SharpHID

Hey John,

Hope your holiday was good. I am running into a problem on the install of my 99 a6 fog lights. I have been using the blog on the audis and I have noticed that my car only has one “power” prong for the stock fog lights. When i removed the stock bulb it was just powered by one prong ,not 2.  There is another wire that comes from the same area as the one prong, but it seems like it is just attatched to a metal part on the foglight housing, is this just a ground wire? Im not quite sure how to go about this now, as the larger of the 2 prongs on your HID kit fits perfectly into that one power prong, now what to do with the second one?? I have an H3 kit which was what the osram sylvania guide on your suite told me to use , and i have bought replacement fogs before so  i know its the h3, just not to sure how to go about this. The metal around the fog housing also says h3. The bulbs that have been in there are the smaller h3, i believe they are h3c’s.. would this be a problem?  All the places i talk to say its just a h3… Any help would be appreciated.. Thanks again

Chris Sullivan

First off, that was some of the most impressive shipping I have ever taken part in. Including the day I ordered, it took 3 business days. Ordered around 8 am local time, got it 3 business days (ordered Friday) later at 2:30pm. Very nice. Second, packaging, very nice, tidy and everything arrived in perfect cosmetic, and working, condition.

Install gave me a couple snags, so I’ll let others know who are planning this install. The only real issue I had was with the clips that hold in the bulb, the normal hologens use a thin metal base, these use a thicker plastic base which gave me some problems getting them hooked into the housing. The fix for the lower spring is simple, theres a groove around the inner base, slip it into there, hooks in fine. The upper part, however, has no groove, the second wire goes in there, so my fix was simply to take my dremel and slightly sand some of it down, voila spring works as it should. The base is round with one section sticking out by itself thats square, this goes facing up, towards you or the hood, don’t force the spring if the light isn’t aligned properly.

Check and double check those lights work BEFORE you wrap up. Hook everything up, leaving the protector on the bulb, and test the lights. Test again with the bulbs mounted before you finalize mounting the ignitor and ballast. Then check again =). I had no issues as I did this because I didn’t want to do it twice. Quick check and re alignment with the bubble and I was ready to roll out. Took about 1.5 hours in the dark driveway with a flashlight lol. Intelligent people working in proper lighting or daytime should manage it in about 45 minutes to an hour for your first time.

One headlight worked fine on the first wiring I did, the other didn’t turn on until I switched the wires around from the stock harness, it shouldn’t make a difference, but it did for my car. Good luck and enjoy being able to see EVERYTHING out there. These eat my silverstars for breakfast.

Probably nothing new in this posting, but hopefully a fellow s70 owner will have less issues then I did with a little prep work pointed out here.

1998 Volvo S70 T5 with the 35W 6000K kit. Slight tint of blue, nothing noticable.

Oh, I suppose I could include some pics, no before, but at least gives you an idea of what they look like, if anyone is interested lemme know.

When I first got in the business of selling HIDs I linked with a supplier offering two types of HID kits - the Apexcone large ballast kit and the DDM Ultra Slim ballast kit. Technology has progressed somewhat since I started and the products SharpHID offers have become better.

The Apexcone HID line used to use analog large style ballasts that were far heavier and thicker than the DDM Ultra Slim ballasts. The DDM ballasts have always been a thin digital ballast that has an external bulb igniter. The advantage of digital technology is that it offers a constant flow of power to the bulbs. The Apexcone output would vary slightly from ballast to ballast.

Recently Apexcone the company, who started the DDM product line, have switched to using all DDM digital slim ballasts for all the HID kits. This has allowed us to keep our prices the same even though shipping costs from Apexcone and from the manufacturer over seas have gone up a great deal.

So in summary there is no longer an Apexcone vs. DDM HID kit. They are now both the same. You may see some places offering the Apexcone kits with the battery and bulb out warning harnesses included. SharpHID offers these also but as additional items. Not all cars require them and having the two brands has brought up some confusion among customers. SharpHID has seen no reason to offer the kits this way.

I hope that this helps to answer some questions and reduce some confusion. As always SharpHID loves to hear from customers with questions, concerns, or simply feedback on the products.

Regards,

John Sharp
Owner

I recently purchased a 2002 Audi Allroad and it had stock reflector fogs. I had upgraded the fogs in my Volvo and loved the difference they made. The bulb type is an H7 which made the upgrade that much simpler. A full installation guide will be posted this weekend but I thought I would post up the initial results here.

I decided on the 55w kit as I wanted the fogs to be bright. There is some risk as the 55w kit gets very bright. The fogs on the Audi are of a reasonable size and being that they are H7 means they have a lot of space behind the bulb inside the fog light cap. So far I have not seen any issues with anything overheating. I do try not to let the car sit with them on for long periods of time to prevent any excessive heat. For most fog applications I would recommend the 35w upgrade.

I am completely stunned by the output of these 55w HIDs. I went with the 5000K bulbs which produces a pure white light. They complement the OEM HID low beams fairly well though I think 4300K would have matched better. They are incredibly bright and really fill in the darkness to the side of the car and directly in front. I have yet to use them in inclement weather but I have no doubt they will do the job.

Here are some pictures of the results:

Update: installation guide now available here.

I purchased the BOW for my 04 Volvo XC90.  After I installed the BOW the flickering seems to stop but the Bulb Out Warning is still there.  Does anyone have any success with the Volvo XC90? 

We have had success with the new Volvo C30 and our bulb out warning (BOW) harness.  Pictures will be posted up shortly.

We have been experiencing great success with our new Bulb Out Warning Decoders (BOW Harness).  Out of 12 various new Volvos we have had 10 of them work flawlessly with the addition of this new harness.  Most vehicles required both the battery wiring harness and the new BOW harness and a few have been working with just the BOW harness.  We are still receiving feedback and I will keep you all up-to-date here on the blog.  We are unsure as to why there are a few cars that are just not working with this new fix but it is definitely an improvement over the previous edition.

We continue to find on the new Volvos that turning off the Daytime Running Lights (DRLs) has no effect on fixing any of the issues.

We have also had huge success in Mercedes and BMWs with the BOW harness.  To-date we have had zero issues with either make of car when they use this harness.

The new decoders:

Happy New Year from SharpHID!

With the new year we expect the new! We will soon be offering our slim ballast DDM kit in 55w versions. We are also continuing to work on and test fixes for the trouble cars such as the Volvo S40/60 and V50/70 and the new Volvo C30! As always we will keep you updated right here on the SharpHID blog.

Please feel free to email us with any questions. We are happy to help the best we can.

Sincerely,

John Sharp

This can either be a faulty ballast (though uncommon) or that the car needs a wiring harness. There are slight variations between ballasts that can cause one to not start up properly when drawing from the OEM headlight wiring. A wiring harness solves this by providing clean constant power directly from the battery. Switching the ballast around, though a good place to start diagnostics, may or may not help diagnose the problem in this case. Second thing to try would be a wiring harness. If that fails to solve the problem then a replacement ballast is possibly required.

This is most common on newer cars. The lights are monitored by the on board computer system and because HIDs use a lot less power than OEM halogen bulbs the computer detects this as a bulb failure and cuts the power to them. You may also be getting a bulb out warning on your dash due to this problem. A possible fix is to either upgrade to a 50w kit or use a wiring harness with either the 35w or 50w kit that allows the kit to draw power directly from the battery but is still controlled by the headlight switch in the car. Your car may also require a capacitor harness in addition to the battery harness. Please note that even with upgrades to the 50w kit I have still seen this issue occur on newer cars. Every single car reacts differently and as of yet there is no pattern as to what works for what car. The harnesses are a place to start with solving these issues.