nc-grayson
Member
Backstory: I got a slightly used, already retro'd set of headlights here in the classifieds. Older Morimoto Mini D2S, older TRS wiring harness, panamera switchbacks, new OEM denso ballasts. Installed a week ago, everything was ok for the first 500 miles until I hit a bump on a road trip and the passenger side went out. Pulled over, made sure connections were tight, unplugged ballast, plugged it back in, I had light and was on my way. Chalked it up to a loose connector.
Got home from my road trip and uninstalled everything to make room for wiring the switchbacks and tidying up the routing of the wiring harness. I hadn't wired them previously because I just needed to get on the road for work.
Got the switchbacks wired in no problem.
I go into test mode to make sure it's all peaches before buttoning everything back up. Now, the driver's side isn't firing - ballast definitely not "buzzing", thus definitely no light. Pull out the multi meter and I get I get ~12v at the ballast connector on the non-working driver's side, strange. Swapped ballasts back and forth, and both fire on the passenger side, so I can rule those out as possible causes.
I monkeyed with it for 30 minutes until I'd gone through every test I could think of to figure this out. I unplugged the main harness connector from the control box as a last resort, and I was miraculously back in business.
Fast forward to today, on my way home from work. Hit a bump, passenger shut off and instantly came back on. Hit another bump, same thing. This happens 4-5 times over 4-5 bumps until it just didn't come back on anymore. It's dark, and cold, and I'm too beat to investigate tonight.
I'm all but convinced I have a bum harness from TRS, (remember....it was used), but before I go throwing money at it and ordering a new harness, is that likely? Are there other common points of failure in these systems that I'm overlooking?
I'm going to pull out the multi-meter again tomorrow, swap ballasts again, and go back through my steps from a few days ago to try and diagnose.
It's really a system with not many places to fail, and should be easy to identify where the issue arises - unless something inside the "box" is wonky.
It's strange that at first it was passenger side due to bumps, driver's due to uninstalling and re-installing, and now passenger side again due to several bumps.
Got home from my road trip and uninstalled everything to make room for wiring the switchbacks and tidying up the routing of the wiring harness. I hadn't wired them previously because I just needed to get on the road for work.
Got the switchbacks wired in no problem.
I go into test mode to make sure it's all peaches before buttoning everything back up. Now, the driver's side isn't firing - ballast definitely not "buzzing", thus definitely no light. Pull out the multi meter and I get I get ~12v at the ballast connector on the non-working driver's side, strange. Swapped ballasts back and forth, and both fire on the passenger side, so I can rule those out as possible causes.
I monkeyed with it for 30 minutes until I'd gone through every test I could think of to figure this out. I unplugged the main harness connector from the control box as a last resort, and I was miraculously back in business.
Fast forward to today, on my way home from work. Hit a bump, passenger shut off and instantly came back on. Hit another bump, same thing. This happens 4-5 times over 4-5 bumps until it just didn't come back on anymore. It's dark, and cold, and I'm too beat to investigate tonight.
I'm all but convinced I have a bum harness from TRS, (remember....it was used), but before I go throwing money at it and ordering a new harness, is that likely? Are there other common points of failure in these systems that I'm overlooking?
I'm going to pull out the multi-meter again tomorrow, swap ballasts again, and go back through my steps from a few days ago to try and diagnose.
It's really a system with not many places to fail, and should be easy to identify where the issue arises - unless something inside the "box" is wonky.
It's strange that at first it was passenger side due to bumps, driver's due to uninstalling and re-installing, and now passenger side again due to several bumps.
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