HID Headlights Question (Midwest Lighting)

[Bengoshi2000]

I put a set of the Midwest Light HID's on my Golf about 3 years ago. Love 'em... haven't had any issues.

But over the last two months, I felt like the driver's side headlight wasn't getting as bright. I confirmed this last week when my son and I were driving back from having tires put on. He was behind me, in the Golf, headlights on (it was raining a wee bit) and it was obvious that the driver's HID was dimmer than the passenger side.

I'm not read up on HID failure modes but I wanted to know if this indicative of a bulb nearing the end of its life or a ballast issue?

... or something else altogether?

 

[Nero Morg]

HIDs as they get worn out do dim out. I don't think it's something specifically related to these headlamps, as I have the same set, but all the HID systems I've ever worked on they either start to dim out, or turn pink.

 

[WildChild80]

I've been doing a ton of reading as of late, on why HIDs start to dim, one is the UV attacking the bowl and causing pitting and the other is just the bulb nearing it's end of life.

What bulbs and what ballasts are you running? How many watts?

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[truman]

Change both bulbs at same time or color won't match if it matters to you.

 

[moparvwfrak]

when i had HIDs in my jetta, i ran a set from DDM tuning. 5000k and 35 watt. worked beautifully till i lost a ballast after 5 yrs. still run them in my BMW same spec and they just work. and work awesome.

 

[PakProtector]

Change both bulbs at same time or color won't match if it matters to you.

Change both anyway... It will leave you a functional spare in case something silly happens. It could be burnt reflector bowls, but after 3 years I'd put the $$ on worn bulbs.
cheers,
Douglas

 

[Votblindub]

Change em both out. Also, DDM has lifetime warranty on their items and their costs aren't ridiculous. Worth a look, at least.

 

[Sevastianun]

Firstly, the headlights lose brightness with age. So if it's been a long time since you replaced the headlights, a new set of lamps may shed light on your problem. Dirty, foggy, or oxidized headlight lenses can also cause a problem by blocking some of the light. Dirt is easy to see and clean, while foggy lenses usually indicate water entering the headlights. I replaced all the car lighting with LED lighting and even made additional interior lighting for the car using https://www.vont.com/product/smart-strip-lights-led-strip-lights/. It looks cool, and the LEDs have a long service life.

 

[BobnOH]

You also want to check the aim, any old car.

 

[U4ick]

Oxford............England?

 

[KrashDH]

Seems like a robo-post to me....

 

[BobnOH]

Oxford............England?

Looking at the verbiage, I'm guessing England, not Mississippi.
Refreshingly, we don't see many robots here, just the occasional phishinp/spam.

 

[KrashDH]

Looking at the verbiage, I'm guessing England, not Mississippi.
Refreshingly, we don't see many robots here, just the occasional phishinp/spam.

I guess not a robot technically, but these forum platforms tend to get people that sign up and practice their random "hacking" skills which usually involves nonsense posts having nothing to do with the topic at hand, or loosely related. Then there's the people hired by the EPA to "fish" for emissions related posts. Not as heavy on this forum, but it's huge on other diesel forums and threads have been referenced in court cases against vendors. Hence why it's important to watch what type of information one discloses (obviously nothing to do with headlights)

 

[jj128]

I'm struggling on my own.... wondering how to make my 320 dollar investment work, with Midwest Lighting. I paid for a pair of MK4 HID with ballasts and amber turn signals back in March 31 2022 and waited patiently for 5 months. I called to remind Jeff once. He answered. He answered my emails in March quickly too. I had a couple of inquiries. and was very quick to say my order is coming up next week. Covid delays you know. That is when I waited patiently again... for three weeks. I got an email. A shipping label has been created, nice!!!! My headlights are on their way. The USPS situation never changed for 3 weeks. Shipping label created, never changed, so I email Jeff and he immediately responded and said he cant't understand how it happened. Whoa, this response is getting too long but you need to here this about MWL. I get my headlights last week. Missing parts of my order. No ballasts, no amber turn signal. I'm rough with HID headlights so I reach out to Jeff by email and say Jeff nice work on the HIL headlight I don't care about the amber turn signals, and keep my $70 for the ballasts please just point me in the right direction for a quality ballast. No answer. I was so dissapointed. I just wanted a one sentence email. What ballast to get. I'm struggling on my own. Tonight I hooked up the ballast I bought on line that I thought in my limited knowledge of ballast would work, and for a while everything was great. Right side low beams is out now. I'm struggling on my own.

 

[gforce1108]

I'm struggling on my own.... wondering how to make my 320 dollar investment work, with Midwest Lighting. I paid for a pair of MK4 HID with ballasts and amber turn signals back in March 31 2022 and waited patiently for 5 months. I called to remind Jeff once. He answered. He answered my emails in March quickly too. I had a couple of inquiries. and was very quick to say my order is coming up next week. Covid delays you know. That is when I waited patiently again... for three weeks. I got an email. A shipping label has been created, nice!!!! My headlights are on their way. The USPS situation never changed for 3 weeks. Shipping label created, never changed, so I email Jeff and he immediately responded and said he cant't understand how it happened. Whoa, this response is getting too long but you need to here this about MWL. I get my headlights last week. Missing parts of my order. No ballasts, no amber turn signal. I'm rough with HID headlights so I reach out to Jeff by email and say Jeff nice work on the HIL headlight I don't care about the amber turn signals, and keep my $70 for the ballasts please just point me in the right direction for a quality ballast. No answer. I was so dissapointed. I just wanted a one sentence email. What ballast to get. I'm struggling on my own. Tonight I hooked up the ballast I bought on line that I thought in my limited knowledge of ballast would work, and for a while everything was great. Right side low beams is out now. I'm struggling on my own.

He has horrible build quality and crap wiring. I ordered 2 sets. 1 arrived broken and then had constant problems with wiring. The harness was junk. I completely replaced his harness and converted the car to leave lows on and only use the stock high beam signal to trigger the shrouds. Then the obsolete bulbs in the one set failed and nobody sells them. He offered to "upgrade" them for like another $300. Junk

 

[KrashDH]

I'm struggling on my own.... wondering how to make my 320 dollar investment work, with Midwest Lighting. I paid for a pair of MK4 HID with ballasts and amber turn signals back in March 31 2022 and waited patiently for 5 months. I called to remind Jeff once. He answered. He answered my emails in March quickly too. I had a couple of inquiries. and was very quick to say my order is coming up next week. Covid delays you know. That is when I waited patiently again... for three weeks. I got an email. A shipping label has been created, nice!!!! My headlights are on their way. The USPS situation never changed for 3 weeks. Shipping label created, never changed, so I email Jeff and he immediately responded and said he cant't understand how it happened. Whoa, this response is getting too long but you need to here this about MWL. I get my headlights last week. Missing parts of my order. No ballasts, no amber turn signal. I'm rough with HID headlights so I reach out to Jeff by email and say Jeff nice work on the HIL headlight I don't care about the amber turn signals, and keep my $70 for the ballasts please just point me in the right direction for a quality ballast. No answer. I was so dissapointed. I just wanted a one sentence email. What ballast to get. I'm struggling on my own. Tonight I hooked up the ballast I bought on line that I thought in my limited knowledge of ballast would work, and for a while everything was great. Right side low beams is out now. I'm struggling on my own.

First off, you don't mention what ballasts you purchased.

2nd, list what harness you used.

3rd, lets see photos of how you wired everything up. It's a golf so it should be pretty simple (if it's for the Golf in your sig).
If you can't post photos, a very detailed step by step write up on how you wired everything. I've got 2 retrofit threads on here, both go into detail on the wiring side of things for the Golf. As others have mentioned, the Jetta is slightly different.

 

[Nero Morg]

Bulbs aren't obsolete. When one of mine went out I bought one of these. Was a direct fit.

https://www.amazon.com/HID-Warehouse-HID-Xenon-Replacement-Bulbs/dp/B010W2KZ9Q

But on another note, how vendors can fall from graces. The set I purchased were in good quality and had zero issues. Purchased in 2018 sometime. Maybe patience is running thin on building them.

 

[KrashDH]

Maybe patience is running thin on building them.

This is very understandable, these cars aren't the easiest (in fact, of all the retro's I've done, they are the most complicated) to do a retrofit in.
Although at this point, I have it pretty dialed. I've learned a lot from the first 2 sets. If I ever do another set, I know what parts and technique I will use and it should be a pretty quick retro. As much as I like having the 3" D2S stuffed into the housing, at least on the Golf, they are not ideal. But, there is a Micro D2S which shares pretty much the same dimensions as a Mini H1, so that's awesome. That would be what I would use next and it would be pretty cake getting that one to fit. With the added bonus of D2S bulbs!

 

[BobnOH]

That's too bad about the quality. I thought this was an individual putting together kits, mostly for VW, usually that's a good thing. I just visited the web site, they're obviouly gettin out, not taking new orders..

 

[Nero Morg]

Interesting, just went and looked and yeah all items are listed as out of stock. To be fair it is kind of a niche market, profits probably aren't worth it anymore.

 

[Nickmix]

That's too bad about the quality. I thought this was an individual putting together kits, mostly for VW, usually that's a good thing. I just visited the web site, they're obviouly gettin out, not taking new orders..

I emailed them a month ago and the reply I got was he was taking the summer off but would open back up.

 

[jj128]

I just want everyone to know my experience. I paid 70 bucks for the ballast Jeff recommended but it didn't come with my order. Like I said I didn't care. I told Jeff to keep my 70 bucks and just recommend a quality ballast to use with his lights. No response.

I worked further on it today and it turns out to be the ballast I bought from a different vendor online.

Jeff sent me a nice looking set of headlights. So far they work good. For what ever reason it took 5 months instead of 2 weeks, like he told me, is irrelevant now. A quick email once a couple of months would have been enough. I imagine he is over whelmed or lost interest? His customer service needs improvement.

To krash you seem a little perturbed about how I am telling others about how Jeff screwed up my order and also decided not to help me. I think it's important to be honest and share our experiences.

 

[KrashDH]

I just want everyone to know my experience. I paid 70 bucks for the ballast Jeff recommended but it didn't come with my order. Like I said I didn't care. I told Jeff to keep my 70 bucks and just recommend a quality ballast to use with his lights. No response.

I worked further on it today and it turns out to be the ballast I bought from a different vendor online.

Jeff sent me a nice looking set of headlights. So far they work good. For what ever reason it took 5 months instead of 2 weeks, like he told me, is irrelevant now. A quick email once a couple of months would have been enough. I imagine he is over whelmed or lost interest? His customer service needs improvement.

To krash you seem a little perturbed about how I am telling others about how Jeff screwed up my order and also decided not to help me. I think it's important to be honest and share our experiences.

Me? Perturbed? Negative ghost rider, to me it really doesn't matter, I'd rather you tell it how it is...

I do my own retrofits, so it's not a big deal to me either way

Not sure how you came up with that though?

You said how you were struggling to make your investment work. I recommended you post up a few things so we could possibly troubleshoot.

 

[Nero Morg]

If you want to share your satisfaction/dissatisfaction about vendors, I would suggest posting in the Vendor Accountability thread.

Vendor Accountability Thread

This thread is for members (not vendors) to post issues about vendors. We want to know about vendor's who are not holding themselves accountable. The vendor registration program is simply for vendors to declare that they have a product or service available to the members in exchange for money...

forums.tdiclub.com

 

[BobnOH]

Yes, but that thread/forum gets very little traffic.