New Morimoto Bulbs Not Bright

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ralphy205

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I highly doubt that your stock Halogen low beam projectors are burnt if all you've been running is stock halogen bulbs and aftermarket LED bulbs. None of those type of bulbs are going to produce enough heat to burn a projector bowl. Typically what causes projector bowls to get burnt are running very high wattage bulbs or HID set ups and usually there are other side affects to this as well like melted wiring harnesses burnt fuses etc.

Now unless there was some sort of electrical short somewhere that caused a bulb to short or an extreme burn out inside the projector I suppose it's possible, but there would have been other signs you would have seen around the headlight and bulb socket if that were the case.

I've ran 55W HID ballasts and bulb set ups in previous HID projector retrofits for 8-10 years on a previous vehicle and never burnt the projector bowls; That was with Acura TSX projectors. Now I have burnt bowls in smaller fog light projectors. Running 55W HID's in smaller 1.5" diameter projectors it was just too small of a space to run 55W HID set ups. The light output did get dimmer and was not as bright when that happened.

I will say in the first picture of your OP titled "Morimoto Low Beams H11" it looks like only your driver's side headlight is on and putting out light and almost looks as if your passenger side headlight is out.

Have you tried testing the wattage that you're getting at the main headlight harness connection to the headlight housing?
Have you tried testing the wattage that you're getting at the low beam projector socket connection?



When you found you were only getting around 10 watts in your original low beam HID set up was that before or after the HID ballast?
Did you try just replacing the ballast to see if that solved your issue? As you said ballast do go bad.
Thanks CMoore711.

I took those photos from the driver's seat so that may be why they look to be brighter on the left side.

I have not tested the wattage running to the harness or projector socket yet but just borrowed my neighbor's voltmeter and plan to do that this weekend.

It was after I had already used the HID ballasts. The guy who helped me troubleshoot suggested the LED bulbs so I chose to go the Morimoto route as opposed to replacing the ballasts. Live and learn, unfortunately.
 

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