SharpHID

Just received by set of 55w H7 5000K lights plus a pair of BOW encoders.

Great quality electrical components (good weather seals on connections, nice gasket for headlight weather seal). Great responsiveness from John Sharp on confirming the accuracy of my order (2004 S60/V70 and XC70 vehicles require the 55w kit and the BOW encoders but do not require the battery harness).

Installation is almost identical to the listed 1998-2000 S/V/C70 procedures. The only difference is you really need to pull the airbox on the driver’s side. Pulling the headlights is not easier as it requires loosening the front bumper. Take your time, be patient and don’t apply to much force or you might break a vacuum hose or a connector.

The recommendation to lay out and test, install and test, tidy up and test is very well worth following. Total installation took approx. 1 hour, no problems, no error codes and the lights look great!

Another satisfied customer,

A. Cools, Maplewood, NJ

I’m new here and this is my first post.  For my 05 Volvo V-70, John says I would get the 55 watt HID system with the BOW harness and all should be well with the install and the lights. The first question regards the install.  Changing headlite lamps in this car has meant engine compartment surgery – on the left yanking out the air cleaner and its related hoses or, on the right, the washer bottle parts, wires, etc.  John thought there was a way to pop the headlight assembly out of the front to make lamp changing easier and avoid all the surgery.  Is there a way to do that?

Second question: The Day Running Lites are the low beams that come on with the ignition. Starting the engine flashes the lites off then back on again after the start. Will that constant flashing damage or shorten the life of the HID lamps?  Thanks for whatever help.

Bill

I had to wait a little londer than I expected but I just installed the kit today in about 30 minutes flat minus the time it took to drill the two holes.

The kit went in pretty easy but there’s not a lot of space to work with.  I would advise taking a few minutes to stare at the engine compartment and figure out where you are going mount everything to keep it out the way.

I got the 55W kit 10,000K bulbs and the Bulb Out Harness.  I was worried the 55W would be too bright but it’s not on the 05 and up S40’s because of the projector lenses.  I have no warnings or messages which is good.  The 10,000K might be a little too blue for me.  I just wanted a hint.  I’ll take some pics and put them up later.

Purchased 2 – H11 55w kits.  Subsequently was advised to purchase the bulb warning harness as well.  Upon installation, it appears that the kit wiring is reversed fom my OEM harness (black vs. red).  Upon trying the installed lights – nothing, BUT if I reverse the harness connection enough to make contact and match the black / red pathways, the light will come on for approximately 10 seconds and immediately go out….any support is appreciated.

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.

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:

We have been testing the Bulb Out Warning Cancelers in two S40s and we are waiting on feedback from some others.  So far the new harness has worked at solving an issue with one car but has not solved it with another.  We are hopeful the the results from the other S40s are more what we are looking for.  This may be a fix to solve more than the majority of S40s/V50s/S60s/V70s but I will continue to keep you all posted here on the blog!

Thanks,

John

Hey alll,

I installed a set of 5000K HIDs in a 2004 Volvo V40 not so long ago. The car has very little space under the hood so the customer decided to go with the DDM kit. The kit installed seamlessly and without issue. We had a little trouble mounting the DDM ballasts as there really wasn’t a space flat enough for the double sided tape to adhere to. We ended up using some zip ties in addition to the tape as there was no doubt the tape wasn’t going to hold. In any case it was a good job we had the DDM ballasts as they were able to be mounted in a much tighter space than a regular Apexcone ballast would. This customer had the OEM jewel headlights in his car. They look fantastic!

So recently it has become more apparent that the Volvo S60 and V70 have been having similar problems to the S40 and V50.  It does appear, however, that the S60/V70 are less picky than the S40 as I have experienced far fewer problems with them.  I have had more S60s for instance work with the 50w kit right out of the box without the need for any harness.  I have seen more S60s and V70s work with HIDs just by installing the battery harness and capacitor harness.

One issue that has come up in the S60/V70 more than in the S40/V50 is that the kit will work just fine but the car will display a bulb out warning.  This has occurred after installing a 35w kit with both the battery harness and capacitor harness.  So far I have found no solution to this other than getting the dealer to flash the car for HIDs.  I have not yet had a chance to test whether this is solved using a 50w kit.

Again as with the S40/V50 there is no pattern as to which particular car will work with a particular setup.  I will post here as I find out more and as we develop solutions.