Radio Static caused from HID fogs

Installed full HID's in my 09 a few weeks ago and I am noticing an issue that when the fog lights are on they cause a substancial ammount of radio static, Turn the Hid's off, problem solved. I have the ballast for the fogs mounted low near the bumper mount. I only have this issue with the fogs not the hi/lows. Anyone have any solutions for this.

 

Make sure your ground wires are good. Is this a plug and play kit?

 

good luck on solving that! i put hid fogs and headlights on my truck, both pnp, and when i turned my headlights on the radio went to static. you can search the internet high and low and nobody really seems to have an answer for it other than pnp kits suck. i ended up taking my hid headlights out and plan to do retro in the future. my hid fogs are the best ive seen though. i can drive at night with them alone, but the headlights sucked and both were VVME kits.

 

yes it is plug an play, doing reaserch i stumbled into a nissian titan forum for HID static, they recomended placing ferrite chokes on the pwr and gnd cables, went to radio shack picked them 5 bucks a piece and they did knock down alot of the static, I can actually pick up the radio station that is 20 min. from my house and it only has minimum static, the same member recomended wrapping the ballasts in aluminum foil. im thinking about doing that as well as adding some sort of signal booster into it.

 

Shielded wiring works great. Not sure how you'd get ahold of some, but I know that would do the trick!

 

Sounds like a shit ballast.
Mine have never done that in the 1.5 years of being installed and constantly being on.

 

I have the VVME kit in my headlights and fog lights. I don't have any static what so ever. They are awesome kits for a good price if yuou ask me.

 

^thats what everyone else said too, thats why i went with vvme. ive had both one headlight and one fog light bulb go bad. they send replacements for 20 a pop, so tack on another 40 and theyre not that great of a deal. plus, the 6000k bi-xenons i had in the headlights were the MOST pathetic things ive ever seen. just like they say over at hidplanet, if you want the oem look you have to use oem parts!

if anyone's interested im selling said vvme kit that was on my truck less than 1 1/2 months for 50 shipped.

 

Bringing this one back from the dead to report on an odd occurrence. I've got slimcubby's HID kits in my headlights and fogs and haven't noticed much static, maybe a little bit, but nothing noticeable.

Oddly enough though, I had my radio on as well as my fogs and headlights this morning in a parking garage. When I pulled the truck up close to the concrete wall, the static got extremely strong all at once. Turned the lights off, no static. Turned them back on, full static. Backed the truck away from the wall a bit with the lights on, no static.

It seems like there must be a significant amount of electromagnetic interference coming off the ballasts and / or bulbs such that when I got close to the wall, the interference bounced off the wall and hit the antenna or the HU. Either way, crazy stuff... maybe I can figure out a way to set the HIDs to stun and clear traffic with them.

 

Go to Radio Shack, look in their parts drawers for snap-on ferrite cores. Get two that are large enough to snap over all of the wires going to/from the HID system you put in (power wires, ground wires, switch wires) or get enough to snap onto every wire going to/from the HID system.

This will help keep the RF interference from the HID drivers out of the vehicle systems (including the radio).

Next step is isolated and filtered power for the HID drivers (or switching to standard halogen).

 

for the guys who are getting static, where are you guys grounding the ballasts?

 

Now I dont have this issue with my retrofit, but I'm still using an aftermarket ballast. Morimotos to be exact.

I grounded my ballasts onto the bolt on the top corner of the headlight areas, on the body frame. Pretty obvious. There's a small hole about 2" above the bolt.

I couldnt get a good ground anywhere else, unless I sanded down the paint. All I did was remove the bolt and ran the wire under the rail and through the hole. Then bolt it down at the bolt. Works great so far. I did put some of the wire looms around where my wire goes through the opening hole to prevent the wire from getting cut by the edge.

 

JW do you need to put the snap on cord on all of the wire. I looked at the piece and I'm hoping its just you buy the pair and thats it. Not buy probably 20 or so and completely cover the cord. I'm having the same issues. I actually put aluminum foil over the wires and put them closer to the head lamps but still have some static