anyone happen to put in a hi/low hid kit in their ram? i just bought a nice 35 watt kit and installed it in my truck but when i turn the lights on either hi or low beam all they will do is flicker on and off. i have tried everything and have no idea what to do to fix it. thanks

 

Ok, before someone else blast you with the "use the search function"...........this is a well documented problem with Ram's. The onboard computer thinks that you have a bulb out because your HID kit is only 35w. It is looking for 55w, which is the standard halogen headlight. You will have to purchase a cancellor/flicker free kit and install to fix the issue. It is basically a resistor that tricks the computer into thinking that is enough resistance for it to supply power to the lights. Hope this helps.

 

Yep ^^ IIRC, its the 20watt 8ohm resistors you need. Some say to just get'em from RadioShack, but there was a thread here a little while back where the guy put those on, and the got WAY too hot to keep on there. I never saw the end result of the fix, but thats what is needed to fix your problem. With the 06+ models we need a relay kit to keep'em on (but a lot of us still have random flickering, depending on the brand you went with..... uhh uummmmm)

 

do a search nfor any pf my posts having to do with HIDs flickering and you will find it. I must have typed the same thing at least a dozen times. Im sry, its lengthy but simple and I just dont feel like typing oit all tonight. But do a search for HIDs and look for my posts and you will find it

 

thanks guys, if i'd of known i woulda just got the 55 watt kit. oh well live and learn.

 

you knows what funny too, the girl from w/e the hid site is in the market place said that you dont need 55's, so they're site doesnt carry em. while every other site does make a 55 kit

 

that was actually me that had that issue with them getting too hot. I actually contacted a manufacturer of load equalizing resistors that makes them for bikes and he is making me a custom set of resistors that are way overkill for the amount of energy dissipation that will be occuring and thus make the resistor much cooler,


an 8 ohm resistor burns about 20 watts of power on a 12v circuit. with a resistor only rated for 20 watts it's easy to see why it get's so hot. The ones being made for me have aluminum heatsinks and the resistor itself is 8 ohm and rated for 100 watts. This should fix my issue, but I do not have a flickering issue like the op. Mine only will flicker once and it's very very infrequent. I mean like once a week or less than that. So IDK if it's just normal, i've seen a lot of hid kits in cars that flicker occasionally so i may just be worrying about nothing.

 

Ya mind droppin the dime on how much dime you dropped on those resistors Ben?

Mine flicker so randomly, its crazy. I can ride around for an hour and have'm flick 10 times, or just once or twice. Its pretty much guranteed to do it though, at least once. If this fixes it for you, I might have to consider going with whoever you're going with. Thanks for chiming in

 

they're pretty steep on the price, 40 bucks for the pair with shipping, I have done a lot of research about the dodge ram and have found that for the 06-up models HID kits are very tricky.

When I installed mine I used a four pin relay that delivers power directly from the battery to the two ballasts for the headlights. It uses the driver side headlight harness to merely provide the switch for the relay. This works pretty darn well for me, I don't get a flicker that I can sit here and say 100 % that it is flickering, I have used highly reflective surfaces such as a mirror to get a good look at the arc inside when the truck is running and I do not notice any minor flickering that some people report that occurs so fast it is very hard for the eye to see while driving. Also I do not have the issue like the OP where the lights don't even arc they just flicker like strobe lights, some people have it where they will arc but shut off after a min or less and just act retarded.

What happens to me is i'll be cruisin down the road for what could be weeks sometimes and all of the sudden the lights just brighten up and flicker kinda, almost like when you first turn the HID's on and they are really really bright and then dim a small bit, I have talked to many owners of HID's and even people with cars with factory HID's and they report seeing something similiar as well. Which makes me believe i'm chasing down a problem that isn't even there and I just am overreacting to something. My main reason for being so persistant in determining if this is an issue or not is because flickering becomes hard on the ballasts and bulbs and they will wear out quickly. I don't wanna be replacing **** every three months just to have bright lights, i'll spend 60 bux on a set of silverstar ultra halogens lol.

So on the LX platform cars it is recommended to place a capacitor in the switch side of the relay basically having it in between the relay and the truck wiring itself. The theory for this is the capacitor evens out the voltage fluctuations caused by the CANBUS system detecting a lack of a halogen bulb on the end of the circuit. This DOES NOT WORK on from what I can tell 08 rams and i'm pretty damn sure it won't work on 06-up because 06-08 are all the same I believe it correlates with the move from the old school sentry key system to the new with integrated keyless and the CANBUS system,

I tried doing everything with capacitors I musta bought 20 at radioshack and tried them out. Each one regardless of capacitance value would cause the truck wiring to detect a fault or something and would cut all power to the lights, so with capacitor my HID's would turn on and then maybe after 30 seconds - five minutes just shut off for a few seconds, not flicker just turn off and then come back. So capacitor is a no go for the trucks,

So i ordered a set of cancellor/anti flicker harnesses from intenseHID tried them out, they cause the same symptoms as the capacitor in the relay, while better than the caps it still caused similiar symptoms.

I was then on stealthauto's website another big HID player and they had a set of cancellors that specifically said "before buying for a dodge pickup truck ie the RAM please call to confirm compatibility" so i called them talked to a real cool tech support guy. He confirmed my suspicions that the CANBUS system on an LX vehicle is indeed different than on our 06-08 ram. Capacitors do not solve the problem but actually make it worse. He actually said stealth auto doesn't know what to do exaclty with the RAM so they really didn't have an answer other than yea cap's don't work which is really what i wanted to know,


Now I did try the 8 ohm 20watt jobbie from radioshack. At first it worked I tried it out for about five mins and saw no flicker, but this isn't confirmed fix it's been about five days since I last saw my lights "flicker" so to speak so five min's is hardly enough time, but in that five min that resistor got hot enough to melt a zip tie. to hell with that.

It makes sense to me that resistors fix the problem with a lamp out light because the truck is looking for resistance on the circuit and without it that throws the lamp out light, the funny thing with my 08 is I don't have a lamp out light now is there one on my dash, i've run the gauge diag that lights up the dash like a christmas tree and there is no lamp out, unless the lamp out displays on the odometer, I have also taken bulbs out and started the truck and turned the headlight switch on and drove aroudn the block not once have I seen a "lamp out" light,

Dirty dog I know installed HID's in his truck like me using a relay, I believe he had to put resistors in his to stop the lamp out light which is odd because he has an 08 as well, mine does lack some of the funkier electronics due to the stick shift elminating all the transmission control and such but I wouldn't think that is the reason.

So i'm left with only a few solutions, one is that resistors are needed and ordering these custom pieces will fix it, two is that there is no problem i'm just being **** and it's normal for a slight flicker to occur once in a great while, three my ground is faulty i'm fairly certain that is not the case because the ballasts are both grounded to the same spot, the battery, the relay harness the manufacturer provided me had a ring terminal with the ground for both ballasts set up already and just needed to bolt the ring terminal to something. My battery is grounded by a six inch 4 gauge lead to the inner fender sheet metal, a foot long run of 4ga to the frame, and a foot and a half long run or so of 4 ga to the engine block, If that's not a good enough ground idk wtf is.

Back to the capacitor thing tho It does appear that older ram's 05 and around that back will work with the capacitor from what I have seen, I don't know why capacitors throw this year into a tizzy and I even tried to eliminate the relay and use the straight vehcle harness with a cap wired in and still got the same issue with the cap the random total shut off's. So I plan to keep everyone updated,

For HID's there's also the manufacturers taht gaurantee HID's not to flicker but who knows that may just be a gimmick and not true, If I ever get the chance i'll drop teh big bucks on a kit like that and see but I have an inkling that all the HID kits are the same whether you get high end or not, i'm sure polar opposites have differences but without talking ridiculous price jumps I figure it's pretty close to the same.

 

I believe its all in the maker of the HIDs. ones I got for my 03 don't flicker near as much as is complained about. why? not a clue. only time (knock on wood) I have the flickering is when I first turn em on. after that, they work flawlessly. once I think they had a spaz attack, but only that time. but I do have that lamp out light.