This whole story begins in February of this year when I ordered Retro-Solutions' 55W Bi-Xenon Digital H13 HID kit. It arrived promptly and seemed like a good quality product. I got it installed about a week after I received it and everything went in fine. After the install, the lights fired up just fine and I was very impressed with the improved light output as my stock lighting was less than ideal. The problems started a couple days later when my passenger side bulb would not ignite. At this point I swapped bulbs, then ballasts but the passenger's side still wouldn't ignite which lead me to believe there was a problem with either the harness, relay or capacitor. I contacted Todd and he sent out a new, slightly longer relay harness (with inline capacitor) as the previous one was a little too short. When I got this harness installed, neither side would ignite. I didn't contact Retro Solutions again as I figured the new problem was the different harness style which I requested.
I forgot about the HIDs until after the semester ended and I had some free time to deal with them again. In mid May I ordered a replacement relay harness (the correct one this time) which arrived without a capacitor so I then ordered that. I installed the harness in the interim (beginning of July) while waiting for the capacitor to arrive. As I am in Canada, my car has daytime running lights (DRLs) so I always drove around with my low beams on to avoid the pulsed voltage that are inherent with DRLs. Correct me if I'm wrong but the capacitor is supposed to help alleviate this problem. Moving on, I received and installed the capacitor at the beginning of August and still everything was working properly. A couple weeks later though, my passenger side light would not ignite again. Once again, I swapped the bulbs then ballasts but the issue was always on the passenger's side. I have been in communication with Retro Solutions since the kit stopped working again and they sent out a new capacitor as the previous one wasn't working. There is now a slight delay from when I switch off the lights to them turning off (as expected with a working capacitor). This unfortunately didn't fix the non-igniting passenger side. Since then I have tested the voltage going into the passenger's ballast and it seems to be fine (consistently 11.9-12 dcv). I have searched a number of forums for people with a similar problem but have come up empty so now I'm here, asking the StangNet community if you have any ideas.
I forgot about the HIDs until after the semester ended and I had some free time to deal with them again. In mid May I ordered a replacement relay harness (the correct one this time) which arrived without a capacitor so I then ordered that. I installed the harness in the interim (beginning of July) while waiting for the capacitor to arrive. As I am in Canada, my car has daytime running lights (DRLs) so I always drove around with my low beams on to avoid the pulsed voltage that are inherent with DRLs. Correct me if I'm wrong but the capacitor is supposed to help alleviate this problem. Moving on, I received and installed the capacitor at the beginning of August and still everything was working properly. A couple weeks later though, my passenger side light would not ignite again. Once again, I swapped the bulbs then ballasts but the issue was always on the passenger's side. I have been in communication with Retro Solutions since the kit stopped working again and they sent out a new capacitor as the previous one wasn't working. There is now a slight delay from when I switch off the lights to them turning off (as expected with a working capacitor). This unfortunately didn't fix the non-igniting passenger side. Since then I have tested the voltage going into the passenger's ballast and it seems to be fine (consistently 11.9-12 dcv). I have searched a number of forums for people with a similar problem but have come up empty so now I'm here, asking the StangNet community if you have any ideas.