HID Flicker
 

Didn't see any threads related to this. And il start by saying I'm obviously not a pro when it comes to HID's.

Bought the Diode Dynamics 6000k kit without relay for my stock headlights. They worked great, no issues. Lady backed into me cracking my headlights so I switched to Winjets in the repair process and ended up buying a set of H7 5000K bulbs. Put them In my headlights, let the body shop mount the headlights and plug them back into my DD ballast. Now I have a slight flicker with these. Not like on and off or change of color, looks like the lights twitching. More frequent on the driver side and occasionally does it on the passenger side.

Is it just low quality bulbs? Or is it something dumb that I'm missing?

Try rotating the hid.

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I will do that real quick to make sure no wires are bent weird but it's going to have to mount the same way because of the tab on the metal base.

Oh. Happened to me but my friend just rotated the hid till it stopped flickering.

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Moved wires around and made sure nothing had tension on it, used a damp paper towel on the spade connectors and blew dust out of connectors I couldn't reach into. Been watching them for a few minutes and no flicker. So hopefully it was just dusty/dirty connectors from being left exposed at the body shop while they fixed my bumper.

:thumbup: glad you fixed it!!

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Haha, Nevermind it started again, less frequent though.

Ah shiet. just try to rotate it and lock it in. See if that works!

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It sounds like a bad connection. You should check and make sure your pins aren't bent from the accident... and that your body shop didn't bend any pins when they installed them for you.

Another thing you can do is check the voltage in the lines BEFORE the ballast. It should be like 12 Volts or something. Don't check it after the ballast because it's 20,000+ Volts to ignite and 85 volts to keep going.

Are your 5k bulbs also from Diode Dynamics? They could be faulty...

Ballast is from Diode Dynamics. Bulbs are HIDExtra. All of the connections are tight. I bent the sockets in so the spade connections from the bulb fit tighter. All of the connections seem solid. I don't have anything to test power going into the ballast. But with my Diode Dynamics 6000k H11 bulbs working fine I'm thinking it's just the cheap bulb kit I bought.

Last night after I cleaned the connections I was just getting a tiny flicker every few minutes. Without changing anything it was doing it non stop this morning

HID bulbs shouldn't matter what orientation they're in. If rotating them fixes it, they're shit bulbs...


Relay kit is always highly recommended with HID's because of the power they need on startup. Once warmed up, you shouldn't have issues unless something is fubar.

I just googled searched "HIDEXTRA REVIEWS"... so far I'm reading their bulbs are not high quality. I would suggest sticking with Diode Dynamics. (I am not affiliated with Diode Dynamics BTW.)

Im going to buy new bulbs, I was looking last night and seeing a lot of people have issues with them.


Il order the relay kit with new bulbs.

Thank you both for the suggestions.

Just picked up a warning cancellor. Hopefully these solve the problem.

The set of warning cancellers fixed it. Flicker for about 10-15 second after they turn on, then they're completely fine after that. Before I could see them flicker while driving.

Shouldn't flicker at all...

sounds like a shady ground issue, and lack of a relay... i grounded both ballasts to frame when i ran my first set of cheapie hid extras on another vehicle... problem solved..
hid extra = low quality kit IMO..

there should be no initial flicker when you turn em on, only warm up.. flicker = bad, bulbs not warming up evenly and gently = reduced lifespan

I'm not using their full kit, just the bulbs. And I'm ordering the relays to see if I can run them without the warning cancellers.