fog lights

[yzboy85]

so one of my fog lights died and I'm looking to replace it

I looked on several sites and through ebay for replacement and it seems like a majority of them are HID and it seems like most people on here go with HIDs as well. However I can't really seem to find a straight answer in terms of what exactly I need to run HIDs from most of these sites. Do I need a conversion kit for HID fog lights? If so what brands/kits do you guys recommend? I found an 880 HID kit on vvme for about 30$. There's an option on this kit for a relay harness..do I need that as well? Are HIDs really worth getting over just, say, some 880 LED replacement bulbs such as these?

If I do go with HIDs id also like to get some HID headlights soon after, but I plan on getting some of those spyder projectors off ebay at some point so I'll hold off on that. I see that some of those might already come with HIDs in them, and some don't depending on who I'm buying from. Is that true, and if so do I need a kit to hook those up as well? The descriptions on ebay leave something to be desired.... Can I just get a set of normal projectors (im guessing they come with halos?) and get a kit from vvme or wherever and hook that all up?

Sorry for the noobish question but I don't have much experience with wiring/electronics on cars and I can't really find a good explanation

[atj8]

hids are night and day difference vs stock bulbs...read this http://www.grandprixforums.net/threa...HID-thread-***

[Russosaur]

LED replacements from what iv seen are mostly for the color and not light output. Vvmes 880 kit will work just make sure its 35w or you will melt your housings. In my opinion I see no point in putting HIDs in the fog light housings based upon you will generally just blind people with them on and after all they are just fog lights.

As for the spyder one piece projectors, they have their issues. The light output isn't the greatest. They also suffer from bad brackets. Which means you will have headlight bounce. Others have fixed this by putting weather stripping under the assembly on the bumper. What a decent amount of people run is HIDs in the stock headlight housings assuming your stock ones are not foggy and leaky. It will grant a lot more light output of halogens, while this isn't the most ideal thing to do because the light scatter will be bad, you will have to aim them down as not to blind people, also you won't have any high beams.

You could if you have the time and ability is to retrofit a projectors into stock housings. For the most ideal light output without blinding others. They also look killer, I can post links to thread about how to retrofit in the morning if someone doesn't beat me to it. Also a guy on here named Classy Pontiac retrofits projectors starting at $375 if I remember he can do halos also.

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[yzboy85]

I just don't get it because there are things like these that say they're HIDs but plug and play and no ballast or anything required..

[cmal37]

Those are regular bulbs. LEDs purely look nice they do nothing for output. In my lighting experience. HIDs in the fog lights are the best. I've had stock bulbs, Philips Crystal Visions, and LEDs. Put HIDs in there and nothing came close to the output. As for headlights I owned the eBay projectors, looked cool, light output wasnt the best. I went back to stock housings with HIDs
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[luckyg817]

Idk what year is your GP but mine is an 04. I bought the ebay projectors and I actually regret it some. The output is pretty bad and the beam is scattered. I tried using HIDS in the projectors but it didn't help much. I eventually had to put HIDS in the fogs to help see at night. If you have the time or money, I would go the retro fit way. Maybe even retrofitting the halos if you want the halo look.

[yzboy85]

so if I wanted to run HID fog lights all I would need is a kit such as this? Would I need the optional relay harness? What's the difference between "standard" and "digital slim" kits? And then if I wanted to go with HID headlights as well I would go with something like this?

After looking at those spyder projectors some more it seems as though they come with 2 different bulbs, a 9005 hi and h1 low, whereas (correct me if I'm wrong) we have a single hi/low 9007 stock (for 97-03). If I were to try to put HIDs in those projectors at some point I would have to choose one of the 2 bulb types and get a kit for that type, otherwise I would need 4 ballasts and it would be constant 4 HIDs and bright as hell, correct? So basically I'd end up with projectors that only have with only one bulb when they're supposed to have 2...

I like the look of those projectors, but obviously I'd like better light output (my stock headlights suck BAADDD) and also if I end up going HID for fog lights I would want my headlights to match color-wise, which is why I'm interested if putting HIDs in them is an option.

Maybe I'm making things more complicated than they should be but I'm just trying to figure out what I want ideally before actually spending the money on anything, and as I said its all rather confusing to me.

[Russosaur]

That kit will work yes, all the relay harness does it get power directly from the battery insted of from the stock wires. I would use it for peace of mind but its not needed that's me tho. The difference between the standard and digital slim is from what I can see the size of the ballast. Slim ballasts are thinner and not as big overall.

If you get the spyder headlights you only want to put HID's in the low beam (h1). The high beams with HIDs would be worthless because of the warmup time needed for the bulbs they would never be fully warmed p. Plus it will lower the lifespan of the ballasts and bulbs with then being turned off then on a bunch as per oncoming traffic. What I would do without shelling out almost 200 for the spyder headlights is to buy some new replacement housings off ebay for about 60 bucks. Then swap your original brackets off your old assembles which is important because the brackets that would come with the replacements are flimsy and cause headlight bouncing issues. If you are going to put HIDs in stock housings you are going to need the 9007 bulb, I would not recommend the Bi-Xenon kit vvme has because the filament will not line up correctly and you have no high beams plus the build quality of the bulb is lacking and it shakes the filament causing headlight bounce. So I would go with the single beam 9007. I went with digital slim ballasts just because of the size difference.

You could get LED fog bulbs just so you can match the color of your headlights, but it that would be of appearance only.

Here is a thread on how to retrofit projectors in stock housings if you feel like doing a project.
http://www.grandprixforums.net/threa...retrofit+97-03

Here is Classy's listing for retrofits also:
http://www.grandprixforums.net/threa...fit+projectors

[yzboy85]

When you say I'd have no high beams with the bi xenon kit do you mean they literally won't work or that they are just useless? I don't mind not having high beams, I only wanted the hi/low kit so that someone looking at my car in the daytime for an inspection would see a visual difference between high and low. Having only functional low beam is fine for me (as long as it gives me decent visibility, which from the sound of things it definitely should), its just I'd rather not have to deal with switching out bulbs for an inspection for a few extra bucks if possible

[Russosaur]

When you say I'd have no high beams with the bi xenon kit do you mean they literally won't work or that they are just useless? I don't mind not having high beams, I only wanted the hi/low kit so that someone looking at my car in the daytime for an inspection would see a visual difference between high and low. Having only functional low beam is fine for me (as long as it gives me decent visibility, which from the sound of things it definitely should), its just I'd rather not have to deal with switching out bulbs for an inspection for a few extra bucks if possible

They are useless and I wouldn't classify them as high beams if I inspected a car with them. It never raised the beam up like your typical halogen would. Here is a example of what mine do, keep in mind I have the hi/low wires flipped because it gave me better lows then how its supposed to be. I have 5000k and wouldn't recommend going any higher. What the bulbs do to "replicate" different filament position is move the bulb forward or backward as too focus the beam more. While this works with other style headlight housings, not so much on the Grand Prix's. For the record, do you have 97-03 or 04+ Prix? Me personally I would just put stockers back in for inspection it only takes like 10min.

[yzboy85]

They are useless and I wouldn't classify them as high beams if I inspected a car with them. It never raised the beam up like your typical halogen would. Here is a example of what mine do, keep in mind I have the hi/low wires flipped because it gave me better lows then how its supposed to be. I have 5000k and wouldn't recommend going any higher. What the bulbs do to "replicate" different filament position is move the bulb forward or backward as too focus the beam more. While this works with other style headlight housings, not so much on the Grand Prix's. For the record, do you have 97-03 or 04+ Prix? Me personally I would just put stockers back in for inspection it only takes like 10min.

I have an 02 and as I said I'm fine with not having high beams, just thought that if it could save me the trouble of putting the stockers back in for an extra 10 bucks for the kit it'd be worth it to me, but if they're really that awful then I won't bother with the hi/low kit.

[yzboy85]

also I found a few sets of spyder projectors being sold with hid kits, such as here, which seems like an alright deal. My concern though is I have no idea the quality of the hid kit, and I read some sites that said people try to cheap out using DC kits which have problems when AC is better quality (or vice versa, not 100% sure which). Also the spyder projectors have a single plug for both the hi/low bulbs normally, when you throw the hid kit into the mix while still claiming to have hi/low I'm not sure what that does with the wiring on them.

[Russosaur]

Most of the HID kits you find on ebay are cheap and usually don't last too long from what I have heard, I have a vvme kit because others have had good luck with them. I had one of my ballasts die and they have terrible customer service. I send 5 emails, called 3 times left 2 voice mails and never got a reply until one day I called I got through and it cost me 10$ to have it replaced because shipping from china. If I would do it again I would go with TRS or Diode Dynamics for the warranty and customer service but they are more expensive. I haven't put HID's in spyder projectors, so someone else with them would have to chime in on the wiring but it is possible, search around you can probably find something.

You make the call on the Bi-Xenon vs Single beam, what i showed it in my video is my results from them. If you get the Bi-Xenon you have to move some pins around in the connectors because its wired wrong by default from the HID harness.

[luckyg817]

I think what the question really is, is what exactly are you wanting to achieve here? Are you going for the look or visibility? I bought the cheap HID kits before and they have lasted me a good while. My first one lasted me like a year or 2. You can usually find those now at any audio shop, well at least here in TX. Idk about up north. The wiring is not really that bad, it's really just positive and negative wires. The ballast connectors are fool proof as there is only one way to connect them. The only one that could be a little tricky would be the actual connector to the headlights. The last kit I bought, the shape of the connector was backwards (negative where positive was). I just had to flip it around and kind of force it in there and electrical taped around it. Also a heads up, H1 bulbs are kind of hard to find. Most autopart stores carry very few of them in stock. The bulbs that came with the spyder projectors burned out within a few weeks and it took me a while to find some, I had to end up ordering some online.