Evolv-ing Thread

[TrollDragon]

Wow and speaking of boxes... my new PC and the wifes new laptop have arrived at the apartment.

Thankfully I'm off for the next 3 days as it's program & data migration time.

 

[BillW50]

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[tiburonfirst]

 

[dwcraig1]

Well i'm back to messing with my headlights again. I might be tickled pink with the conversion kit that I bought if I hadn't paid 3 times what it should have cost. Until tonight I was perfectly happy with how it worked (was). So I did my homework this time and bought what is considered the best although it is not the most expensive. I bought a Morimoto conversion kit.
I had to look around for some screws and ended up going to Home Depot so I figured I didn't have quite enough time to install it.
So here I am at work and I decide to swap out one of the old ballasts and igniter with one of the new ones. Just a temporary deal, not mounted.
So when these bulbs don't get their required power they appear at higher Kelvin temp, for example a 4500K will look like 8000K and dimmer.
Here are some pictures with the no name ballast and the Morimoto balast. In the first picture both no names are in use and in the second picture the Morimoto ballast is on the right side. I honestly expected to see no difference but the difference is huge.

I will know more tomorrow night after I install them and drive it, these pictures are a bit lacking on what they actually look like.

 

[dwcraig1]

I see that I wouldn't have gotten very far with mounting the ballasts, I'm probably only going to screw one of them down, the other will get zip tied to something as there is no good place to mount it. So the self drilling self tapping screws that I bought have 1/4" heads on them. There is not enough clearance between the body of the ballast and the 1/4" socket. I could thin down the socket I guess but will get some screws with Philips heads later this morning instead

 

[dwcraig1]

I finished my project this morning...I think. Things went smoothly until the very end when I realized that the bulb on the driver's side was not put in correctly. I fought that thing for an hour, even got out my inspection mirror. I ended up putting one of the generic HID bulbs back in....and it went right in. Once I get up a little steam I'm going to go out to the car and get it along with one of the generic bulbs and the OEM halogens and examine the tabs on the base to figure out what happened. I'm hoping that I don't have to go back and change the one one the passenger side.

 

[dwcraig1]

Upon Inspection of the bulbs tabs I saw no difference between the Morimoto HIDs and the OEM halogens. There was a slight difference on the generic bulb's tabs, they were slightly smaller. I got my flush cutters and snipped off tiny amounts of the tabs on the Morimoto bulb. Then used some nettle files to clean up and bevel all tab edges. I even worked a bit on the o-ring groove, I kind of suspect that the o-ring may have been the culprit here.
In an other hour it will be dark and then I'll know if I'm done with it for now. It wouldn't take much at this point for me to put the stock halogens back in.

 

[dwcraig1]

About the inspection mirror, I found that in a dumpster more than 25 years ago when I was living a some what homeless life. Sometimes I kind of miss those days.....ya right.
I had a some what under the table mobile auto repair business for about 10 years.
I lived and worked out of a Ford van, the last 5 years of the 10 the van didn't move.
Some woman wanted me to get a job with a regular pay check (probably so she could collect alimony down the road) So I gave up the auto repair and started working security, the first paycheck had few hours and uniform deposit removed (2nd half of February too). She left the day after I got my first pay check, that was close.

 

[tiburonfirst]

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[dwcraig1]

I put in that manicured bulb, it went right in, a bit tight still but in. What a difference compared to the cheap kit.

I choose to not use the Morimoto dual relay harness that was included, I had bought a single relay harness from elsewhere and it was already installed. The single relay harness has a short ground pig tail at each ballast 12v power plug, the dual relay runs the ground all the way back to the battery negative.

 

[BillW50]

 

[BillW50]

My First Mesh Build on a Geekvape Zeus X Mesh

View attachment 894207

Two weeks later with 133ml worth of juice through it.

It is still producing one of the smoothest and greatest tasting vapes I ever had. I mostly vape it at 25W, but I have tried other wattages up to 60W. I still like 25-30W the best. Reviewers will say passed 65W, it will start dry hitting. That sounds about right to me. I have no idea how long a single mesh lasts, but this one hasn't shown any evidence of slowing down yet. Plus these are super easy to build on.

 

[Mowgli]

Two weeks later with 133ml worth of juice through it.

View attachment 896495

It is still producing one of the smoothest and greatest tasting vapes I ever had. I mostly vape it at 25W, but I have tried other wattages up to 60W. I still like 25-30W the best. Reviewers will say passed 65W, it will start dry hitting. That sounds about right to me. I have no idea how long a single mesh lasts, but this one hasn't shown any evidence of slowing down yet. Plus these are super easy to build on.

I've been using Zeus X RTAs with a pair of 3mm Advanced Vape Supply N80 (28gx3/36g) @ 55W-62W. They'll keep up with chain vaping (Max VG) with much more power but I like the flavor at 55W fresh and 62W getting old. I could get more than 40ml between rewicks but I make 120ml per flavor so the math is good. Cotton is still clean and coils not bad after 40ml on most of my DIY flavors.

I was tempted to try the mesh but with 8 regular version there's no need to stray for me. Zeus X airflow WFO is perfect for me and top afc rules.

Good to see a review over-time though. Most YouTubers do a presentation instead of a review now.

Did you use a regular Zeus X for any time to compare the 2?

 

[BillW50]

Indeed Mowgli. I bought the Zeus X first, but I only ran Demon Killer Alien V2 coils in it. I bought 3 of those tanks and I only have used one of them so far. And yes, I too absolutely love top airflow. These things are fantastic. The tanks stay totally dry on the outside. I just checked my log and the Zeus X only has had 46ml through it and it still looks super clean looking down the drip tip. Might look different if I pull the deck out. The vape between the X and the X Mesh are very similar. I'll know more with the X by using different coils in it.

 

[Mowgli]

The ECF written reviews say if you like X you'll like X mesh.

Hasn't leaked a drop except I took a nap with it once and it seeped some because it was below horizontal. Never had a drop on the 510.

 

[BillW50]

 

[dwcraig1]

 

[tiburonfirst]