Hello All,
I'm new to the forum, but just reading through all of the very helpful posts in this forum motivated me to compose a post about my own installation experience. I had been thinking about adding HIDs after a recent night-time road trip with my family. There are a lot of deer on our country roads here in Texas, and my wife saw several deer that I never saw. It seemed to me that the stock halogens on my SEL just didn't light up the sides of the road as much as I'd like. I've used fog lights for that function on previous vehicles, but this car didn't come with them.
After much reading of the various threads on this forum. I ordered from Retro-Solutions the 9012 55W Digital 5000K kit (standard ballasts, not the slim ones). I decided on the standard size ballasts because it looked like there was plenty of room, and I didn't want the extra little dongle that is part of the wiring for the slim ballasts flopping around. I also decided on 55W HIDs because I was concerned about the light-out errors that I've read about with 35W kits. I decided on 5000K because I didn't want the blue "ricer" look, and it seemed that the more pure white of the 5000K color better matches the color of the LED light bars on my Edge. I had also read that this color temp puts more visible light on road than higher temperatures.
I got the HID package with the 2011 Edge-specific harness, hoping to avoid any problems with flickering that I've read about. I hoped that the wiring harness with the extra capacitor offered by Retro-Solutions would prevent that problem. I scrutinized A LOT of other vendor sites, and never found another vendor with a harness specific for the 2011 Edge. That's the main reason that I went with the Retro-Solutions kit.
The only real challenge of the entire installation was deciding where to mount the ballasts. I ended up mounting them on the sides of the engine bay just behind the factory light housings. I was able to use existing holes, except I did drill one hole on the right side because the hole that I wanted to use for the ballast mounting bracket was blocked by the coolant reservoir. To get to the back side of the factory holes, I took the screws out of the wheel well liner so I could snake my hand behind it and install the nuts and put a wrench on them.
Here are a couple of pics of the ballast mounting locations.
First, the left side ballast and relay mounts:
Then the right side ballast mount:
For the wiring, I almost exclusively followed the wiring diagram from the Retro-Solutions FAQ Page labeled "Single beam kit with optional harness with capacitor link (daytime lamps, pulsed):" The wiring diagram was the only place in the instructions that I could find that specifically showed how to wire the part of the harness with the capacitor on it. I checked and rechecked the wiring to make sure that it exactly followed the wiring diagram.
The tabs included with the supplied 9012 HID bulbs exactly fit the holes in the light housing. I was happy to see that there seemed to be only one way to insert the bulbs. The three tabs made a kind of "T" shape when looked at from the end, and this only fit the housing one way. I didn't need to do any sanding to get them to fit. They were quite tight, but probably as they should be to make sure that the bulbs stay aimed properly.
I filed and/or sanded the paint off all of the ground mounting points as instructed.
You don't know how thrilled and relieved I was for them to light up and work the very first time that I turned them on!
I took some before and after photos of the factory halogens vs. the HIDs so I could post the results here. I am very impressed with the sharp cut-off. I don't see any difference at all in the "quality" of the cut-off of the new HIDs compared to the original halogens. The only thing that I can see in the photos is that the HID light spread below the cut-off line seems more uniform across the width. The stock halogen lights seem to have hot spots on the wall shot.
Just for background, I used a Canon S3IS with manual aperture capability, so I could "force" the camera to use the same F-stop for the pictures. I hoped that this would help make a better comparison of the light output and cut-off.
First, here is a shot of the stock halogens pointed at the wall of a local supermarket. I was parked about 50 feet from the wall, and used the same distance for the later HID shots. I shot the photos from the door sill, standing just outside the car. I tried some from the driver's seat, but the dash blocked a lot of the light on the ground near the car.
Here is the photo of the installed HIDs with the car parked at the same location, with the same camera F-stop setting (F5.0). The cut-off is sharp, and the light seems more uniform across the wall. One thing that I did notice is the crescent-shaped areas of light on the ground just in front of the car. These were about 10 feet in front of the car, and not visible from the driver's seat unless I lean way up and forward.
I later found a fence at a local car wash to take some more photos of the HIDs. Unfortunately, I don't have any "before" photos of this fence with the factory halogens. But these pics certainly demonstrate the sharp cut-off and no glare above the cut-off line. It does look like maybe I need to adjust the right side down a bit, but at this point I kind of like the right side being a little higher to light up the deer better...
This is a zoomed pic of the same wall, same camera setting:
I took the car out to a dark road to demonstrate the visibility.
First picture is with low beams.
Second picture is with high beams. I couldn't get the forum posting function to accept a bigger picture, because the high beam photo in full size really shows the far-off fence line really lit up well. These HIDs do seem to light up the sides of the road better, which is the main thing that I was hoping to achieve.
Anyway, this is my experience. I'm very satisfied with the lights and with the quality of the kit from Retro-Solutions.
If they crap out in the next few weeks/months, I'll post an update.
