EBAY HID ballast - buyer beware

I just wanted to let everyone know about a recent experience I had with my truck and a set of HID's I bought off of ebay about 6 months ago. I found a smoking deal on HID's $53 shipped to my door out of cali, with me being on the West coast this is like two days ... bottom line, I am excited. The ad mentioned they were slim ballasts, I thought thats cool, I dislike the big ballasts. My 300 has 6 ballasts in it and it is hard trying to find a place to put all of those, it is the price you pay to be sexy I guess! Anyways, I ordered them up... they got to my house and they were not really what I was expecting. These were not like any other slim ballast i had ever seen, these are shaped like a barrel or big ass capacitor. (I will provide a picture or them later). I wire them up, they work as expect, cool, HIDs in my truck and it looks pretty hot.

A month goes by no issues, I have been happy with my HIDs. sometimes I would get the normal misfire of the ballast but for the most part they worked. So there I was cruising through town, and eff around... I swear there is a chemical plant burning down. I can taste the smell because it was so strong... It was gross, about a couple blocks later it went away so I didnt think much of it. I am not sure how i noticed but one of my lights was not working... After some investigation, I found out that I was having the melt down, the ballast swelled up and blew out the side. I removed it and fortunately I had an extra ballast laying around so I put it in there to be legal. I emailed the person I got them from and they were happy to replace it. I had to pay for the shipping down there but I got a new one back within a week.

I replaced the ballast on my truck so i had matching ballast again. Low and behold about 2 months later my other one goes out. I was about an hour from home and you know it... the chemical smell. I knew exactly what happened... I am kinda pissed by now... I mean seriously I have HIDs in all my other cars and never have had problems like this. I email the person I got them from and he tells me, ship it down enclose $5 and I will send you a new one. Stomping my feet... I tell him OK

I put my spare ballast in the truck and put the blown ballast on my porch... I cant even put them in my garage because they stink up the house from the obnoxious fumes these things emit. I never mailed it off because I didnt want to give this guy another dime. so it has been a little over a month it has been sitting there, on the porch.

Yesterday on my way to work, I am driving in the dark, HIDs blinging cause I like it like that. Low and behold pooof I smell burnt wires and I loose my low beams, yes both of them. Now if I lost you, I am running one good ballast, my spare and one crappy ballast. I switch over to my high beams and they work... Thank god.

I get home and start working on my truck because I need to drive it in the morning. I start looking around and I cannot find any burnt wires... then again they are all loomed up. I am doing what I like to call the sniff test. Smelling for burnt wires, I am not really smelling anything very strong... and there she blows. I notice the damn ballast is pushing out the side... it didnt smell like the others when it went and I am not sure why it took out both my lights other than the melting cause it to short out but it didnt blow any fuses.

So this is just an FYI.. watch out for these slim ballast kits on EBAY. I am gonna see if I can get my money back from this guy.

I will post pictures of the ballast later...

Just interested... What would you do?

Cut your losses and order some from DDM Tuning. FYI HID retro-fits are illegal in most states.

WOW, the DDM tuning prices are really good!

Im a rebel... What else can I say. Adding to that list... most good shades of window tint and draggin your truck on the asphalt.

ttiwwop lol.. i can get you real slim hids for 80 shipped lmk

I run a DDM HID in my bike. They sometimes ship kinda slow, but they respond to emails and phone calls promptly.

I went ahead and ordered a couple sets from them... Some for my wife for her Bday and some 55w high beams for my truck

We use the DDM lights too. No problems at all.

I'd recommend you spend the extra $12 or so to get the headlight harness. Even on stock headlights it's a good idea. More important with HID's. You'll take a major load off your headlight switch, high/low beam switch, and the associated connectors and wiring. They're kind of marginal in these trucks anyway. The more obvious benefit is the direct battery power the harness provides tends to prevent the flickering/fail to start problems that you might sometimes see with HID's.

Richard

Yeah in my Chrysler, I installed some retro HIDs and found that when my car was running it was like a disco strobe light show... off it was fine. I did a little research and this is what I came up with, inline capacitor. They had been working great ever since.

The cap trick is cool just keep in mind it will not do the job I'm describing with the headlight harness. Without the harness you still have the heavy current load on the factory wiring/switches and they're not up to the job, on our trucks (and most other vehicles, too). The relay harness powers them straight off the battery and changes the factory harness to a very low-draw circuit just to operate the relays. It's pretty much a plug-and-play deal, even easier than the cap job you did on the car.

This is especially important for you 95-up Chevy/GMC guys because the high/low beam switch is integrated into the multifunction switch, which is pretty much every damn function in your steering column. Sux to replace and it's over $100 for the part.

Richard