HID install issues

[Ray Khan]

I installed the USP HID kit for the B7 Passat in my wife's 2013 SEL last weekend. I used the tee taps included and got power and ground from the wires going into the factory headlight harness. I did the the passenger side first and everything seemed to work ok. I did the driver side the same way and the lights turned on briefly and then shut off giving the low beam out warning. I suspected a bad power connection so I redid the tee taps and the behavior was the same. So then I cut the low beam power wire and put on a new connector to directly attach to the HID power wire. I cut back the insulation on the factory harness ground wire and soldered on a second wire to connect to the HID ground. The lights work better but they still give problems intermittently. Even the passenger side occasionally goes out and gives a bulb warning. This side still uses the tee taps. I figure one next step is to make a direct power and ground connection on that side as well but the fact that the drivers side isn't perfect is making me hesitant to go that route before I get to the root cause of the issue.

So far I've done limited driving but when a light doesn't ignite, it fails right when the lights are turned on. Once the lights ignite they seem to stay on, but I haven't taken any drives more than a few minutes with the lights on so I'm sure if they will shut off once ignited. Some times a light fails to turn on and the dash warning light comes on, then the light ignites a second or 2 later and the dash warning light shuts off again. I tried both ballasts/bulbs directly attached to the battery and they seem to power up and stay on without any issues. It seems the parts are ok with full battery voltage. Also, there hasn't been a case of both lights not igniting during the same start up.

So what to do next? It seems others have done installs on the 2013 B7 with no issues and didn't need to make changes with VCDS. I thought the error eliminators built into each ballast I have should make everything work with the factory low beam power as it is. Should I turn off the bulb life extension feature or is there another logical next step? If this works I'll be happy, but I don't want to put a band aid on a problem that can be fixed either. I was thinking to measure the voltage coming to each ballast during startup and after the car has been on a few seconds. Is it possible the slow voltage ramp up caused by the bulb extension feature is the problem, are the USP ballasts error eliminators both defective, or is the kit not known to work well on our platform?

Looking forward to your feedback.

 

[vw_norm]

I do not think retrofitting HIDs to non-projector housings is wise(period), both from a visibilty issue (yours) and blinding on coming drivers with your uncontrolled and unfocused glare bombs. That stated, it appears that not disabling the bulb life extension is the problem. Not soldering your connections will only come back to haunt you later. If you want HIDs do it the right way and replace the housings or at least install the proper projectors.

 

[Ray Khan]

Thanks Norm. I tend to agree about retrofitting HIDs in reflector housings. I decided to try it out in this car since a few others posted promising pics with good looking cut offs. When I step back and look at the lights in my wife's car from a distance they definitely don't scatter like ones you see retrofitted in some of the Japanese and American cars. They definitely aren't as focused as the lights in my Audi either. I honestly don't think I will get flashed with this setup any more than I do with my factory Audi lights. The drivers side is definitely aimed lower than the passenger side so we'll see how it goes. I know some cars a few years back came from the factory with D2R bulbs in reflector housings and the HIDs in the Passat definitely look more focused then those factory setups I've seen. I'll keep my eyes out for a projector setup in the meantime.

I definitely plan to fix the wiring on the tee tapped side once I get the setup working properly. Thanks again for the feedback Norm. I'll stop by a local VW independent shop in the morning and see if they can recode my bulb life extension off and see how that goes.

 

[Ray Khan]

Still having issues. I ended up soldering the ground connection to the headlight harness ground and removing the 12V low beam wires from the headlight harness and connecting directly to the ballast. I have the bulb life extender feature disabled. The issues seems to only come from one side. I've tried both ballasts on that side. It only happens 1 in 10 times or less. We keep the headlight switch on Auto. I'm assuming this is ok.

The lights always turn on at first so I'm assuming the resistance in the USP kit isn't exactly right. When I switched the ballasts I actually kept them on the same sides of the car but ran some extension wires from side to side. That seemed to lower the occurrence of the light going out. When the light shut off it was now the driver side light, with power coming from the passenger side. I wonder if the slightly more resistance added with the power wire extensions helped to trick the BCM? When the light doesn't work we turn off the lights by the headlight switch and turn them on after a few seconds and they work. I'm guessing it's the resistor pack in ballasts isn't exactly right for the Passat. I haven't read of anyone else using the USP kit in the B7 Passat so perhaps I'm better off with the 35w distant extremes kit since that has been shown to work well. Any suggestions?

 

[vw_norm]

Did you disable the headlight life extension to allow full voltage to be supplied to the ballasts. Some ballasts do not fire properly at lowered DC voltages. This is in the BCM Byte 19. Set the headlight dimming to inactive (00) in the drop down menu. AA few feet of wire is not going to add appreciable resistance. In fact, you want as little as possible to get full voltage to the ballasts. Did you try firing the ballasts directly from the battery to determine if behavior is the same as when connected to OEM wiring?

 

[Ray Khan]

The bulb life extender is disabled. I will check it again but I'm pretty sure on this one. The lights seem to work fine every time I ran them from the battery. This seems to be an issue of the bcm shutting down the circuit be wise of low resistance or whatever it checks for.

 

[VeeDubTDI]

The BCM will only attempt to fire the headlights once, it seems. If it gets an error, it will not send power to them again until you turn the car off and back on. I think this is a safety mechanism to prevent a short circuit or loose wire from starting a fire.

We had this issue with our XE+ kit originally, but it went away with time. I think it might have something to do with the ballasts being new and having a resistance that the computer doesn't like. When we were having the problem fairly consistently, I found that turning on the headlights before starting the engine prevented the problem from occurring.

 

[Ray Khan]

VeeDubTDI, so this is normal behavior? Did you always get the bulb out on the same side? It would seem the resistor isn't doing its job if this is happening. I wonder if the 50 watt ballasts are less prone to this. My wife is the primary driver of the car and I don't think she wants to deal with something that doesn't just work all the time like oem.

 

[VeeDubTDI]

VeeDubTDI, so this is normal behavior? Did you always get the bulb out on the same side? It would seem the resistor isn't doing its job if this is happening. I wonder if the 50 watt ballasts are less prone to this. My wife is the primary driver of the car and I don't think she wants to deal with something that doesn't just work all the time like oem.

I wouldn't call it normal, but it is similar to what we experienced with our install. The problem solved itself after a bit of time, so I dunno.

 

[vw_norm]

I'm assuming that these have the canbus compatible ballasts with the 'block' in the 12V power line to the ballast.

I have a suggestion that you may wish to try out. You can always put things back if it doesn't work out, but think it's worth a try.

Go to Byte 14 and click bit 3 on - BiXenon with shutter installed

This should tell the BCM that you have xenon lights and enable reliable ignitions.
When I was experimenting with the byte 18=24 configuration, the xenons initially turned off when I turned on the high beams. Surprised me a bit when it happened on an early morning drive. After some further experimentation, I ended up clicking on the bit above to enable the xenons on with the high beam on. lotsa light!

You may also want to try this one too if the high beams does not work after doing byte 14 above:

Go to Byte 25, and click bit 2 on - High beam with shutter active/installed

 

[Ray Khan]

Thanks Norm. Those vcds adjustments make sense. I'll waive them a try and report back.

VeeDubTDI we have been running like this for over a month and the issue is so random. It definitely doesn't seem to go away.

 

[Ray Khan]

Looks like one ballast is dead right now so I'll hold off on the vcds adjustments until we get a replacement ballast. Got the hot look of one xenon and one halogen for now. Of course the deal ballast was the one on the left side which seemed to be working normally. It is the right side which intermittently shuts off a second or so after it initially ignites.

I checked my wiring again last night. To recap, on each side I removed the 12v low beam wire from the harness and installed a female connector so that the power wire from the ballast can just slide in and get 12v. For the ground wire I removed some insulation an inch or so back from where the wire goes into the harness and soldered a secondary ground wire to it. I also installed a female connector to the secondary ground wire so that the negative wire from the ballast can slide right in like the 12v power wire. All of the connectors are crimped on with the correct tool and are tight. I have good continuity between the spliced/soldered ground and the main ground, as well as the spliced/soldered ground and the chassis and also the negative terminal of the battery. From what I can tell my wiring seems fine. When I check the resistance back through the car by measuring from the 12v power wire and both ground wires (same reading) I saw slightly more resistance on the right side. It was .75 ohm compared to .66 ohm on the other side. I'm not sure if this is an issue or not.

 

[Ray Khan]

Still waiting for new ballasts so I decided to use an oem H7 bulb to check my wiring job. Bulb worked fine on each side cycling the headlight switch with the ignition on but not the motor. When I had the bulb on the left side I kept the hid ballast connected and it worked each time as well. I started the motor once to see if the electrical load from starting the motor was an issue and it wasn't. I know it's not a lot of data but I do feel better about my wiring. Maybe the new left ballast will do it or at least get me closer.

 

[VeeDubTDI]

I think HID ballasts and the stock lamp monitoring just don't get along sometimes. It seems to be very hit-or-miss, and sometimes the problem goes away as the ballasts age (example: our car). Not sure what else to say, other than make sure you wiring is good (no vampire taps!) and you have the bulb life extender turned off in VCDS... oh yeah - and don't buy super cheap HID kits.

 

[767wrench]

Hid

I had very similar problems to yours for a while after my HID install. Did you turn of the bulb extender function and also go in and change the voltage to the maximum allowed voltage? I seem to remember it being 13.7 and it also allowed you to adjust the brake light voltage too. Its been a while so i dont remember the location for that option but if you search around im sure youll run across it. It solved my problems and I was also having issues when i turned on my brights with them failing. I ruined a few ballasts in the process also. They didnt seem to like the low voltage.

 

[vw_norm]

it's in Byte 19. I think it best to simply set the bit 0-3 to HEX 00, as this is the Inactive position for the headlights, rather than set an upper voltage limit. This way you'll always get full voltage to the lamps. Same for the taillamps if you put in LED type.

 

[Ray Khan]

Thanks guys. I did turn off the bulb life extender feature a while ago and that didn't solve my issue. My lights always light up before shutting off so it seems that the issue may just be a defect in the can bus resistor box. I suppose the other issue may be if the ballast is drawing too much current occasionally. This would make the circuit resistance lower and cause the bcm to act. This would also be a ballast issue. I'll have to check that next if the problems persist. I'll also go back and recheck the coding changes I've made.

 

[Ray Khan]

Still waiting for the replacement ballast so I took some numbers. Measured current on my xenon setup and stock halogen setup. Just sharing numbers in case people are interested.

Halogen

Motor off ignition on. Light turned from off to auto. Voltage at battery 12.6 volts. Current 4.1 amps steady
Started motor with lights on auto 13.85 volts at battery and 4.0 amps from bulb.

Xenon

Motor off. Ignition on. Light turned from off to auto. Ballast cold. Battery voltage 12.6 volts. Current starts at 4.7 amps and slowly goes to 3.6 amps over the course of 20 seconds.

Started motor with lights on auto. Battery voltage is 13.85 volts. Ballast cold. Current at 5 amps for a split second then down to 3.3 amps in less than 2 seconds. Turn off lights and turn back on seconds later and the initial current is around 4 amps then goes to 3.3 amps.

 

[Roishe Cheng]

Ray, during all of this, did you ever try pulling the negative cable off the battery and just waiting for one minute and plugging it back in to see if that made a difference? I notice that if I get a bulb out on my HIDS, the BCM "reset" helps and can last for months. Like VeeDub stated, the BCM is most likely very sensitive to voltage fluctuations with some setups being a hit/miss.

 

[panther_v]

I just installed deautokey h7 canbus canceller kit in my 2013 passat.

The lights seem to work fine after some initial hickups.

Now the problem is whenever I turn on high beam, the left bulb warning in the dash shows up. I swapped ballasts and still get the left side warning.

Anyone have similar issues? Is it possible that when high beam is on, there is a slight change in low beam voltage and/or current?

Thanks in advance.