Now before you go on and hack away at my intelligence after reading the title since its literally "plug and play", both myself and blownss06 looked at almost every option. He's a great guy to do business with and i amNOT, i repeat NOT, bashing him in any way whatsoever. It's just pm's can be kinda slow and its better to get more feedback, maybe from someone who encountered this problem before or know of a solution.

So anyways, to my problem. I ordered a set of his retros, they came in. Flawless. Great retros, i suggest getting a pair to everyone and anyone. Great price too i must add I plugged everything in to my car like i should. Positive ring terminal to the positive lead in the fuse box, can't miss it. 10mm bolt like big stud. then the ground on that small bolt behind the drivers side headlight assembly (i also tried 2 other ground spots so its not a faulty ground). I plugged in the male/female adapters that came with both his harness and attached to that headlight. Obviously male-female, female-male.

Now, i bought a 35w DDM slim ballast set several months ago BUT i bought it with H1 or H7, whatever the gen 4s are cuz i WAS gunna buy those but decided to spend the extra cash and get a set of retros. Once again, glad i did. Since the bulbs are different, i bought D2S adapters. Also from DDM. They plug right into the same spot the H1/H7 lamp did, just have a different end for the D2S lamps so you can use them.

I got everything plugged in correctly. Nothing reversed, upside down, backwards, etc. Went to turn headlights on, and only the parking/blinkers came on. They functioned normally. No problems, but the headlights would not come on. I heard the relays click when i turned the headlights on and an even slightly louder click when i turned the brights on. Blownss06 said thats the solenoid for the e55's he uses. So its normal, i knew the clicking was the relays so i wasn't worried about that to begin with.

Then, not to doubt him, i asked him about the wiring for the relays cuz just maybe he accidentally and unknowingly wired the relays wrong. Gladly helped me with no problems. I took the tape off the harness and everything was correctly forked and still connected. I'm an electrician and i don't even do that well of a tape job on my work So it's not his harness wiring.

Now, i had a kinda stupid/troubleshooting thought and i held the positive side of his harness on the ground and the ground of his harness on the positive terminal only for a second to see what would happen and it lit like it should. Both sides. But i quickly took it off cuz i know i could overload/heat up both the ballasts and lamps and could cause another set of problems since its not fused and not cutting down the amount of amps. So its not bad ballasts, bad lamps, bad harness(s), or the adapter cables.

So blownss06 came up with another troubleshooting idea but i don't wanna splice into my brand new DDM wires. He said that "there is only one way the plug will go into the ballast but if the leads are switched and your putting the pos onto the ground side they wont light up and that might be why they did when u put the pos to the ground and ground to the pos." He also said that he makes his harness based off the ballasts he uses, not DDM ones but i searched and other ppl are running retros off of DDM ballasts, blownss06's retros too.

I exhausted many ideas and spent a few hrs yesterday and todays friday and the weather is gorgeous. Tomorrow its supposed to rain and i wanna get these bad boys on my car working. Their taunting me sitting on top of my tv stand. Someone PLEASE give me some suggestions. The only other thing i can think of is there could be a short somewhere but even that idea is kinda out the window cuz my stock headlights work with no problems at all.

 

So, when you reverse the power and ground wires or reverse the headlight plugs... they come right on correct? I got the same setup including the ddm hids. I had my wires mixed up at first.

 

When i reverse the power and ground off of blownss06's harness. Not the ballasts or headlight plugs.

 

I don't personally have DDM HIDs but I do know several ppl who do and they say that the quality of work on the DDMs is getting progressively lower

 

What I did wrong was..... I had placed his ground as my power wire and his power wire as my ground. I couldn't figure it out at the time. lol. So I switch the plugs at the headlights and thought I fixed it until I realized what I had done.

I'm trying to think what else it could be.....

 

But its not the ballasts, lamps, or adapter cables cuz i did get them to light. Sure i had to switch the two leads but still...

 

This may not help you but when I made my retro's and had this same problem this worked for me. I don't know if his wiring harness compensates for this but the one I got from retrofit source did not. If it works you can thank Matt @ TRS. It only takes a minute to give it a try and if it doesn't work you can always switch them back.

"It's basically because your headlights are setup as a "ground switched" circuit, which is not typical. To fix it, check the attached picture - you just need to swap 2 pins around in the input socket and that should take care of the issue."

 

^THAT! I had that problem with mine too. Such an easy fix.

 

I don't know if that applies to me, but heres a few pictures of the DDM setup i have and the harness from blownss06. The plug that you're showing me looks like the one from the stock setup that you would plug in your stock 9007 plug/a HID kit but blownss06's harness erases that plug completely. The only plug stock that you reuse is the one thats a 6 pin harness but only uses 5 (I think i described it right, but its the one that plugs in the bottom outer sides).



^^ D2S Adapters ^^


^^ DDM 35w Slim Ballasts ^^


^^ Connections between the two ^^


^^ Blownss06's harness. Fused = Power. Nonfused Ring = Ground. Male/Female Connectors = Switched Source for Low/High Beams. ^^


^^ Other side of his harness with DDM kit hooked up ^^

 

Right I got ya. You are going to be taping off the blue plug on the passenger side but the one on the drivers side is how your headlights are getting the signal to switch on unless his harness taps into the wiring somewhere further up by the fuse box. I think the stock harness your talking about being the only one you reuse is the side marker/turn signal harness and thats why only those are working.

 

I don't use those blue stock plugs tho. Those are completely removed from the setup. And yes, the one i reuse is the one for the side marker/turn signal harness.

Here dspeed123.



Red = D2S adapter directly to the D2S lamp in the e55 projector.

Green = Switched source connectors for high/low beams.

Blue = Only stock harness used and thats for the markers/blinkers.

 

DDM is garbage now. There customer service sucks, and it takes a month to get a damn kit. Ridiculous. Just thought Id throw that out there, lol!!!

 

Hmmm.... I don't know what to tell you on that one. The wiring on the headlight looks good. Connections wise it looks fine except I'm still trying to figure out how it is getting powered by your stock headlight wiring system. BlownSS is a good guy and knows how to make these. He even gave me advice when i made mine! I'm not really sure how to help you out anymore though because i didn't make my harness, I just bought one so I wouldn't have to dick with making one after putting all the time into making the headlights

Only thing that maybe you could try is since it worked when you switched the ground and pos maybe you could switch the pos & ground connections at the relays and see if that works.

 

It's not being powered by the stock headlight system. Theres a constant power source going to them from the positive lead of the fuse box. The male/female connectors send the switched signal to the relays telling them to turn on either the low or high beams.

 

****, now I have to retype that whole last post. Stupid timeout feature. Anyway, I understand that it is wired separately. It has to be that way, and mine is the exact same, EXCEPT where the blue 9007 plug is. What I am trying to say is, when you turn on your headlights inside your car, that signal to turn on is sent to the 9007 plug that is hanging dead behind your new retros. I didn't see anywhere on the harness you have that is wired into that to turn your headlights on. Here is the harness I have.

http://www.theretrofitsource.com/pro...roducts_id=151

Hopefully I explained it better this time. You said when you had it all wired up the headlights didn't turn on, but you heard the ballasts? And when you tried switching on the high beams you heard the solenoid make its "snick" sound?

 

It looks like everything is wired exactly like mine.

I know you said you got the wires on correctly but just double check that the fused wire goes to the positive terminal and the other one to the ground. If thats how you have it. Good. The next thing I would try is turn the blue plugs around that go into the ddm metal box. It sounds to me like one way or another the positive and negative got switched around somewhere.

Thats all I can come up with right now.

 

Alright, i'll try a couple different things tomorrow if its not raining or sunday. Thanks guys. I'll keep you updated.

 

I have that exact same harness on mine except that i got rid of that crappy fuse holder.

Oh question while i have ppl who know what they are doing in the same place. Every now and then one or the other of my lights doesn't come on so I turn them off and on a couple times to make it turn on. And when I hit my brights the driverside works but the passenger side doesn't. Any ideas?

 

Sounds like bad ballasts to me. It's totally random which one does not come on? Could be drivers side or could be passenger side? If that is the case I think it's ballasts. As far as the brights on the passenger side, did you check the solenoid wires because it sounds like those might have just disconnected or something.

 

It's usually the passenger side but it happens on both sides from time to time. And for the brights yeah everything is connected correctly. I think I need to pull them out again and swap the passenger to the driver side just to double check that the solenoid hasn't gone bad.