Kristin Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Okay, so... here's the story. I'll try to be as quick about this as possible. I got H.I.D headlight bulbs to fit into my stock casings. They were working perfectly for months.. no issues. All of a sudden, one day, I hit a pothole and the passenger side flickers then proceeds to go out and stop all function. So, I take it out, try to put the stock bulb back in, doesn't work. I tested the H.I.D.'s and they work perfectly... wired them back up, turned the lights on and they both lit up. YAY.. right? WRONG. After about ten seconds, they shut off.. now neither of them work. Now, by this point, I'm getting impatient. I look at all of the fuses, none of them are blown.. I replace EVERY one of them, just in case I missed something. Doesn't help.. something is preventing the headlights from getting power. I was told it might be a transformer, but as far as I know, everything is fine. None of the wiring is wrong.. I've double checked everything. As far as it goes, I have no headlights now. Something in the wiring has GOT to be messed up.. the whole entire cars wiring is f**cked. I'm pretty stumped about the whole situation.. if any of you have any idea as to what could be wrong.. please let me know. P.S. Another thing, according to one of my friends, who's pretty much a know-it-all when it comes to Honda's... has told me I've had a conversion done to my headlights... according to him, when the switch is turned on at the first notch, only the corner lights are supposed to come on. Mine, don't do that. My fog lights turn on as well... I'm pretty much wanting to turn my car in for scrap metal at this point... I think it could possibly be the switch itself, since the wiring has been messed with.. or... I don't know. Sorry for such a long post, I'm just completely stumped. Any help is greatly appreciated. - Me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wannaBstuntin Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 I posted on another forum for lighting mods. I'll get back to you Kristin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 15, 2008 Author Share Posted May 15, 2008 You're a doll Ryan. I love you long time. =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Matteu Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Sounds like you jostled your lighting system too hard and damaged it, somehow. The reason the lights come on initially, is that the gas inside the bulb is at cool enough temperature to initiate the arc (yes, this is the same arc that Tony Stark refers to). As the gases heat up, the molecules' minimum excitation energy exceeds the output of the ballast and the arc is lost. The ballast continues to pump electrons into the arc bulb, but no light. When the gases cool off, the arc is reinitiated. This is one way HID lights can appear to cycle, or appear to be fine, then shut off inexplicably. More complex HID systems will not return voltage to the bulb once the arc is lost, and only by shutting the car off can one regain the arc in the faulty bulb. But what I described is a bulb problem, and likelyhood of both bulbs failing simultaneously is very low, unless by pothole you really meant you were Rallycrossing your Honda. I chose not to go into the mathematics behind that probability. Just thought I would sprinkle some Chemistry on this thread, but initially, it appeared you damaged a bulb, but then for both to fail is just strange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 15, 2008 Author Share Posted May 15, 2008 Both bulbs are working though. I wired them to my battery to test them to make sure it wasn't a bulb problem. It wasn't. It has to be a wiring issue. Thank you for the input though, I learned something new today, so I can't complain. I'm thinking that wires might have touched, something. Something has got to be blown to prevent power from getting from the battery, to switch, to bulb. Something is disconnected, melted, blown, etc. I just have to find it. It's such a compact area, that it's hard to find things. I'm working on it, slowly but surely.. just until then my car has given me a curfew. In before dark, or it's lights out until sunrise. Sucks. I'm waiting for a friend of mine to get off of work to see if he'll look at it. I'm stumped and frustrated. >_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kastigir Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Do these bulbs use a ballast? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubbith Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 If the bulbs work, and the fuses/relays work, sounds like your going to have the pain in the ass task of making sure all the wires are good. Hope you have some extra time on your hands. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Matteu Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Both bulbs are working though. I wired them to my battery to test them to make sure it wasn't a bulb problem. It wasn't. It has to be a wiring issue. Whoah there, that isn't a bulb test for this type of bulb. That is a bulb test for an incandescent bulb, which essentially functions as a resistor, i.e. once the filament is broken, it's done (granted, I've giggled a few bulbs to get the broken filament to bridge the broken connection for a few moments of light and amusement). The arc light comes from excited gas molecules being forced into a sigma-star excited state and "falling" back down to their standard sigma conformation, emitting photons in the process. If you shove enough current through a bad arc bulb, it will arc. The real question is, does your transformer put out enough current to do the same. It sounds like the answer MAY be no, but until you test the transformer (ballast), you cannot be for sure. They use the same type of arc bulb for laboratory detection equipement, I found it is hard to tell if a bulb is bad by a visual inspection. As far as your parking lights not illuminating when the proper lighting selection is made, well, given the addition of fog lights, I would check all connections that were made to allow the fog lights to function. It almost sounds like someone jumped the parking light circuit at the wrong place, drawing too much current from the parking light relay or from the bulbs themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 15, 2008 Author Share Posted May 15, 2008 Hm. I'll check it out. Thank you, I really appreciate your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 15, 2008 Author Share Posted May 15, 2008 Wait, one more question... it doesn't even power a regular bulb either though. I tried putting the stock bulbs back into the car, not the originals, new ones I bought, still nonetheless stock. It still won't even turn those on. That's whats so confusing. I would understand if it was just the HID's needing too much power... but they worked previously for months. I suppose the transister could have gone bad or something during that time, but it just doesn't make sense. Now they won't work at all, no matter which lighting system I have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wannaBstuntin Posted May 15, 2008 Share Posted May 15, 2008 Kristin, this is the response I got... similar situation happened to me except when my hids went, it completely f'ed up my entire headlight circuit. i think theres a short somewhere in the line before the headlight because it seems like the headlight housing is getting no power whatsoever. i'd follow the wires leading from the headlight housing to everywhere in the car...may require taken off the stock factory wire loom. sounds like everyone thinks its a wiring issue. Which it probably is, considering the 85476497 owners before you have messed around with the car so much. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 16, 2008 Author Share Posted May 16, 2008 That does! Thanks Ryan! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TS John Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Damn this makes me hate wiring and I haven't had to deal with anything like this since last summer... Good luck with this. Thank god for James Matteu... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Matteu Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Wait, one more question... it doesn't even power a regular bulb either though. The beauty of a HID is that the ballast provides enough power to ignite the arc, then the current drops to a level that is lower than the power requirements of an incandescent bulb. There may not be enough current to power the stock bulbs, are you removing the transformer when you switch bulbs? I hope you didn't fry your transformer. See the arc bulb has no solid physical connection between positive and negative, instead it uses a gaseous physical connection. Switching it on with the incandescent bulb could have sent more electrons down the positive terminal than the circuit is used to. Did you really mean to say transistor? or transformer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 17, 2008 Author Share Posted May 17, 2008 Transformer. By the way, thank you for your help. I found the issue with the lights.. and I feel like a complete idiot. I had about five blown fuses in my fuse box underneath my dash. I had looked at them and they didn't look blown.. I was a dumb dumb and didn't TEST them. I had forgotten about the fact that fuses can be blown without LOOKING blown. Ugh. Thank you, James, for all of your help. I've definitely learned something in case I ever actually DO have a wiring issue. I have never felt so stupid, yet thankful at the same time. I guess I was being super pessimistic in reference to my car, considering Sol's are known for bad wiring problems. I'm just thankful for the fact that it WASN'T what I thought it was. No matter how silly I was about the situation. I'm definitely happy that it was just a fuse blown and not some other issue. Thanks to everyone who responded to this post, I appreciate your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Matteu Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 I hope the fuses were blown by your problem and not by using the stock bulb with a transformer. Let us know if anything else comes up or the problem re-occurs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mpearce1974 Posted May 18, 2008 Share Posted May 18, 2008 Your aux. lights probably have the same mod as I did to mine. So you can turn on parking lights and have aux. also. Nice thing about doing that is aux. lights stay on when brights are used also. Just ablout every one who owns a Sol does this 2 min mod. It is done right behind aux switch on dash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristin Posted May 19, 2008 Author Share Posted May 19, 2008 I believe the fuses were blown just out of old age, actually. The wiring in my car is getting re-done as we speak. Everything will be to specs. I'm tired of having a crap mobile. Anyway, so far, no problems have come out of replacing the fuses. Thank god. The only thing I can't seem to figure out now is why my car is randomly blowing the ECU fuse...there's really no special situation that would make me think anything is going on with any particular part of my car, other than the ECU itself. Which, I have a Hondata, sitting aside, that I bought when I turboed my car. I have taken the turbo off and it's back to square one. Bone stock. It feels weird running 16's again.. ha. Anyway, I'm pretty frustrated with the ECU thing... it was happening when my car was turboed and it's still doing it randomly, now that it isn't. I first thought it could have been bad tuning.. obviously not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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