Irunone
Full Access Member
With recent subzero cold snap my retrofitted hid's with Morimoto 5Five ballasts have not been lighting at times. Usually can get them to light by turning off and then on again. Ballasts were purchased last May. Spoke with Dawson (Raptorretrofits) and he is well aware of some ballasts being faulty. Theretrofitsource.com (404-220-7940) posted info at hidplanet.com (see below) and they will send out upgraded replacement ballasts at no charge. Hopefully this will save some of you guys some hassle of trying to figure out what's going on with your retro fits intermittent firing in the cold.
From hidplanet.com/theretrofitsource.com:
Update: Morimoto 3Five and 5Five DSP Ballasts
Problem: We've recently encountered an issue where Morimoto 3Five and 5Five "SS" ballasts are failing to fire bulbs reliably in the cold. The specified igniter in the ballast puts out 16,000V on start up under normal operating conditions, which is more adequate to fire up most any bulb. Naturally when the temperature of the magnetic core in the igniter drops so does its capacity to produce that high voltage, and therefore in cold weather the output of the igniter is only right "on the fence" of being able to strike the bulb on reliably. How something like this passed by all year long without being noticed is truly beyond me, but as soon as temperatures started falling this winter it became clear that we had a problem on our hands.
Resolution: Once the issue was identified we took immediate action to solve it. The original MCU-Chips that were responsible for regulating the output to the bulbs were replaced with an all new ASIC-DSP circuit, which can track and adjust bulb output about seven times faster than before. They're also capable of doing so with less components, so the entire system is more efficient. Kinda like replacing your trusty old Acer with a new Macbook. And of course, the igniter....which we replaced with a much beefier Siemens model capable of producing 20,000KV (4000 more than before) so even when its capacity drops in the cold, it will still be well above the required threshold to strike the bulb reliably. The shell of the ballast has been thickened by 2mm to accommodate the bigger igniter as well. It wont be until the ballast temperature reaches -40F until things get sketchy again, so unless you're driving around in the arctic ocean, you should be fine!
We are addressing complaints on a case-by-case basis at this point, and are replacing ballasts in pairs to ensure all the problems are solved. It has affected just about 10% of the total ballasts out there (so just because you have an SS ballast, does not mean its bad) ....but 10% is way to high in our opinion, thus the recall. Today, we shipped around 300 sets of ballasts for customers at no charge to them....Some were mad about it, some disappointed, but I'm happy that the vast majority were impressed and happy to see us standing behind the product. I agree that something like this would be more typical of a $50 set of ballasts from eBay; but surely if that's what you bought you would get a reply that says "check your connections buddy! don't bother us again" whereas we've recognized the problem, wasted no time in re-engineering the ballast to solve it, and are now shelling out thousands in postage to make it right. TRS baby!
Thank you to all who put up with bad igniters for the past month, we can't thank you enough for your patience.
From hidplanet.com/theretrofitsource.com:
Update: Morimoto 3Five and 5Five DSP Ballasts
Problem: We've recently encountered an issue where Morimoto 3Five and 5Five "SS" ballasts are failing to fire bulbs reliably in the cold. The specified igniter in the ballast puts out 16,000V on start up under normal operating conditions, which is more adequate to fire up most any bulb. Naturally when the temperature of the magnetic core in the igniter drops so does its capacity to produce that high voltage, and therefore in cold weather the output of the igniter is only right "on the fence" of being able to strike the bulb on reliably. How something like this passed by all year long without being noticed is truly beyond me, but as soon as temperatures started falling this winter it became clear that we had a problem on our hands.
Resolution: Once the issue was identified we took immediate action to solve it. The original MCU-Chips that were responsible for regulating the output to the bulbs were replaced with an all new ASIC-DSP circuit, which can track and adjust bulb output about seven times faster than before. They're also capable of doing so with less components, so the entire system is more efficient. Kinda like replacing your trusty old Acer with a new Macbook. And of course, the igniter....which we replaced with a much beefier Siemens model capable of producing 20,000KV (4000 more than before) so even when its capacity drops in the cold, it will still be well above the required threshold to strike the bulb reliably. The shell of the ballast has been thickened by 2mm to accommodate the bigger igniter as well. It wont be until the ballast temperature reaches -40F until things get sketchy again, so unless you're driving around in the arctic ocean, you should be fine!
We are addressing complaints on a case-by-case basis at this point, and are replacing ballasts in pairs to ensure all the problems are solved. It has affected just about 10% of the total ballasts out there (so just because you have an SS ballast, does not mean its bad) ....but 10% is way to high in our opinion, thus the recall. Today, we shipped around 300 sets of ballasts for customers at no charge to them....Some were mad about it, some disappointed, but I'm happy that the vast majority were impressed and happy to see us standing behind the product. I agree that something like this would be more typical of a $50 set of ballasts from eBay; but surely if that's what you bought you would get a reply that says "check your connections buddy! don't bother us again" whereas we've recognized the problem, wasted no time in re-engineering the ballast to solve it, and are now shelling out thousands in postage to make it right. TRS baby!
Thank you to all who put up with bad igniters for the past month, we can't thank you enough for your patience.
