Installing the H4 HID kit in your FJR
Pg 3 of 5: Lamp Housing Placement of HID Ballast and Ignitor |
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There are a few limitations to consider when deciding where to place your ballasts and ignitors.
In the case of the "Low-Beam Only" kit the ballast and ignitor come hard-wired to each other, and you don't want to try to cut into these high-voltage lines or modify them in any way:
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H4 "Low-Beam Only" Kit (note: HID capsules are not shown here) |
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In the case of the "High-Beam/Low-Beam" kit, you need to be mindful of the somewhat hefty amount of wire harness that you'll need to stash somewhere in the nose of the cowling, as it would be problematic to try to run excess cabling through the hot engine bay area.
At first, I thought I would be extremely clever and try to mount both ballasts in-between the stock headlight housings, as seen below:
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Unfortunately, the vertically-positioned ballast strikes the nose sub-frame when you try to install it here, so I elected to mount just the one ballast in between the headlight assembly (horizontally), and find another place for the second ballast and ignitor.
Look closely at that little half-circle "shelf" that resides between the two ballasts in the photo above. This provides a support area that a good portion of the ballast can reside against, so a little sissors work to the very strong double-sided sticky tape is required, as seen below:
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Now you can place the ballast in the area in between the headlight housings as seen, using the strong double-sided tape to hold it there. However, the tape alone isn't going to do the job; you definitely want to beef up the holding power here. So before taping the ballast in place, you want to carefully drill three small holes on either side of the ballast (right side pointed to by three small yellow arrows below) that you will use to insert long zip-ties to help retain the ballast in place:
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Now to place the ignitor for this ballast. The ignitor (being much smaller than a ballast) fits nicely right above the horizontally-positioned ballast. However, for it to fit flush agast the lamp housing, you need to lose the little mounting flange. A dremel makes short work of this:
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Now you can use the part of the yellow double-sided tape that you cut off for the ballast, and cut a small portion of it to tape to the top of the ignitor. After taping it to the stock housing as shown below, coil up the excess cabling and zip-tie it cleanly in place, and stuff the coiled harness as shown. Volia, the first ballast/ignitor has a new home, and located immediately adjacent to the HID capsules! This particular ballast/ignitor services the LEFT HID capsule. |
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Also note how the OEM rubber boots are re-installed over the HID capsules, and common electrician's tape covers the small openings where the factory H4 connectors used to reside. Don't fail to do this, otherwise the reflector housings will eventually suffer from dust/moisture intrusion. |
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