NAV came over to my place to get some HID bulbs installed into his X-Type. Over the course of a few hours, we got both his heads (low beams) and fogs done. Things went pretty easy. If you look in my gallery, there is a quazi how to on this. Should have taken more pictures, but once we got rolling, the camera took a seat in my car (literally).


Nav standing with both of our cars.


Nav's car awaiting the transplant. Removing the bumper cover is pretty easy. The hardest part of this removal is locating the two 10mm bolts located on the backside of the bumper cover


The HIDs for the headlights went in really easy. Drilled a hole in the back cover, tucked all the wires inside, mounted the ballasts under the headlight assembly. Had more problems getting the LED running lights working than this install and that was plug and play.


In the middle of modifying the fog light bulb bases. The guts of the H11 bulbs has to be removed so you can drill a big enough hole to slide the plugs through for the HID bulb. After that, fill the gaps with caulking and all is good. Of note though, with the H11 bulb bases, you have to trim the HID bulb base to expose the 3 retaining tabs. Not a hard job if you have a dremel tool at your disposal.


Street level view of what NAV's car looks like now. 5000K bulbs all the way around. THe running lights were upgraded to LED bulbs (7000K).


NAV and my cars side by side, HIDs going full blast, LEDs doing the smaller lights. Of note, Nav is running 5000K bulbs, I am running 6000K bulbs. Ironically, mine looked a bit more yellow than his and his almost had a purple hue to them. Maybe one NAV's bulbs run for a bit they will whiten up some.

 

Looking good. You're going to make me want to spend money.

 

Great job and nice pic's of both of the x's, wish you guys were a little bit closer to Ny we could have installed mine too haha. I just got my 5000k kits for the low's and fog's and its a good thing NAV got them in 5000k and I got to see a pic to how they are going to look because I dont know anyone else on here who has 5000ks, but hopefully me and a friend are going to do the install on Thursday since Ny is getting pounded with rain (unfortunately my luck) maybe NAV can post up some more pics including some night pics if possible. Now you guys have me wanting to install mine now lol

 

Nice upgrade and neat job

 

Ruddigger, like I mention, the heads are really easy. So, what I would tell you to do is to first start out on the fogs. The hard part with those is getting the HID bulb base to fit over the current H11 base. I used 3 tools to make this happen. I used a drill with a variable size bit (1/8 to 3/4"), a drill with a 1/2" file bit, and a dremel tool with a sanding barrel. I started out drilling a 1/2" hole in the back of the H11 base after removing just the glass bulb. I then used the variable bit to drill out the area where the bulb set to get everything level with the tabs that retain the base into the housing. At this point I switched over to the 1/2" file bit in the drill. I filed out the internals of the bulb base to expand the hole to allow the large plug from the HID bulb to fit through. I found that I could not file any bigger than what the metal ring was, so, I ended up taking off about half of the retaining tab on the plug to make it fit. Once you can get the bigger plug to fit through, the smaller plug will fit through no problem. From there, you will need to use some RTV or caulk to seal the HID bulb to the base. If in doubt, use more RTV/caulk. Make sure to apply some under the lip of the HID bulb so it gets a good seal right at the metal ring. I also squirted some where the factory plug went just to make sure all was sealed up good. You will then need to let this sit for a bit to allow the RTV/caulk to set up. This will give you enough time to do the headlights. Of note, the hole in the back of the headlight housing is a 9/16" hole. Once the RTV/caulk is setup, you will need the dremel tool to cut back some of the plastic from the HID bulb to make it match up to the 3 retaining tabs on the H11 bulb base. You can save yourself some time by lining up the flat side of the HID bulb base with the edges of the small and medium size tabs. That way you should only need to use the dremel in 2 spots vice 3.

If you need more clarification, let me know. I will explain things until you get what I am talking about.

 

Chris,

You are an absolute legend my man. Thanks so much for taking the hours out of your day to help with this. I love my lights. They are bright and clean and no issues well passed the 1 hour mark!

Well sorry folks, i had said i would try to capture this on video but I failed. However, since Chris is a freakin genius at this stuff (he had to modify the fogs on the fly!) im sure his clarification would be worth more than a video anyways.
However, i will take some video of the HID's lighting up at night.

Just to reiterate what Thermo said about the fogs, you need to make some modifications to the actual HID bulb base to get it to pass through the fog light housing on the back of the bumper. A dremel is the easiest way to make this happen as you need to cut out 3 notches.

Chris, thanks again. Good to have a moderator that has got skills as a mechanic!
Cheers.

Nav.

 

Looks good. 5000k is very clean.

 

I'll take a stab at why his 5000k appeared a bit more 'purple' than your 6000k. If you remember from my HID poll in the Exterior Section, the HID projectors have that cutoff for all typical purposes, midway across the projector. 5000k is very close to daylight, in fact, closest to pure white you can get, and as the pure white light is passed across the cutoff, the light bends and creates the various color casting...purple being the most prominent to the eye. 6000k is a tad blue already, so as it bends, you don't get as much color variation, only more blue (not sure about the yellow, perhaps just in comparison to NAVs only).

Our OSRAM bulbs in the factory HIDs are rated at what, 4700K, I bet NAVs HIDS look very much like the OEM color and pattern.

Great project guys, thanks for the writeup!

 

I'll take another stab. Assuming everything else is the same (bulb and ballast), the kelvin rating fades after time, not by a lot, but the variance can be up to 500k.

 

H20Boy, depending on the year, it appears that our cars came either either the 4300K or 6000K bulbs from the factory. Because mine is one of the early year cars, mine more than likely came with 4300K. But, I would venture to guess that over time, someone upgraded the bulbs to 6000Ks based on the fact that I know the fog lights are 6000K bulbs and the heads and fogs match up almost exactly. Who knows. Just one of those interesting things we noted.

 

As requested here is a video showing the HID kits that were installed lighting up at night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z6zNej4q8w
The colour variation is pretty bizarre, i assure you that is exactly what the camera picked up.

I have another of me driving around which is unfortunately not very impressive because the roads were wet and the video camera does not do it much justice but let me know if you want to see it either way.

 

This is great! When I installed my HIDs it was a PITA without taking off the front bumper.... great to know we have a great DMV community in the making! Representing ALEXANDRIA! KINGSTOWNE AREA!!!

 

Nav, thanks for posting that up it's much appreciated! Your lights look great I just wanted to see how they are going to look since I got the
same kit and they look really clean. Thanks again

 

gupdah, if you ever need any help, drive the hour south, I will make sure you are taken care of. Not much on these cars I am not willing to tear apart. Who knows, maybe Nav would be interested in helping out too. Who knows.

 

lol, who knows! but im probably coming back to you for DVD/Nav system, exhaust and lowering spring installs hahah



DMV Whut!!

 

Nav, I think DMV community is standing for Delaware/Maryland/Virginia community. But, that is just a guess.

 

Haha, Thermo i know, its DC/MD/VA
It was a statement not a question! nevermind....

 

Hey Thermo, Seems like you have a good handle on how to install HID kits. I have a few questions to clear up some things on my own install I'm about to attempt.

1.) For low beam, I see you need to splice into the yellow and brown wire. Which is positive and which is negative

2.) For High beam, again I see two wires in the housing, but don't know which is positive and negative.

3.) Is the foglight H1's as well, they just have a H11 housing? Which bulbs did you use and where did you buy them?

Thanks so much, I'll be sure to take pictures on this install.

 

Awesome job! HID's are one of the most inexpensive and best upgrades for our X-Type's!

 

Maxazor, here are your answers:

1) the yellow wire is positive and the brown wire is negative

2) the JTIS doesn't show the wire colors inside of the headlight housing, but if I remember right, the high beam has a colored wire and a brown wire. The colored wire will be positive, the brown wire will be negative. Worst case, have a multimeter handy and connect it up across the two wires. If the multimeter gives a positive indication (ie, positive voltage), then the wire attached to the red lead is your positive wire. If the indication is a negative voltage, then the wire attached to the black lead is the positive wire.

3) when looking at HID bulbs, the H11 and H1 bulbs are the same bulbs. This is where things get tricky. You have to modify the bulb base to allow the HID bulb to fit into it. You have to cement the HID bulb to the modified standard bulb base. As for the brand name used, I don't recall the name of the one's NAV had. I bought some, but the picture I have of the box doesn't specify a name. The only writing on the box simply says "HID". For the most part, all the bulbs are made by the same company, the only difference is the maker of the ballasts. Both NAV and me bought our HIDs through E-bay.

If you live in the VA/MD/DE area, let me know. I'm sure we can figure out something to get together and give you a bit of help with the project. Once you know what you are doing, the process goes pretty quick. The long part of doing the foglights is that you should wait on the RTV/caulking to dry before installing the bulbs into the housing.