thundercassius

I am sorry for the ignorance, but what exactly is a DEPO? Is that a brand name for the projector type headlight assy?

Can you give me an approximate cost for these items at Ebay?

Thanks again.

thundercassius

So you did not do anything on your headlight assembly at all. Do you have halogen lamps on it originally? Does that mean that you were able to install the HID lamp using the original reflector type headlight housing only meant for halogen bulbs and it does not blind oncoming traffic. I wanted to make sure about the legality.

thanks

KA8

Can't help you in a sense that I don't have mtec kit. But I DID have same symptoms with my cheap $80 kit from ebay with radioshack capacitors. It turns out the capacitor was bad. So after a new capacitor and a new set of bulbs problems solved.

No more error msgs woohoo! I tested it yesterday with a 3 hr nonstop trip. Didn't flicker nor gave error msgs

Mu9enx

yea, they are the company that manufactures the projector headlights.

they costed me about 300-320+ on ebay, and the mtec hid kit was said to be 320? but yeah, you can just check ebay

thundercassius

Understood. Thanks for clarifying that part. I have started to check at Ebay and I did see a few headlight assy that are made by Depo. And they range from $250 to $400.

If you don't mind me asking a few more questions:

1. If I replace the whole headlight assy with the DEPO brand, will this new Depo assy have the bulbs for the other lights. I understand that I have to buy an HID kit for the low beam and put it inside the projector. But what about the high beam?

2. I did a thorough check on my current headlight and I see a lot of bulbs there aside from the high beam and low beam. Checking the manual, there are the standing light, signal light, etc. Will the Depo have already the bulbs for them or will I use the original bulbs that came with my halogen headlight.

3. Does the Depo assy also have a projector for the high beam in case I also wanted to install HID for high beam?

thanks again.

Mu9enx

you can use all your old bulbs from your original headlight and swap them onto the DEPO one. you can upgrade your highbeams to HID if you want, someone on this board done it before nad it is insane!

stock05c230

I purchased an MTEC 8k kit back in October '07 to replace a (cheap) chinese unit that was on my car when I purchased it. Check further up in this thread and you'll see the errors I was getting. Everything now works BEAUTIFULLY! What I did/noticed:

1) MTEC instructions tell the installers (us) to assure that the bulb doesn't touch the small center reflector after the HID bulb is inserted. The HID bulbs are slightly longer than the OEM halogens on our cars, close enough that the manufacturing tolerances on our headlight buckets can cause contact with the center reflector, which would short out the bulbs. Not good. No problems here in my case, although they're very close - less than .1 inches away, and will touch while I am wiggling the bulbs around to seat them in the headlamp socket during installation.

2) My computer code errors were caused by my driver's side install. As mentioned in this thread, there's not a lot of quality space to mount a ballast. I mounted my driver's side ballast on the flat, vertical face of the ABS controller. This is all fine until you turn on your headlights and the ballast starts feeding 40,000 volts to the HID bulbs. oops. That's a great deal of electromagnetic interference for the ABS controller to deal with. Well, it looked good at first haha.

My solution, that I've put over 4k miles on now: buy the higher-quality (gray) double-sided trim attachment tape at Schuck's/Pep Boys/Autozone etc. and attach the ballast to the driver's side wheel well. Do this is on a warm day so the tape will adhere well. Clean the wheel well surface with some alcohol. Find an orientation for the ballast that keeps it from contacting any of the wiring and AC lines (?) in the vicinity. The wheel well is curved, so you'll need to use a couple of ~2" strips of the tape placed bottom-center on the ballast for good contact with the well. Orient the tape vertically so it does not retain dirt and moisture beneath the ballast. Also, make sure that your ballast wiring can enter and exit the ballast with gentle curves. Kinks and hard bends will accelerate wire failures. Once you've prepped the well and placed the tape strips on the bottom of the ballast, peel the protective layer from the tape to reveal the adhesive, and firmly press the ballast against the well for a few seconds. It will look a little odd, since the corners of the ballast do not sit flush on the well, but it's a surprisingly robust installation.
Two bonuses using the tape: that the tape is a foam-based, and provides some shock protection for the ballast. That should help the ballast live longer. Number two: the tape is strong enough to hold the ballast ad infinitum, but just soft enough that the ballast can be peeled off for warranty work at the dealer.

3) As for the passenger side, there is a perfect horizontal flat on the front of the passenger side frame that's the same width as the MTEC ballast. I used the same tape to fasten the passenger ballast here too.

4) I recommend drilling the hole in the back of the plastic headlight cover as MTEC recommends in their instructions. It keeps moisture out of your headlamp assembly, and will extend the bulb life as a result. The bulbs don't do well with the shock of cool water and the condensation inside the headlamp just looks bad.

5) MTEC instructions say to cut the factory MTEC wire ends off to insert the wires through the rubber boot that seal the headlamp. This is unnecessary. The seal is a high-quality rubber that will accommodate pushing the connectors right through. The key: don't let the connector fray or slice the seal - tightly wrap the entire (sharp-edged) connector in a single layer of electrical tape. Lube the outer layer of the tape with handsoap. Get one corner of the connector started into one of the (visibly tiny) wire holes - they will stretch, so don't worry. Work the other corner of the connector into the hole and continue to work the soaped connector through the hole. Voila. It is a little bit of a PITA, but worth it if you're not excited about re-crimping and soldering new connectors. Make sure to clean of any excess handsoap. At this point you can insert the connectors in the their pink plastic frame that positions them to connect to the factory MB harness. The wires can be slid back and forth through the seal holes to aid assembly.

I zip-tied the MTEC wire harnesses to hold the gentle curves going into both the ballasts and the headlamp assemblies, and made sure that the harnesses didn't rub on any sharp steel edges or any of the MB wiring. I've now got a beautiful blue-white illumination that looks good on a white '05 C230SS.

Hope this helps. -Kyle

ozoz

haha that good ... i had another error message after a rainy / storm day of driving ... but no further problem after a few days ... not sure why ... but no time to get it look at ... but certainly thats very helpful ... only to find time to move the unit around ... thanks