Both harnesses were completely melted destroying the bulbs with it..... After 2hrs of meddling around in 30degree weather and blowing one fuse, my headlights are back.. Woulda taken shorter if I had more room to manuver in and the temperature was warmer!!..
Dam high output bulbs!!! Well, they lasted about 15 months b4 going...
Cost me $43 to learn not to use 90/110watt bulbs...
Word of advice!! Don't use PIAA extremes, Nokya artic whites or any other higher wattage bulbs that exceed 85watts!!!

 

shoulda bought some harness to enhance and brighten your high waltage ultimate light experience!

 

Didn't think they were going to melt... Didn't realize the high wattage until ealier.. Oh well... Now I have upgraded harnesses that can handle higher wattage!!..

 

Where do you get the upgraded harnesses?

 

We've been preaching not to use high wattage bulbs... guess you didn't listen.

 

Which bulbs are not high wattage?

 

Bulbs that are the same wattage as stock.

 

RBa, not to sound harsh or anything, but if they lasted 15months, then something else went wrong. I mean dont have a degree in electronics, but I know as much as my brother who has a degree in it. Those wires can take about 160watts before it begins melting the insulation. Believe me we have tested this. Secondly, if a bulb of that wattage stays on for say 1hr, it reaches its peak temperature within 30mins. So that goes the same for the wiring. The wiring reaches it peak within that 30mins.

Now I mean you had it going for 15months, it definetely reached it peak and survived for that long. That should tell you something.

I dont want to be the bearer of bad news, but I will tell you what REALLY happened. With rain and/or snow and/or salt, some of that got up in there. And must have shorted it out. Cause in my opinion there is no way it just felt like burning out today and not and of the prior 15months. Either that or SOMETHING got in there, but my guess is water.

It can easily get near the connector just by washing your car, cause the hood from the top is not perfectly sealed, so water can trickle down in there and cause of "increased" the chance it frying out, and it most likely did.

Dont flame at me, just tell you what I feel an expert would tell you also. Cause I am very expertised in this area, cause my brother is a Expert Electronic Degree and me and him always test wires to see what its "peak level" is before it fries. And normally it is ALWAYS 3times what the normal wattage is currently being applied.

Sorry for the book I just wrote. Hope it was informative.
Dixit

 

Cheap, good white light, and stock wattage

 

I thought Nokya Artic Whites were stock wattage (55W)?

 

Well, I do . All it sounds like he had bad contact somwhere in the harness and that can easily melt insulation since all those watts apply to bad contact point, not to the filament in the bulb. Usually it starts near sockets and after it melted insulation enough - you'd get short circuit and the rest of scenario. It explains BTW how it survived for previous 15 months. The water itself, even salted can't provide enough conduction to short anything at 12 volts. We're talking here about 8 amps and water could leak something less than 50 mA, I believe. So, point is simple - keep contacts clean .

Mike.

 

Yeah. You better give me a $45 discount b/c that's how much I paid for new harnesses.. Are they panasonic or phillips????

 

making fun of my garage huh??

yo its ok stole my PIAA's.. PIAA's werent part of the deal!

 

shiet..that's not cool at all...
my friend's civic headlights melted too...all 3 prongs were melted off...

 

If I had a Digicam, I would post pics... If you can only see the damage that happened...

 

some people are always fallin asleep while the preachers goin on

 

who wants to buy burnt harness's?? there still in my garage.

 

I used to have 85w hyper with HD harness. Both bulbs burned out in about 2-3 months. So I replaced them with krypton, which were in my car for about 8 months before I finally got sick of the poor lighting. Believe me, if you are thinking about getting colored bulbs, DONT. They are better than stock on a clear night, but they do a **** poor job in the rain or fog. And the glare is horrible. Every person I have ever followed (friends and family I mean, not strangers) have told me the glare was really bad.

Anyway, I am off the point. When I took them out, one of the bulbs actually had a bubble on it! I mean a blister or whatever you want to call it where the glass actually melted up into a bubble about a 1/4-3/8" tall. And I had HD harness from day one. The bulb did still work though.

So now I have an HID kit in my car. The lighting is perfect. I approximated the beam area on the ground and the hot spot on a wall, and they match the stock projections almost exactly. And from what I have been told, no glare. Haven't driven in the rain yet. And the kit was $525. Way less than the Nissan HIDs, and the light is much brighter than Nissan's. The bad thing is that when I am going up a hill, I know it is blinding to other drivers. And I do feel bad about that.

by the way, does anyone know if Nissan's HIDs are self-levelling like Lexus? how about Acura?

sorry about the long post.

 

All HIDs that come on cars from the factory must have the self-levelling feature. That's the law. It's like that in Europe also.

However I don't know the if the self-levelling feature works well for all the manufacturers.