HIDs not working
 

I hooked up my Xentec 8000K HIDs to make sure they worked and nothing happened when I turned the car on. I have a relay harness hooked up to the ballasts also. Any ideas?

I have heard some cases where a wire needed to be flipped. I can't recall exactly which wire (as I didn't need to with my HID's), perhaps you have tried that already or someone who has done it could tell you?

FWIW, Xentec is a good brand. That's what I've got on my Buick and they're great.
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yes pay attention to the colors, on the 2000+ the Yellow wire is 12V and the black is ground. Make sure that you have the Red of the HID on the same terminal as the yellow on the car wiring

My HIDs have a blue and black wire for plugging into the factory connector but yea I made sure black went into black and blue into yellow.

Try this:

I believe when I was first assembling my Xentec HID kit, the metal terminals popped out of the connector fairly easily. Try connecting those directly to the battery (or in your case, the underhood positive terminal and a ground) and see if it will fire up.

This is what led me to the conclusion that my relay was at fault originally.
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Did you change your headlight fuse to a 30 amp?

That's how I hooked it up the first time and it didn't work. Would I be able to hook up the ballasts directly to the stock harness just to test the HIDs?


No, didn't think I had to with the relay harness but I'll try it.

you dont have to change the Fuse. I have 55W hids with a relay harness and have the stock fuse.

double check your connections again, if all else fails contact the company and let them know your set was DOA

Xentecs DOA? You don't need to change the fuse in the car for the headlights, all the passenger headlight has to do is trip a relay which takes minimal current

Check all the connections because the pins like to come loose

Lemme check with you on this, I'm a little bit confused. You connected the wires going to the ballast (not the relay, or the bulb) directly to the battery?

If so, and it didn't work, then something is DOA. Did your ballast make any noise at all when you did this? If it didn't, then the ballast is dead. If it did, it might still be, but it could also be the bulb or the ignitor.

You CAN try hooking them up to the stock harness...it won't harm anything...but if connecting it directly to the battery didn't work, that almost certainly won't either.
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I connected the one positive and two negatives from the relay to the battery, not the actual ballasts themselves.

Ah, okay. Try popping the two metal terminals from the ballast connector (the one that connects to the relay) and try connecting those to the battery. They should come out with a small screwdriver.

If it works, then your HIDs are fine, and something in your wiring or the relay itself is borked.
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Thank you so much Dan. I deviated from your instructions slightly in that I used a spare car battery (my hood is currently frozen shut) and I used small jumper leads to connect the pins to the battery (I didn't want to accidentally mess something up and void my warranty), but it worked. Both lights and ballasts work. So does this mean it's the relay harness?

No problem!

Possibly it could be that you have a faulty relay, but I wouldn't doom it just yet. When your hood gets unfrozen, double check all your wiring and connections again. If you're absolutely sure that you connected everything right (try reversing the polarity of the wiring even, you never know if those guys might have mixed up the colors!) then I would try another relay. If nothing else, you can run it off of the stock wiring, although in my opinion it's always preferable to run HID's with a good relay.
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Had my dad show me how to test a relay with an ohm meter and the relay is fine. Also checked the in-line fuse and it's perfectly fine as well. Guess I'll have to make attempt 2 at hooking it up in the car. Could anyone with an 00+ bonneville tell me where specifically to hook the positive and negative? I hooked the positive to the positive terminal and the negative to a ground that was right in front of the fuse box.