DDM, HID 55W 8000K or 6000K w/relay harness questions

Yes, plug your power lead from the HID relay harness into one of your open terminals in your engine compartment fuse box. Seen here, the two red wires:

 

That seems to be what people are experiencing. The 55w ballasts make the color temps appear lower:

DDM Tuning HID question | PriusChat

 

but you also have to keep in mind that DDM is known to be more blue then actually listed. i ordered 4500k from ddm 55w and they look like 6k.

 

thats my car 55w DDM 4500k

 

Are you sure DDM sent you the right bulbs? That's definitely bluish.

SCH-I535

 

yeah they were "correct" ddm has never really given me the true color, even after complaining.

this is how it looks like in the daytime

 

Depends on the color balance of the camera too. Night pics are going to make the bulbs bluer than they actually are.
That being said, definitely not 4300k.

 

Ballasts that make HID bulbs bluer than you think they should be are cheap crappy ballasts. A good quality premium ballast should yield near the true rated color temp. of the bulb. Here is where I think it pays to spend a bit more and get a good HID system rather than a cheap $40. one. A better system will also be brighter. Some of the cheap ones apparently don't even output the rated wattage.

 

Yeah, but you have to consider your ROI at a certain point.
Is a Morimoto kit really 375% better than a DDM kit? It costs that much more.

 

Yeah, probably not. I actually got the exact same ballasts as the Xenon Supply premium kit under a different label for like $70. or something like that.

 

they have compared the DDM ballasts to the morimoto ones and they give the same results. warm up time, power usage and life all yielded the same or almost same answer. but i know for a fact that DDM bulbs are not that great. if you want to get good decent HID bulbs then morimoto are great. also i have a ddm 55w 6k hid kit in my bike and its been working flawlessly for the past 5 years.

 

i run ddm and im proud of it. for the price, it cant be beat

 

I would personally always get a relay with any HID kit.

HIDs take a very high voltage to ignite when you first turn them on and the stock halogen wiring is not made for that. While in most cases it works fine without a relay, it's better to put that voltage load on the battery directly, which is what the relay does for you.

If an HID ballast fails or starts going bad (most of them are really cheaply made after all), it could potentially burn up your stock wiring. A relay has a fuse which protects against and you are able to protect your stock wiring versus basically zero protection without a relay.

 

While that used to be the case with the larger, analog ballasts, the newer digital ballasts ramp the ignition voltage up, so there's no more voltage slam at ignition. While this tends to cause the bulbs to reach operating temp a little slower, it also protects the wiring.

A relay harness is cheap insurance, but I've not personally experienced any problems with digital ballasts killing wiring after several years.