Yea Im sure I didn't need to scrape the paint but after installing and removing the kit a few times I didn't want to chance it. It was a lot of work taking off the bumper because I had the ballast and wires hidden deep inside and was hard to get to unless I remove the bumper.

 

Actually, to my surprise when testing some + and- wires for DRL I found that wiring to a bolt that has paint may not be suitable enough to ground. There's also a particular bolt on the car in the engine I tried that wasn't properly grounding the wire. I kept getting shocked when I got off the car and let go of my driver side door. It was a bolt on the passenger side near the a.c. Pipes. Weird.

 

i got my HID fog light kit from XenonDepot. No stalling, no problems.

I used what looked like a grounding point, a bunch of brown wires running to a stainless steel bolt on the drivers side, and on the passengers side I used the horn bolt after I scraped off all the paint on the body, bolt, horn bracket. No problems

 

So its been almost a week since I expose metal for my grounding and I have not stalled once. I tried everything I did before including leaving also lights on without any stalling.

 

can you take a pic of your grounding points, please? my below points are still giving me almost stalling issues when i turn on the HIDs. but the frequency is much less compared to my old grounding points. going to try diff points tomorrow

driver side: battery terminal
passenger side: bolt on firewall behind plastic box

 

Guys, i think i found a solution. I used to have my drive-side ballast mounted wedged on the right side of the engine bay very close to my ECU. I moved it to the front side of my engine bay in front of the battery. Moving it away from the ECU (at ignition, it emits a large disturbance as mentioned by bassguitarist) which causes the car wanting to stall out.

99.999999% my car would almost stall when i turned my HIDs on (when ballast was located close to the ECU).

Since i've relocated it about a week ago, this issue hasn't reoccurred yet and i use my lights twice a day when i drive (morning/night).

Give it a shot, let me know if this helps you.

 

As far as high quality kits go, I use Vleds dot com. I live in seattle and they are just north of me about 3 hours or so. Thats who im going to use for my conversion. After reading this thread I am a little worried about running HID on my fogs. Using LED for sure on the H/L

 

Interesting.

I also had my left side ballast up near the ECU and the fuse box. So maybe that was my issue as well.

I'm glad to hear that. I'm planning a projector headlight retro and my biggest worry was the stalling coming back once I get those HIDs back in.

 

Tofu,

Yes very true of your observation. The ballast throws a ton of RF trash at ignition of the HID light. The radiated emissions causes the ECU to freak out and shut down. That's why some people have had success with a solid ground to the frame to prevent stalling. If the ballast has a metal case, grounding it acts like a farraday cage bleeding the RFI/EMI to ground. Poor designed ballasts with little to no RF shielding, no matter how good a ground will interfere with the ECU.

Keep us posted with the install. Which brands exibit no stalling issue, and locations of the ballasts away from the ECU near the battery.

 

Will do. My current PNP ballasts are from DDM Tuning.

I have had a Morimoto retrofit kit sitting around for a long time now. I'll get around to doing that whenever i get some free time.

 

Update - I completed my retrofit one week ago yesterday and have experienced 0 stalls or anything of the like. Running like a champ. I even purposefully started the car and then immediately turned on the headlights (that was when I noticed the biggest tendency to stall) and the car didn't even flinch.

I was sure to mount the ballasts as far away from the ECU as possible and so far, so good. The morimoto ballasts also seem to be higher quality so I'm sure that helps too.