Canadian '11 Edge Sport HID Install with DRL Success Story

[saynt]

Hi,

 

So last spring I decided I wanted to get HIDs installed on my Edge Sport. After driving for a winter and seeing how bad the stock lights are, it wasn't much of a choice. My purpose for this wasn't for the "look", although that's just a by product, but for practicality.

 

So last spring I purchased my first HID kit for the edge. I had limited knowledge of how HID kits got setup but after a little bit of research I found which type of bulbs I needed. Since this was my first time installing HIDs I decided to buy a kit locally. At the time I didn't know the difference between 35 and 55 watt kits etc so was leaning on the retailer a bit for some help. The kit that was ordered in for me was 4300k bulbs with 35w ballasts. Getting some help from the installer I seen how easy it was to swap out. Turning the lights on they fired up and left for the drive home all happy. I stopped through a service station to fill up and when I started up the vehicle again, I noticed off the reflection that the lights didn't light up. Even by turning on the switch. Unsure if something was wrong I began the troubleshooting when I got home.

 

The next day of testing and contacting the retailer, it was suggested I needed a relay. Hearing the price they wanted to charge me for the simple relay, I was unsatisfied and began doing more research myself. Finding this forum and some help from some other board members I decided to go with a different HID kit. Seeing how affordable the DDM kits were, it was worth a try.

 

I got my new DDM kit in (55w with 5000k bulbs) mid summer and began swapping out the other install. This kit acted quite a bit different than the 35w kit I had previously installed. One major difference and improvement is that the lights would shine when the switch was put to the on position even on a sunny day. With the 35w kit, if the vehicle was in the sun, the lights would not turn on at all. I decided at that point to order the DDM wiring harness and see if that fixed my problems current issues (along with some 4500k bulbs). That however introduced other issues as it would continue to blow my factory 10A fuse for the low beams. Contacting some board members they had upped their fuse to a 15A fuse that fixed their issue. Happy that I had sort of working headlights again I pulled the wiring harness out ( I wasn't comfortable adding 50% allowable current through the factory wiring) I left them as is until this past month.

 

Over the winter I toughed out these main problems :

1. Lights would only turn on if the vehicle was in park

2. Flickering/flashing head lights at dusk or dawn or low light levels when the vehicle would normally auto turn on the lights

3. Auto lights would not work, would not turn on headlights unless in complete dark (night or garage)

4. No Day time running lights

I decided this spring that I wanted to get these problems fixed. The straw the broke the camels back per say was one night after working late I was about to head home. It was the coldest night of the winter, around -27 degrees Celsius, and my lights wouldn't stay on. Pulling over I turned on the lights once the vehicle was in park, they would come on for about 10 seconds, flash and then go out. At that point I knew I had to get these problems resolved. Back to researching...

 

My first step I wanted to give the DDM wiring harness another try. I picked up some more fuses including 15A that was recommended. The Odd thing is, hooking up the wiring harness again didn't blow the 10A fuses. Sadly however it didn't help with any of the problems listed above. Doing more research at other forums, there were some members talking about the quality of wiring harnesses range a fair bit. That the cheaper kits require more power for the switching module to initiate the draw from the battery. At that point I contacted DDM support, their stance was the wiring harness is working as designed and the ballasts have an auto turn off that if they are getting alternating power that they just turn off.

 

After hearing a lot of comments about the quality of DDM and seeing first hand not being able to handle a colder night I decided to order yet another kit. This time I went with the retro fit kit. I also got the wiring harness with it after reading how much better this harness is.

 

When this kit arrived, I can speak to it's quality. The wiring is heavy duty and is double housed on some wires. Very impressive. I went with a 50w kit and 4300k bulbs. After pulling all of the DDM components out of my edge and installing the retro fit I had 2/4 problems solved.

 

FYI : When installing the retro fit kit, I also decided to go with the 4500k bulbs, the most "white" color out of the bulbs I have.

So there was two problems still remaining. Flashing and very loud hissing from the ballasts when the DRLs should be on, and no DRLs. The auto lights do work however and with this kit, I was able to turn on my lights while the vehicle is in drive (yay!).

 

It was a honda forum that I found the key to fixing the last couple issues. The canadian edge DRL's is not using a lower power current, instead it's alternating on and off. Which causes the flashing of course...

 

Thanks to some board members on here, a link was posted to http://www.hidextra.com/capacitor/ . For those of you that don't know, a capacitor smooths out an electrical current. This site sells a short cable with a large capacitor built in (save you the wiring) for a pretty low price. Adding this to my setup fixed the remainder 2 problems!!.

 

This capacitor cable is currently connected between the bulb and the wiring harness.

Factor cable -> HID bulb -> Capacitor -> Wiring harness Switch Module

I've been running this setup a week now and everything has been working flawlessly. I have DRLs, auto lights work, the light switch while driving turns on lights etc etc.

 

I hope this helps other canadians as it was a fair bit of trial and error (and money) to get this figured out. Hope it saves you a buck...

 

If you have any questions, shoot me a msg.

[WWWPerfA_ZN0W]

Thanks for logging your success story, hopefully more of our Canadian brethren can now go HID! Goes to show the value of a good capacitor here.

[cwatkins]

saynt, are you saying even with the retrofit source wiring harness, you STILL needed a capacitor for DRL mode? Otherwise the DRL's would cause the relay's to go cycle on and off?

[omar302]

I remember reading that a dealer can change your DRL's to the turn signals instead of low beam, this would simplify your HID setup.

[Haz]

http://www.fordedgeforum.com/topic/8962-drls-on-mkx-with-hid-headlights-an-fyi/

 

Good luck!

[PrinzII]

Saynt: You did exactly what I did when my non-Canadian 2011 had DRLs. I had to order a warning canceller and a capacitor. After that, they have worked ever since.