HID Bounce/Shake Culprit

This theory is wrong. See my update here
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/hid-bounce-shake-culprit.522351/page-2#post-17190267

I've been running 50w morimoto HIDs for about a year now. I had little to no bounce originally but now a year later I have very noticeable bounce. So much so that I popped the hood and took a look around. This is what I found.



The orange wire is the HIDs, the other is the stock halogens. Notice the black rubber gasket surrounding the metal socket. It has significantly deterioated due to the heat from the HID bulb. There is a gap at the top and the bottom is borderline melted. Just by grabbing the bulb and wiggling you can see the entire socket wiggling around due to the deteriorated gasket. With the lights on this very noticeably moves the light output just as it does when driving down the road. The same does not happen with the stock halogen socket.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it but I figured it's worth posting since this has been discussed many times here without a definitive answer.

 

I don't know what you are talking about. Can you draw arrows on the photos to show what area you are speaking of?

 

Thats the gasket I'm talking about. It's drooping down. Big gap at the top and no gap at the bottom. The same gasket on the halogen socket has an even thin gap surrounding the whole socket. I'll probably take another look tomorrow and clean off all the dirt. Will grab some better pics while I'm in there.

 

50w is a bit much. They make quite a bit of heat. Especially for halogen housings.

 

@mesojdm whats the deal with that rubber gasket? Can it be removed/replaced without taking apart the whole headlight?

 

sub'd. No shake/bounce, but I am running the same kit and am interested to see where this goes. Hopefully the gasket is easily replaceable. Good find OP.

 

Try squirting in some Red High-Temp RTV sealant along the top gap or all the way around. Should hold up to the temps and secure the housing, keeping it from bouncing. Also, it could likely be peeled away if it doesn't work.

 

I have the 35w Morimoto kit, tried all the gaskets they provided and it still bounces a year later. Albeit it’s very minimal.

Got some new cheap hid bulbs off Amazon I’ve been meaning to try out and see if that resolves the issue

 

If the issue is in fact caused by damage to the housing, (shrink in rubber due to prolonged high temperature exposure) I doubt you will see any improvement by replacing the bulbs. The damage would need to be fixed. My suggestion would be to shim the gap with a high temp RTV to prevent movement of the bulb mount itself. There might be a more elegant solution to shim this but I think the RTV should do it, at least until more shrink occurs.

I just installed the 35w Morimoto kit myself so I will keep an eye on it and update if I see the problem and can solve it. Other bulbs might run cooler and not cause the damage but typically light output is directly proportional to heat, so a cooler bulb will typically be dimmer.

This looks like the most likely culprit for the shake that I have seen. The best solution would be to replace that rubber housing seal with a silicone one since it can handle the temps (up to 500F) and wont dry out and shrink like rubber. The high heat is greatly accelerating the rubber's aging and I wouldn't be surprised if we all start seeing the rubber cracking and falling apart in the next 5-10 years. I'll look around at the headlight disassembly threads here and see if I can find out exactly what that rubber piece looks like. It might be worth making a mold from one and casting silicone replacements as a solution.

If anyone has had one of these apart please let me know!

 

Putting some kind of shim in the gap to prevent it from wiggling as much was going to be one of my first tests. Haven't had a chance to do it yet though.

@mesojdm is the local 3rd gen headlight disassembly expert. It's why I tagged him in the previous post questioning about these rubber seals.

Here's a thread of him retrofitting quad projectors into one of the housings. It contains one of the only images I've found that gives a slightly better look at the rubber seals
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-quad-led-projector-retrofit.499612/

 

Awesome!

Hmm... it looks like the inner and outer rubber is one piece. This makes me think loss of elasticity rather than shrink, which is not what I would expect from the heat. So far it still looks like a shim would do the job, maybe not a silicone replacement because of stiffness required.

Hey @mesojdm, is that rubber ring removable without disassembling the headlight? I'll pull mine off and look if I'm not going to break it in the process.

 

I was wondering the same. It seems like you could just pull them right off. If so, could potentially swap the low beam and high beam seals as another test.

What I noticed when I originally took a look was that the low beam seals were very soft to the touch and warm. I had just got home from a 30 minute drive where the lows had been on the whole time. In contrast the high beam seals were cold and hard and didn't budge when I tried to wiggle the bulb.

 

Yes it's just a sealing gasket/" o-ring".
Sorry guys, I don't have stock projectors so I cant confirm if the bounce is caused by the rubber rings. They are very pliable, so I don't think they would cause that much of an issue. They are easily removable, so i would pop them out and drive around to test.
just don't forget to put them back in before it rains

 

Thanks!

I'm now rethinking this...
From looking at Meso's thread, the whole projector is secured by that seal and the bulb is hard mounted to the projector. The issue looks like only the bulb is moving and not the projector, otherwise the cutoff line would bounce as well right?

If the whole projector moving is causing the bounce, another quick fix might be to shove an appropriately sized o-ring in the gap to stiffen it up.

 

Yeah the cutoff line never seems to shake, at least up and down. It's really more a side-to-side shake in my experience. Admittedly this does counter my theory.

 

Has anyone tried to make progress on this? I think you guys were on to something here.

My 35W Morimoto kit has been in for over a year now and while the output is great, the bounce has gotten quite bad.

I am looking for any sort of potential fix at this point.

 

Any luck? I am about to install my morimoto kit and would like to fix the glitch before it happens if possible.

 

I installed my Morimoto kit a couple months back and have not seen the problem yet. If/when it happens I will try out some ideas and update here.

 

What exactly is bouncing? I've been running DDM HIDs for over a year and zero issues here.

 

That's what we're still trying to determine. I just see light pattern bouncing around at night. Could be bulb, housing, projector, or something else.

The posts above are zeroing in on the rubber bushing that the bulb twists into. The thought is that heat over an extended amount of time softens the rubber which causes it to sag.

Some have the problem, some don't. Lots of ppl running moritomo bulbs have it. I'm running 35w (cooler) HIDs and mine bounce all over.

Maybe some people don't drive at night very often? I dunno.