practice, right?
Anyway... It's a great system, super-fast to install. Stay tuned for performance reviews.
(EDIT: There are a few more photos in my gallery. Boris: if you want any help or photos when you write the instruction manual for this kit, lemme know.)
Last edited by The Rigger; 09-12-2009 at 07:23 PM.
Reason: Afterthoughts
Do we need to dis-asymble everything or can be plug and play..
Like I said up there ^ somewhere, if you can get your fingers behind the lamp housing well enough to deal with the lamp spring, you can probably do it in-place. Since my hands are proportionate to the rest of me, and I had to take the Fantastic Plastic off anyway, I just decided to make life easier on myself and put 'em in with the housings out of the car. I also tend to think that putting the hose clamps on and tightening them down will be a bit easier of you have the lamp housing out of the car, but there again, others may have better luck and smaller fingers than I.
Like I said up there ^ somewhere, if you can get your fingers behind the lamp housing well enough to deal with the lamp spring, you can probably do it in-place. Since my hands are proportionate to the rest of me, and I had to take the Fantastic Plastic off anyway, I just decided to make life easier on myself and put 'em in with the housings out of the car. I also tend to think that putting the hose clamps on and tightening them down will be a bit easier of you have the lamp housing out of the car, but there again, others may have better luck and smaller fingers than I.
I got already HID but the ballast are skinny and stick on the fire wall i like that idea thinking replacing mine...
I got already HID but the ballast are skinny and stick on the fire wall i like that idea thinking replacing mine...
If your present system works, I'd hold off. It's a lot of money to spend on a lark. (and considering how much money I've spent on my car, when I say that, it *means* something!)
However, if your system drops a ballast some day, I would *strongly* recommend the Smart Madness system as a replacement.
In the immortal words of Paul Harvey: "And now... The rest of the story."
First things first: These suckers blow out a *TON* of light, as you would expect. They strike immediately upon switching on the lighting circuit, and take about two to five seconds to stabilize at full intensity, just like any other discharge lamp you care to name. I opted for the 4300°K system for maximum candlepower, and boy-howdy is it *MAXIMUM*!!
The pattern has the same cuts as with an incandescent lamp loaded into the projector, which leads me to believe that the manufacturer did a bit of homework regarding specific placement of the arc in relation to the mounting base; I only had to give the passenger side headlamp adjuster a half-crank down to bring the lighting in line with proper alignment. Left-to-right alignment is spot-on.
The kit replaced a pair of SilverStar Ultras, which are quite powerful in and of themselves, but compared to the HIDs in the dipped-beam projectors, the SilverStars are like a fart in a hurricane. I kept the SilverStars in my main-beams though, and when I popped them on for giggles, they blended into the HID pattern nicely. I could see the halogen lighting outside the arc-light pattern, wiht no clear line of demarcation. Very nice, very smooth, with no noticable transitions anywhere to distract or irritate the driver's eyes.
I can detect no RF or electrical interference from the energized ballasts in any of my electrical accessories. Not even a strike-up spike. Electrically, it's a very clean system, no doubt owing to the short wiring runs and heavy-gauge primary wires.
The only issue I have is a "shadow" or darker spot in the projected light, toward the lower left corner of the beam pattern. It resembles an enlongated oval, running in the direction of travel of the car. I suspect it's the shadow of the anode (or is it the cathode?) support rod inside the arc lamp. The one in the passenger-side beam is washed out by the driver's-side light, however the dark spot on the driver's side is pretty noticable; as you look out front from the driving seat, you see a dark streak about 15-20' long, appearing to extend straight out from the left front tire. I double-checked the seating of the lamps today, and they're both properly oriented and securely fastened into the lamp base in the projector... I spoke to Tim at Smart Madness about it this morning, and we'll see what the R&D team at the manufacturer comes up with.
All in all, even with the dark spots (which I'm not suffering much angst over, as this is for all intents and purposes still a "prototype" system - I think I have one of the first of these systems out of the first batch released for sale), I'm pretty thoroughly pleased with the system, and I have no doubt Boris & Co. will come up with a solution to the dark spots.
Yes, you certainly can get HID systems cheaper, but to my mind the absolute ease of installation and overall high lighting quality of this system more than offsets the relatively high price. If you're thinking of adding arc-lights to your car, you should seriously consider the Smart Madness kit.
Last edited by The Rigger; 09-12-2009 at 07:26 PM.
Reason: typos
The only issue I have is a "shadow" or darker spot in the projected light, toward the lower left corner of the beam pattern.... I spoke to Tim at Smart Madness about it this morning, and we'll see what the R&D team at the manufacturer comes up with.
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