Forgive me in advance, but this is going to be one of those typical lame reviews. In short, I installed HIDs from Xtreme HID (purchased through kbcarstuff.com in Canada). The only caveat is that I installed these into aftermarket projector assemblies from carid.com, not the stock assemblies with reflector housings. The install took me about 5 hours, but only because I'm super anal about how everything needs to go together. I removed the front grill (didn't need to), the battery & the air filter housing (more on that below).
The kit itself is fairly nice, especially compared to all the other kit photos I have seen. The wiring is very beefy, with protective sleeves, and includes a relay (lots of posts elsewhere from people who installed without a relay & ended up with lots of problems). The ballasts seem very heavy duty as well & are supposedly completely weathersealed. One thing I remembered from a bunch of other forums is the abundance of complaining concerning the screw down tabs on the ballasts. I can honestly say that if you use a bolt/screw for the tabs on these, they will not be bending or breaking unlike so many others.
The kit:
Comes with gloves, wiring & relays, ballasts, bulbs, 3M sticky tape for the ballasts & a few black zip ties:
I ordered the Xtreme Digital HID kit with Philips 4300k bulbs. They also have kits without Philips bulbs, and a kit called the Volt that is cheaper than the Xtreme.
More of the contents:
The ballast:
The bulb (didn't want to remove the foam), wires & rubber grommet:
Here's the back of the headlight housing with the rear cover removed. The shiny portion is the projector housing, which looks to be cheap-as-dirt plastic. I had to drill a hole in the cover for the new wires, along with a ton of wire cutting & crimp on connectors added. I have it set up now in such a way that if I want to switch back to the regular bulbs, I just have to pull a few plugs and reconnect them differently & I'm good to go.
All of the pictures are from the driver's side, as that was the most difficult to install. The wire loom they provide is virtually ideal for our engine bay. Instead of running anything up front near the radiator, I ran the wires from the battery, back around the inside of the engine bay (following existing wire looms), then along the driver's side loom to the headlight. There are more than enough places to throw on an extra ground or relay. I think I used about 60 zip ties when all was said and done.
Here's the rear cover installed with the new wiring poking out of the new grommet:
Here's a view of the installed wiring on the driver's side. The only zip ties I had were those clear/white ones, so they kind of stand out if you're attentive to detail. The ballast is stuck via the 3M doublesided tape, and I also ran some hi temp silicone all the way around it. If it ever comes loose, which I honestly don't think it will, I can just flip it on the side and zip tie it to the wire loom.
The only 2 problems I encountered with the install both dealt with the air filter housing. There are 3 bolts holding it in place, 2 of which are direct access. The 3rd is on the bottom of the housing in a little recess very close to the back of the headlight. It took me close to an hour getting that bolt tightened because there is no room for a wrench or a socket. Really wish I had an offset 10mm. By the time I finished Saturday night around 8pm, I fired up the lights. Only the passenger's side was working. Great. I just stared at that damned air filter housing and let out a huge amount of profanity for 5 minutes or so before giving the housing a goodnight middle finger and calling it quits. Next morning, I popped the hood & mentally thought about what I had done the previous day. I attacked the wires I had zip tied on the back of the headlight first, because I remember bumping into them quite a bit while I was trying to tighten the lower air filter housing bolt. Sure enough, one of my connectors had come undone. Both lights worked. Good, a step in the right direction. I went out for a quick drive tonight to see the fruit of my labor. WARNING: really crappy photos follow. I should have dialed in all my settings manually from the last time, but was too anxious to "see the light" and forgot.
I'm kind of facing the wall a bit in this one. The passenger's light is hitting the wall in that brightest section, but at least it gives more of an idea of the cutoff.
Another showing the cutoff. Yes, these are bright, but the picture makes them brighter than they really are.
All in all, the kit is good. Takes a few seconds for the bulbs to reach full output, but no biggie. Certainly much better than the halogens they replaced, but I think because my projectors are so crappy, I just don't have any of the awe factor. Maybe I was just expecting far too much, or am simply just not used to them yet.