HIDs melted projector lamp housing, nearly toasted the car..

[infinitium]

I had a near-death experience last week, when acrid smoke started pouring out of my engine bay while I was cruising at night. Pulled over, rushed out, yanked open the hood, and discovered my left HID was literally burning through the lamp housing...





Turns out my mechanic who installed my aftermarket HIDs didn't screw in the HID bulb securely... it must've got loose, HID filament made direct contact w/the thin aluminium projector housing, and burnt a hole right through it.

At this point, i was thinking "there goes my brand new lamp housing", then my mechanic had a bright idea - to surgically remove the burnt projector lamp cup, and replace just that.



He managed to find a similar projector cup from an old Mazda lying around, ripped my lamp housing apart, sawed off the burnt OEM cup, and mated the new projector cup with the old one (!!). Then glued everything back together. In the pic above, you'll see the new-ish Mazda projector cup... held together by a metal brace to the OEM projector cup from our Insight (or what's left of it, heh)... and the projector lens on the right, with it's socket.

I didn't believe in miracles at first, but hey, it actually does work... my HID bulb sits firmly in place now, and my light quality's just as good as before

[infinitium]

.... and here's the quality of light from my HIDs, post-lamp assembly surgery...






ignore the color variation from the headlamps - shot this on a crummy cellphone camera, so the pic quality ain't that great. So far, no problems with my lights... guess I'll know if there's a problem if more smoke starts pouring out ...

[jedi tacos]

Holy Crap! That is crazy! Glad your car is fine and everything workd out. That could have ended much worse. It looks great now. In those pics, it looks like you have your front blinker lights glowing. Did you put LEDs in those? And if so were you able to use them as running lights? I would love to turn those bottom bumper lights into LED running lights and just have the mirror blinkers serve the purpose for lane changing.

[jedi tacos]

Also, is your mechanic Macgyver? Ha ha!

[infinitium]

lol... actually, he kinda is! (he managed to rip out a custom-installed H9 HID set from my previous car... and somehow made it fit a H11 projector lamp housing). this is also the same guy who installed my Hella SuperTone horn kit... and changed my grounding cables (if you're interested in reading about 'em, they're all scattered in this forum, in separate posts).

about those "blinkers"... no, they aren't from my side turn lights. they're from a DRL kit that I installed (Philips DRL-5). here are some pics... note that the DRLs are just "superglued" on using double-side adhesive tape... there's no need to drill holes etc on our plastic grills, to mount them. they magically fit in just nicely.

[jedi tacos]

Ah, ok. I think it was the fog lights that i was looking at, thinking they were the bottom turn signals. Those Philips DRL-5's look great! I've been looking at them, but i might have to pull the trigger soon after seeing this post! Nice insight!

[infinitium]

thanks dude. totally love the DRLs... absolutely NO regrets getting 'em, despite the high price point (it costs around $200, including installation work, where I am... Malaysia). they light up the road nicely, and certainly catch attention of oncoming cars without dazzling them like some other DRLs tend to do.

if you want 'em a little cheaper, you could try ordering them from UK online auto suppliers that specialize in bulbs (google Philips DRL-5 and you should find 'em... one of 'em is powerbulbs.com). the downside is you'd have to DIY install 'em yourself (which isn't too hard, given there's a step-by-step install guide that ships with the box)

[jedi tacos]

Awesome! Thanks so much. I love this forum, everyone is so helpful!

[infinitium]

g'luck w/the DRLs.... the Force is strong in this one

[runtohel121]

what wattage was that HID kit? HID is supposedly cooler than halogen, running at 35w instead of 55w. But then there are two types of HID wattage which one is 35w and another is 55w. But I'm glad the mechanic fixed it for you.