FricFrac

Just be careful with the solder sucker as they require more heat than any of the other methods (unless you use a soldering iron with a built in vacuum). If the part you are desoldering doesn't care about having excessive heat then it should be fine but if you are working on a circuit board, etc its probably not a good idea.

Lol - my political views... I was simply stating not to overlook an HID kit because its made in China. Totaly relevant to the thread and nothing to do with my political views. In fact here's my political view - not interested in politics, fighting, arguing, etc. I am interested in helping people out and contributing. That's what this thread is about. If you have something to contribute please do. Otherwise you are simply trolling The intent of this thread is to provide an HID solution that is affordable, works every time, easily obtainable, safe, easily repeatable and easy to install. If someone can find an H4 HID kit that is cheaper than the one I found and works just as well isn't it a no brainer to use it instead? If everyone is looking and ignoring stuff because its made in China then we don't gain a more affordable alternative. My statement was simply to help us find viable alternatives.

Agreed. I've dealt with getting product manufactured in China as well. Its like dealing with businesses anywhere - you have to sift through the BS to find the guys you want to deal with....

I like the looks of both of those ballast. They look to be a slim digital style an sealed with waterproof connectors. I've seen some nasty sheet metal huge enclosures for ballast - a sure warning sign of cheap

Either cut off the wire near the connection if you have enough length and heat the solder up. Most of the excess will stick to a tip that has been cleaned off. You can also heat it up and knock it off (CAREFULLY and wearing goggles!). You can also use desoldering braid. I personally don't like solder suckers but that is another option.

There is a common misconception that Made in China = junk. Yes there is lots of junk made there but a lot of the stuff you buy if its not completely made there the guts or components are. That includes stuff made in Japan/Germany/USA, etc. Like it or not China is the World's manufacture - that's what they've set themselves up to do. When you have something made in China the person building the product chooses what level of quality they want to pay for so most choose cheap over quality because that's what the consumer demands. It has nothing to do with "made in China" but what the designer/distributor want's to pay. It wasn't too long ago that everything that came from Japan was absolute garbage. Now if you want to have a high quality part machined you send it to Germany and if its of the highest quality it goes to Japan to be manufactured. So while price doesn't determine quality it does point you in the general area.... however there are bargins to be found and at $90 it shouldn't keep anyone from missing a mortgage payment

The top cutoff is the main thing and it looks good. There is some splatter but I would definately try these out with the HID kit you were looking at. At the price it might be a great candidate and we won't know for sure until someone tries it! Its less than half the price of the Alumina setup so if it works then you are helping others save some serious cash that can go towards a V8 swap instead

Oh just to clear things up there are two "pieces" to this procedure. One is getting an H4 housing to replace the sealed beams you already have in the car and the second is to get an H4 HID Bi-Xenon kit to upgrade the H4 halogen system to H4 style buld HIDs. A good H4 housing is very important as its what directs the light and produces the "beam" which prevents oncoming drivers from being blinded by the light. The intensity of HID low beams is just as intense as the high beams. Low beams are just controlled so the beam doesn't go into the eyes of oncoming drivers. Sealed beams are controlled but the low beam is also a lower intensity as are halogen bulbs.

Yes that is the H4 version I got. Our local Lordco auto parts shop has them for $330 (or less if you have some sort of discount) so pretty much anyone can walk in and get them for $330 CND here in BC (lower mainland, Victoria, etc, etc). If you can't find them locally you might want to contact them and have it mailed out to you...

Bad connection? Typically with those power resistors if it fails it will fail open. Unlikely to be intermitantly shorted. Did the other resistor do the same thing? The resistor is acting as a voltage divider so if you have 1.5 ohms resistance on the coil in series with the 1.5 ohms on the resistor from the ground through the resistor and the coil you should see 12 volts. Across either the coil or the resistor you would see 6 volts. (50% of the resistance is in the resistor and thus 50% of the voltage = 6 volts). The voltage on the coil is switching off and on rapidly (producing the back EMF to give you spark) so if you have a digital multimeter (DMM) you might just be seeing a peak reading. Try an analog meter and watch as the needle bounces back and forth because of the pulsing.

Here is a picture of the HID ballast mounted in front of the radiator. I've hooked a leg of the star ground to the chasis ground and the wiring harness ground.

A copper buss bar is perfect. I just used a single point but if you've got room the buss bar works great. I think what I would do if I was using a bus bar is paint it except for the screw down terminals to keep the oxidiztion down and to keep it looking nice but that's more asthetics than anything. The fuse box was a marine style one - I'll have to see if I can figure out which one it was and let you know.

I spent about 5 hours reading about the MSD, coils, distributors and how to get my tach to work. Simple fix. Flip to page 10 of the instruction manual (well it was page 10 on the 6AL) and it shows you how to add a resistor across the input to the 6AL from the ignition. From what I can tell is it draws enough current to pulse the tach. I think its around a 5 or 5.5 ohm power resistor. After around 5K I did notice it not working so I suspect a 4 ohm resistor would probably fix the problem but it would be best to check with MSD before following my guess Regardless its way to easy to fix to get your tach working again!

Oddjob has a great thread about grounding your car in this thread http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=147928 Unfortuenately its kind of burried and difficult to find. I've been asked a few times about grounding so I though I would point out the work Oddjob had done and add a few points and some pictures to illustrate. I spent hours myself digging through info and I forgot to bookmark one of the threads I found on grounding that was pretty good. Hopefully this will thread will be a good reference point (no pun intended) for grounding. Poor grounds can cause some major electrical issues! A couple of interesting things to note. Loop grounds may cause ground loops as well which cause countless problems that may be difficult to find. Also troubleshooting a loop system can be difficult. Its also interesting to note that steel is about 11-17% as conductive as copper! Most of the electrical problems in our vehicles are bad connections and poor grounds. A star ground is a great way to get rid off or prevent those problems. Its not uncommon to use a star ground to increase preformance (Ok freeing up HP) by eliminating sensor reading issues in ECU controlled cars BUT its important to have a good electrical system in even a system as basic as a stock 240Z, etc. Our cars have thermal and oil preasure sensors that use the grounding on the block to complete the circuit. A poor ground will give an inaccurate reading. Grounding is also very important to the ignition system as well to give it as strong a spark as possible. Running a leg from a star ground to the distributor is a good idea as well. I run a lead from the head to the block and back to the star grounding point. Another important thing to note is because of the dissimilar metals between our block and head makes a perfect battery/corrosion. Part of the grounding between the blocks and head is to short out that process and help reduce that battery/corrosion effect. Here is a picture of my star ground and additional fuse panel. I've modded the car so I can reverse it back to its "original" condition (it wasn't original in '72). I built a mounting plate for the fuse panel and the MSD ignition system that uses the stock mounting nutserts. For the fuse panel I used the mounting holes for the relay to mount the plate then moved the relay to the edge of the mounting plate. I'd hate to drill holes in the body if I don't have to even if I wasn't going to keep it "stock". Anyhow the fuse panel is good for six circuits. I'm using two circuits right now with the MSD ignition and HID lights You can see here how the battery cables are hooked up. The negative side goes to the transmission mount and a secondary goes from the negative battery terminal to the star ground. The positive side goes to the starter solenoid and the secondary positive goes to the fuse block. Here is the HID kit I installed. The wiring harness that came with the kit uses chasis ground for the negative side close to the HID ballast. I run a star ground leg from to the chasis ground for an extremely low resistance ground. I've gone overkill with the wires running individual 10 guage grounds for each of the ballast.

If you are happy with the H4 beam pattern the HID kit should give you the same results. If not you'll need to get a new quality H4 lens. Keep us posted with your results if you try this method.

H4 halogen should be pretty good. Are you running a relay? HID are brighter but you should get decent performance from halogen if they are wired through a relay and proper connectors. If you don't have a relay and want to go with HID the kit I used comes with a relay for the system. Adding a relay if you don't have one then switching to the HID just means you bypass the relay and use the one with the HID wiring harness.

I was at a car show in Vancouver two weeks ago and a guy showed up late with a 280Z with shaved bumpers, 3.2L stroker, triple Webbers, etc. He had a very small electronic ignition system similar to a MSD, Crane, etc but it was about the size of a pack of cigarettes but thinner in an extruded aluminum case and IIRC he said it was made in Canada (or designed - probably built in China like everything else). Does anyone have any idea what the name of the system is? I Googled for an hour or so and no luck...

No one has really mentioned getting a good water tread tire. Yes a narrower tire of the same tread will improve traction but the biggest effect will be a tread designed specifically for getting water away from the center of your contact patch.

Ahhh it just clicked in. I met you at the QA car show and on the ferry on the way to the show in Van. Didn't have the lights in at the QA show. Once I noticed you had the 260Z 2+2 both of my brain cells starting firing Anyhow if you get stuck with the headlight harness let me know and I'll give you a hand.

No worries. I just have a basic knowledge of mechanics (which is quickly expanding thanks to this site) so I have little to offer the the forum in that regard. I've been doing electronics since I was eight so that stuff comes pretty easy to me. One of the local fellow Z guys said I should post on Hybrid about how to do the conversion so I though I'd do a little write up to help people without that experience get up and running. Even I had a pile of crap to wade through to get to where I came to a solution so I figured if I could build a bridge over that crap everyone else wouldn't have to wade through it Hopefully others will be able to add to this thread though if there is another kit, etc that works well as a combo, better pricing, group buys, etc. Personally I think the H4 set up suits a stock or mildly modified body but for a more modern look I like the projectors too. I agree with the bug eye comment. I would like to do a large and small projector for another car with a curved plexi lens similar to the lexan covers that go over the sugar scoops but more filled in from the base. That would make it look less bug eyed and more modern. The halo is fadish but I like the look. Can we use coloured LEDs in the halo? I've got some really cool colour changing ones and I'm working on some RGB as well.

Yellow? So you are going for the retro look

Wouldn't you want the humps on the low beams since if there is oncoming traffic you should be on low beams already or is it just incase you forgot to switch your high beams off?

Definately the way I'd do it. Get the H4 HID kit and if the beam dispersion is poor on your Autopal you can always swap in the Vision-X lenses. You should have a really good idea of your beam dispersion with the H4 halogen bulbs you are running now.

I don't know for sure what the warranty from the manufacture is on the bulb/ballast kit is but from our local Lordco auto parts supplier I was told they would cover the kit for one year including the bulb. I've never heard of a warranty on a light bulb so that seemed more than reasonable to me. The other thing to note is the size of the ballast on this kit. The ballast was originally designed by Phillips who are one of the leaders in HID technology. Alumina bought the designe from Phillips and is producing a very small high quality ballast system. I like small for mounting on the car and I like quality as they don't get burning hot and fail like the cheap ones do. Mine purchased locally with my discount (most clubs can get a discount with Lordco) was around $400 CND but I didn't have shipping. ..... and yes install is pretty easy. Only real mod I had to do was drill the opening on the back of the buckets to accept a new grommet. Pics are coming as I can squeeze them in. Lol - as for the group buy I'm not sure if you are still thinking I'm associated with either of the companies - I'm not (but maybe I should approach them - jk These are simply the products I used that the combination/price/performance seemed to be the best configuration. I don't have any group buying power nor can I vouch for any of the places that sells these. Possibly the manufactures would do a direct bulk purchase?

Sorry just some quick ones in the garage before I head off ta bed... unfortunately the Tempest game is in front of the other headlight but you get the idea