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Stealth HID instal into Helix housings

nitf1

New member
Location
CA
I purchased a set of the Helix style housings from Ed because I wanted the blue stripe and they were on closeout so I do not know if Ed's in house assemblies are molded the same so if anyone else can confirm I will update this post.

For various reasons I needed this install to look completely stock and have the reliability of a stock system so i went about trying to use the factory components as much as possible. After many emails phone calls and talks with local HID installers I was able to achieve my goal so if anyone else is looking to do this here is what I came up with. I did some wire cutting, soldering and shrink wrapping to minimize the number of connectors and clean things up but not necessary.

Parts needed:
1 pair of Helix style HID retrofit housings *From Ed but currently sold out
1 pair of Misubishi style Audi/VW ballasts *From Deutsche Auto Parts
1 pair of ballast pigtails *From AliExpress
1 pair of D3 bulb retainers *From AliExpress - Hardest item to find and had to buy a full projector set just for the clips
1 pair of Morimoto CANBUS H7 standalone harnesses *From The Retrofit Source
1 pair of Osram D3S Ballst->Bulb cables *From The Retrofit Source
1 pair of D3S bulbs *These are the mercury free bulbs with the attached ignitor, pick your favorite but I went stock style Osram
6 4mmx14mm thread rolling screws for plastic *From McMaster-Carr
6 washers for above screws *Had these lying around
2' of 0.25" cable loom *From Ebay - May not be necessary but I wanted to play it safe
1 roll of 3M Extreme Mounting Tape *From Walmart

Because I used the stock ballasts at the stock mounting locations all I had to do was open up the round access hole in the bottom of the housing. To be safe I removed the main headlight cover and slid a thin flexible ruler on the inside so my Xacto knife couldn't accidentally nick any wires inside. The plastic is very thin and just a gentle plunge and drag of the Xacto sliced through it easily. Here is what the hole looks like.



Here is most of the parts you will need, the ballasts aren't shown but are later on.



The optional part is to remove the female 9006 style connector from the "ballast" end of the Morimoto harness and splice on the female square end of the ballast pigtail. Leave as much wire as possible to make routing a bit easier.



Also you can remove the female H7 style connector from the headlight housing and replace it will a female 9006 style connector from the H7 pigtail that came with the Morimoto harness. Make sure to maintain the polarity of the connections. On both of my housings the copper colored connector was the +12V but double check on yours.



If you don't want to cut and solder then you can just connect the headlight H7 into the H7 pigtail to the Morimoto harness on the input side and then the Morimoto harness to the ballast pigtail on the output side.

Because the ballast->bulb cable has a metal grounded exterior and there are some exposed items inside the housing I went ahead and wrapped the bulb cable with the wire loom to make sure it didn't short anything out. You could also secure the cable in such a way that it wouldn't touch anything but covering it seemed easier.

Remove the D2S style retainer from the back of the projector and install the larger D3S retainer using the same 4 screws. You can also install the bulb cable and bulb into the housing. I found it very hard to get the cable on or off the bulb once in the retainer so do everything before. Feed the other end of the cable out the hole you cut into the housing as well.



I looked around and found the best place to hide the Morimoto unit was on the underside of the side illumination bulb housing using the round access cover as my entry point. I left the item running for over an hour and it only got warm so I am not afraid of it doing any damage to it. I test fit things a couple of times and then applied as much of the 3m tape as would fit to the flat side and carefully maneuvered it into place and attached it. I had to unclip a few connectors inside the housing to make it easier.



Now feed the ballast end connection out the same hole in the bottom and plug in your ballast. When everything is plugged in and tested to work press the ballast into the area making sure the rubber seal fits into the tube to waterproof everything. I had to gently bend the ballast end of the ballast->bulb cable so that it would slip into the hole and not hit the small circuit board inside. Once it is in place use 3 of the screws and washers and lock it into place.



Once the rear bulb cover is reinstalled using the 5 screws there are no external indications that anything was done other than a completely factory ballast being mounted in the factory position.

If you have any questions let me know and I will try to expand my answers to help.
 
Last edited:

nitf1

New member
Location
CA
Thanks. My main goal was to use the reliability of the factory components as much as possible but immediately after that I needed there to be no external signs of modification. I won't have access to this car regularly so I was paranoid about some of the aftermarket components. I was going to go with Morimoto as they seem to have the quality and longevity but they only had the 55W ballasts and because of some recommendations to avoid the higher wattage setup it didn't seem the most robust solution.

Once I found out I could use the stock ballast it made the rest of the choices pretty straight forward. I still can't believe how hard it was to find a set of the D3 style retainers for the projectors was. I asked numerous people and no one had them stand alone so I ended up ordering a complete set of projectors that I don't need and hope to find them a home. I did end up getting a second set of retainers from another AliExpress seller so if someone else wants to copy it I can put together a spares package to save them some trouble.
 

BxGTI

Go Kart Champion
Location
Bronx,NY
Excellent, did you get the grille to go with it?


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nitf1

New member
Location
CA
Yes, had to get the grille someplace else though. Kitt Tuning if I recall correctly. I even picked up the E-Golf front emblem that is 2 pieces so it has a cool looking blue and chrome. The E-Golf blue was the wrong shade of blue so had to get that part painted to match.

Car should arrive at the dealer any day so just need to get everything installed once it gets here and will post pics.

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nitf1

New member
Location
CA
Car arrived and I installed them but unfortunately the headlights flash on startup and sometimes the car thinks the passenger side light is not working so it turns it off. It appears the Morimoto until isn't capable of satisfying the cold start test procedure for the BCM. Not sure if anything changed as this is a 2017 Wolfsburg Golf but this has created a very bad situation for me as I have to either quickly figure out how to get them working reliably or else I have to go back to the stock set. Will have to try and design my own circuit for the load balancing and error cancelling...
 

dr_mk7_il

Ready to race!
Location
Israel
Have you done any coding to the BCM?
I'd assume that using stock ballasts would require some form of coding to eliminate the error codes
 

nitf1

New member
Location
CA
No BCM coding, the stock ballasts are just being hard wired to 12V so the BCM still thinks it has halogen installed. The Morimoto error canceller was supposed to trick the BCM into seeing the normal halogen circuit during the cold start test.

Is there any coding that will eliminate the cold start check​ because that would solve my problems completely and no more circuit work needed. I looked before but never found any reference to disable the bulb out error via VagCom.
 

BxGTI

Go Kart Champion
Location
Bronx,NY
No BCM coding, the stock ballasts are just being hard wired to 12V so the BCM still thinks it has halogen installed. The Morimoto error canceller was supposed to trick the BCM into seeing the normal halogen circuit during the cold start test.

Is there any coding that will eliminate the cold start check​ because that would solve my problems completely and no more circuit work needed. I looked before but never found any reference to disable the bulb out error via VagCom.



Can you install an already available canceller from Morimoto?


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nitf1

New member
Location
CA
I did install the canceller from Morimoto, it just didn't work on my 2017 TSI. I went with the latest version with large heatsink and fairly complex internal circuitry so I was hopeful it was going to work out. In contact with The Retrofit Source as they were the ones that said that setup was going to work fine but they said to look at coding but didn't give any further details so not sure they are fully up to date on these things.
 

BxGTI

Go Kart Champion
Location
Bronx,NY
Oh wow, it should work the way it is then , I wonder what's going on


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sprinks

Drag Racing Champion
Location
United States
No BCM coding, the stock ballasts are just being hard wired to 12V so the BCM still thinks it has halogen installed. The Morimoto error canceller was supposed to trick the BCM into seeing the normal halogen circuit during the cold start test.

Is there any coding that will eliminate the cold start check​ because that would solve my problems completely and no more circuit work needed. I looked before but never found any reference to disable the bulb out error via VagCom.

Just saw this reply while reviewing this thread for something else. While i don't know about disabling cold-start directly, i know you can change the bulb type in vcds/vagcom/obd11. Basically you go in via central electronics and find the appropriate lighting channel, and the adaptation to modify is the channel1 lasttyp value to the appropriate bulb type. This works well for the led channels so you don't get errors thrown there and i believe works well for the HID setup as well. I did this shortly after install of my retrofits and have not had an issue with coldstart bulb out errors or flicker.
 
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