Bartman

I finally broke down and got myself a newer bike. It's a 2003 ST1300 with less than 16,000 miles. I got over 200,000 miles on my 94 ST1100, so I figured I should stick with a Honda. I hardly did anything to the ST1100 over the years except replace the tires, get oil changes, and swap out the final drive once. This ST1300's got heated grips, ABS, electrically adjustable windshield, etc. So far it's great!

I don't know if I just did it wrong, but I tried to use this option when I paid David for my turn signal knob and there were still fees - it just gave me the option to pay for them myself.

If you're going to get different heads (or have the stockers ported) get your stock intake ported as well. There aren't any aftermarket intakes for the LT1 engines and a stock ported intake is better than an LT4 intake. Edit: Edelbrock does make an aftermarket intake, but I haven't seen anything that shows it's any better than the stock one.

Pic's are in my signature block.

I think he's referring to the holes on the rear control arms themselves for the end links (like what the MM arms have). On another note, it looks like a very cool project but are you actually doing any of the work yourself?

Yes, most of the airdams you will found require the removal of the stock lower valance and install using the same mounting points.

I was pretty amazed as well by the Mythbusters results. I believe that not only was there a significant increase in miles per gallon, but the clay they put on the car added significant weight as well. They even took the clay that was in the dimples and put it in a bucket that was placed on the back seat! I don't know the total weight, but that car looked really weighted down.

Wow, the edit made this nothing like the original post.

Thanks guys I won't remove the axial reflector, nor mess with the bulb shielding. On another note I took my car out for a spin last night and WOW - what a difference. I think my beam pattern shot was taken with the car too close to the garage door as it really lights up the road completely across the front of the car...and I think that the high beams may affect low flying aircraft.

Very cool...I wonder how high that auction will go. The video from the Ultimate Track Car challenge has footage of an S30 as well.

Thaks for all your help FricFrac. My Autopal MSR lights came with a little shield in the center that the lights sit behind. As you can see in the pic below the HID bulbs came with their own shielding. So it would be realtively easy to remove the shield that comes with the Autopal housings. Do you think I should remove them? I can't tell from your shot if I'm looking at the bulb's shielding or what came with your housing.

So I switched the wiring per my previous post and everything works perfectly. I don't know if my wiring is different than other Z's, but if your car is wired like mine - you should be able to easily hook up this HID kit or any other one with a solid state relay. As far as VVME is concerned they seem to have a good product at a very reasonable price. On the down side their customer support people are clueless! They do respond, but they don't have any good information to provide. They wanted me to send the relay back, but I would have had to send it back to China on my dime before they would send another one out.

I've been thinking about this as well and have reached a similar conclusion. I'm going to change the wiring where the HID kit connects to the stock headlight connector. I'll give it constant gound from another source and provide it power for the low beams with the wire that was already in the stock connector that has power when both high and low beams are switched on. The high beams will get the power it needs by taking the wire that changes to ground when the high beams are switched on and wiring it through a new relay like this: This will change the ground trigger supply to a power output.

I don't know for sure, but FricFrac thought they were solid state based on the picture I took when I first received the shipment. Fixing the wiring would be much easier if the low beams didn't provide power to two of the connector blades. Using two relays will still probably solve the problem (activated by ground), but there should be an easier way.

I don't think the problem is that a single contact is being used for both headlights,as they're only being used to activate a relay. The power for the headlights is now coming directly from the battery and not going through the switch at all. I think I understand why the Halogen and stock lights work, but it's contrary to what's marked on the connector. The black wire connected to the blade marked 'ground' on the connector is actually power. The red wire with the black stripe connected to the blade marked 'pass' gets ground when the low beams are switched on. When high beams are selected the connector still gets power at the blade marked 'ground' and gets ground from the red wire with the white stripe connected to the blade markes 'drive'. So it appears that the new relay with the HID kit doesn't like getting ground where it expects power, and getting power from where it expects ground. Has anyone else run into this? I could buy 2 more relays and install them such that they are activated by getting ground. One from the red wire with the black stripe and the other from the red wire with the white stripe. I already installed relays wired this way since my fans are activated by ground from the PCM.

So here's my very bizarre test results. The plug is labelled from the factory like this: ground on the left, drive on the right, and pass on the bottom Here's what happens when low beams are turned on: power on the left, power on the right, and ground on the bottom Here's what happens when high beams are turned on: power on the left, ground on the right, and nothing on the bottom My voltmeter isn't digital nor very accurate, but all voltages seem to be the same. These results are nothing like what I expected - especially since the ground moves and the halogens work fine. So knowing this I should be able to provide external ground and move around the other wires to make it work properly.

So here's a shot of the beam pattern with the high beams disconnected The cut-off isn't too bad, but the color of one side looks different than the other. Here's a shot from the front Again there seems to be a difference between the sides. I took this last shot because it's the opposite of what I expected to see. The light seems to be coming out of only the top half of the housing, and I expected it to only come out of the bottom half. Putting my hand in front of the bottom part of the housing had no affect on the light pattern, while putting my hand in front of the top half clearly affected the light output.

FricFrac, you appear to have a better understanding of HID lighting that the customer service people I've dealt with so far. I disconnected the relay plug from one of the lights - and it went to low beam! so I think there is a good possibility that there is a problem with the relay. I haven't measured any voltages yet.

So dealing with customer service hasn't been much fun. We've been trading several emails and it seems evident that they really don't have a clue. Hopefully they'll figure it out, or I'll have to figure out how good they're return policy really is. I've tried every combination of wires between the factory harness and the HID harness to no avail. I've even only provided power to one at a time which resulted in high beams and no lights when switching between high and low. Here's a pic of my bulb with the lights turned on, and it's the same whether the brights are on or not. The bulbs extend out when the light turns on and they jump a little when I switch between high and low, but they still stay extended. It appears that the light goes back to it's normal position before they turn off, therefore I see the correct lighting just before they actually shut off.