Steve 96C4S

All I can say is I'm grateful for the wonderful people that make up Rennlist. Joe from Alexandria basically did the entire install for me today and I'm so happy to have met him. He's a class act! After 2 trips to Home Depot to get better Velcro, electrical tape, and the female spade connectors, we were finally ready to go. Thank god Home Depot opened a store 4 minutes from my house - to think I cursed them when they first opened up...

Here's the pics! I'm not much of a photographer and didn't really know what to take a picture of, but here ya go for whatever it's worth. I felt silly taking pics of a light install, but if you find this useful, great. $270 (aftermarket) vs over $1000 for Porsche Litronics... I think my Rennlist membership is definitely a bargain for the info I get here.

Drilling that hole:

The hole:

Getting creative with the hole picture:

So that's what the car looks like without the front headlights... always wondered what that would look like. I didn't realize these lights were so massive till I had to hold one for a few minutes while Joe was threading through the wires

Joe - in the midst of figuring it all out...

Well I'll be damned, we got light, Houston (HID's and the Silverstar high beams)


more to follow in the next post...

Steve 96C4S

Part 2 - Close up of low beam and high beam on - the silverstar high beam lights are SO blue compared to the low beam HID lights...

Don't laugh, but ... 3.5 hours later we're basically done. Little bit of a learning curve here but all is well in HID land now:

We used velcro to hold the units against the metal interior.

Uh, got velcro? Yeah, about an extra 3 feet. The box I got had 4 ft of the stuff!

The silly, final picture. For some reason I thought I had to hunch down to be caught in the picture. <doh>


Thanks to Robin Sun's site and all the other generous people that posted step by step instructions on how to do this. Can't wait to drive the car at night. I just got back from Washington DC for my birthday dinner and it was furiously snowing outside. I didn't take the Porsche and was glad for it as the roads were awful! Glad I just got new all season Mich Pilot tires put on the bimmer 2 days ago as my old bald tires wouldn't have fared so well. When all the salt gets washed away from the roads after our first big rainstorm, I can't wait to take the car out at night for a long drive. It's going to be great to be able to see better in the evening.

Thanks again, Joe, and y'all have great weekend.

Steve R

Marc in AK

Looking good! AK

solsrch

Steve,
Thanks for the compliment! Great meeting you and your wife. Hope you have a great B-day. Next time, I have to make friends with the cats.
Folks, frankly, I got there and Steve had this fantastic lunch all set out. It was great. Of course, we've got folks here that could probably drop an engine in the length of time it took us to do this task, but it all seemed to work out well in the end. So for simple DIY folks, this counts as a total success.

Steve 96C4S

By the way, folks... I just read in the HID manual that you should wait 15 minutes after shutting off the HID lights at night before cleaning the headlights during one of those desperate late night cleaning jobs, as they get incredibly hot compared to the regular headlights. I wash my car very late at night sometimes in the dark after a long ride, so this was good information to remember!

Oh, and the cats look forward to meeting you again too, Joe.
Our Ocicat, Mocha says hello:


My wife really spoils these 3 cats... they each get a heating pad on her bed at night when she's watching TV! (Himalayan and Oriental Shorthair)

Mark in Baltimore

Looks good, guys!

STLPCA

Steve
I wouldn't worry about the "heat issue." I've cleaned my lenses many times within moments of turning off the HID lights or while they've been on. I've never noticed any greater heat than w/the oem H-1 bulbs. This may be a case of something lost in the translation to English. If true, driving in the rain at night would be a real problem, not to mention using the car's headlight washer.

Steve 96C4S

Thanks Dan for that clarification, and your logic makes sense. Speaking of translation issues, here's a funny word from the brochure:

"HID bulb will become hot when it starts to work. Maintenance should be performed after the bulb cools down (about 15 minutes after it is turned off). Otherwise, you may get burnted"

Burnted - that's a great word

continuing on... "Because the light source generates heat in use, please wash the car at least 15 minutes after the HID system is off. Or the headlamps may get damaged."

And, you could get burnted in the process.

Steve

Brett - 1996 C4

Cool, an Oriental. We have a blue, as well as a couple of Tonkinese. Unfortunately, all the Siamese in these makes for some very loud cats. Ocicats are great cats, though, too.

They don't seem to enjoy riding in my Porsche, since the only time they are in there is to go to the vet!

Well, I'm looking forward to doing a HID install sometime this year. The way the one-piece igniters/ballasts are hooked up, is there any way to detach the headlight units from them or are they permanently tethered? I thought someone had mentioned splicing the wires so you could remove the headlight units, but I can't seem to find that particular post.

Thx,

Brett

C4S_fan

Looks awesome! I can't wait till I get my kit.

solsrch

Steve,
The cats look great! Heating pads, hmm. Reminds me of that old saying, Dogs have owners, cats have staff.
Brett,
There are three connectors between the ballast unit and the light housing, routing four wires. You can connect/disconnect these wires to remove the housing. Unfortnately, there isn't a lot of slack. We pulled Steve's right headlight after we had it installed because I was busy talking and didn't get the connector back on the high beam bulb after we swapped it out with a Silverstar. With Steve holding the unit, I could still pull the back cover off and get to the bulb. We almost had to disconnect everything to pull it back out. The other pain is that the connectors are on both sides of the grommet going into the fender well. It would be a lot easier if all the connectors were inside the fender well, then you wouldn't have to mess with pulling things through the grommet after install.
Overall though, as someone else said, this really is a pretty easy DIY. Only bad gouge I found was the low beam is on the OPPOSITE side from the hinge when you remove the back cover. We had Steve check his lights (empirical evidence is always best) and checked the manual. Previous poster listed it the other way around. So the bulb at the top of the unit when you look at it mounted in the car is the low beam.
Can't wait to upgrade my baby too.

Steve 96C4S

Hey Joe, so let us know how your OEM litronics install goes... It should be a bit easier than the aftermarket one you helped me with last weekend! Did you find a buyer for your aftermarket HID kit yet?

Steve

chris walrod

Cant wait to receive my HID kits. Didnt get the Catz HID brand, but I do have a Cat

Steve 96C4S

Totally off topic here but... Chris, I like your Cat(z). Great pic! So many people hate cats and love dogs... I'm definitely on the low maintenance, cat side of the fence.

Steve

Toga

Great atmosphere here!
You'll love your HID, I'm sure. Concerning the T° they get...here in Europe, all the cars equipped with HID have to be equipped with headlamp washer (by the law), and I don't remember having read any restriction on their use. But you should be able to judge that after your run by just touching the headlights glass cautiously.

Congratulations for the job.