Andy_H

I have an 04 GT that we got about 3 months ago from a dealership. I have been in touch with the old owner. Anyways I have some problems I want to see if any of yall have any ideas about.

The first thing is the HIDs. The last owner put them on and apparently had the same problem as I do. Turn the lights on like normal, flip them on high beams fine, but when you try to flip it back to low beams, they just stay on high beams. If you try it like 15 times they normally go back to low beams. I've just been avoiding using the brights but it would be really cool if I could get this fixed.

The next thing is the radio being fuzzy when the lights are turned on. I had the stock antenna on the car and the radio worked fine without the lights on. As soon as you turn them on though, the stations get static. It gets better and worse, there is not a constant level of static. It is bad enough to want it fixed though. Auxilary works fine lights or not. I also had a short 14" antenna and the same exact problem. On Friday I got an entire stereo system upgrade with new speakers, amp, sub, wires and everything, and the stereo deck. I told the shop about the problem before they did all the audio work and they said they'd fix it. When I picked up the car, I turned the lights on and the radio worked fine. Then on Saturday night I was driving at night and decided to check out the radio and it looks like the old problem is back.

Thanks for any input.

MU71L4710N

trace the wires for the HID's and see whats up. if you dont find anything, yank it all off and put some normal light bulbs in and see if you get the same problem. if you do, its a problem with the factory wiring somewhere, if not its in the hid wiring. you need to narrow it down more before you start guestimating.

cliffyk

With regard to the "sticking", many (maybe most, IDK) HID systems used a solenoid to physically relocate the lamp in the reflector housing, or relocate a shield, to switch between low and high beam, it may be this mechanism that is sticking--disassembly, cleaning, and lubrication (a very small amount of dielectric grease) may be in order.


The radio interference is a common problem with after market HID systems, Google "mustang hid lighting radio interference" and you'll get 6400 hits, Google just "hid lighting radio interference" and you'll get 84,000.

The HID ballasts use what are know as switching power supplies, that normally operate at 100kHz or so, and which normally produce very strong harmonics. These harmonic frequencies are being picked up by the radio, probably through both the antenna and the wiring.

This can often be fixed by adding RFI filters to the radio power supply, that is likely what the audio shop did--however a wire may have come loose and/or I have (only once or twice) seen those RFI filters burn out.

However I had once one do this to me while I was in a line of 10 or 12 cars coming out of a parking garage in downtown Atlanta--it stunk like heck in addition to the disconcerting amount of smoke pouring from the dash--one of those things you'd notice.

Sometimes adding parallel, or increasing the wire gaugeą of, "ground"˛ wires can help; sometimes adding new grounds can help--once it a while removing a ground wire can help.

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ą - In RFI suppression using larger gauge wire has nothing to do with the amount of current that's flowing, but instead relates to a phenomenon known as skin effect--simply, the higher an electrical signal's frequency the more it travels through only the surface of a conductor. At 100kHz, with copper wire, this skin depth is only 210 um (0.008").

Obviously a larger diameter wire will have more surface, as do stranded wires vs. solid.

˛ - That's ground in quotes because a car really isn't grounded, if it were controling RFI and EFI would be a much easier and less experimental exercise--one would need a very long ground wire however.