2011-2014 Dodge Charger Headlight HID Upgrade - Tutorial + Problem/Solutions

• Challenge #1my HID headlights would not turn on after I had everything hooked up!
  • solution - Inside of the headlight housing unit are two plugs (look like the flat piece of a wall plug) that plug into your HID upgrade kit. I had these plugged in, but they are polarity specific. If your headlights do not turn on, swap the polarity by swapping the two plugs. This corrected the amateur mistake that I made and everything worked perfectly. You may also want to aim your headlights before you put your bumper back on, because it can be challenging to adjust them left/right afterwards due to lack of space.
• Challenge #2. The old Dodge Charger headlights use the highbeams as their DRL (daytime running lights) with a 50% power voltage so they are not very bright. The challenge with the new lights is that even though they advertise the LED bar works as the DRL, it does not. In fact they operate off of your parking lights. So the challenge came up that with the new system that uses one bulb for your low/high beams, it was trying to send 50% power to my HIDs to run them as DRL. HID light do not work the same as halogen lights, and instead are either 100% on or 100% off, there is no 50% power feature... which causes the bulbs to flicker. This has a few solutions; if you stick with halogen bulbs you will not have this problem.
  • solution #1 - If you do not live in Canada, you can simply turn off your DRL from the settings in your touchscreen system. However if you are Canadian (like me) DRL lights are mandatory by law, and cannot be shut off in the system. Please see solution 2 or 3!
  • solution #2 - you can buy a new wiring harness, which will supply a constant supply of 12v to your HIDs and allow them to run as your DRL. This can be bought here: HID Morimoto Lowbeam Relay Harness. However this will mean that your lowbeams will be on 100% of the time.
  • solution #3 - if you do not want your HID lights running as DRL, which will of course burn them out faster since they will always be on, you can reprogram your charger to use a different light source as your DRL. Don't let this scare you, it is actually quite simple... and is actually the solution that I used. You can do this with a Bluetooth enabled OBDLink, which is the error reading tool that plugs into your car. If you do not have one, you can buy them on amazon here:
    OBDLink MX+
    OBDLink MX+
    or borrow a friends if they have one. On top of this, you will also need the https://www.alfaobd.com/ for your phone, or PC. This app allows you to connect to the OBDLink through Bluetooth and modify thousands of features on your car. I used this to reprogram the DRL to run as my fog lights. If you do not have fog lights, you can have it run other lights as well.
  • solution #4 - if you do not want to buy any more parts, or can not afford them because of budget constraints for a bit. A simple work around is to not use your 'auto' headlights, and instead always turn your headlights on manually every time you are in the car (day or night) and turn them back off when you get out. While this is not ideal, it worked for me for a week until I found a fix that I was happy with!

I now have perfectly working HID headlights, in the VLAND projector housing using my auto-lights feature. My DRL run as fog lights so no flickering occurs on my HID lights during the day.
If you have any questions please feel free to post! I will do my best to answer all questions when I can.



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BobCollette
4276 posts · Joined 2007

BossmanTez
8 posts · Joined 2020

• Challenge #1my HID headlights would not turn on after I had everything hooked up!
  • solution - Inside of the headlight housing unit are two plugs (look like the flat piece of a wall plug) that plug into your HID upgrade kit. I had these plugged in, but they are polarity specific. If your headlights do not turn on, swap the polarity by swapping the two plugs. This corrected the amateur mistake that I made and everything worked perfectly. You may also want to aim your headlights before you put your bumper back on, because it can be challenging to adjust them left/right afterwards due to lack of space.
• Challenge #2. The old Dodge Charger headlights use the highbeams as their DRL (daytime running lights) with a 50% power voltage so they are not very bright. The challenge with the new lights is that even though they advertise the LED bar works as the DRL, it does not. In fact they operate off of your parking lights. So the challenge came up that with the new system that uses one bulb for your low/high beams, it was trying to send 50% power to my HIDs to run them as DRL. HID light do not work the same as halogen lights, and instead are either 100% on or 100% off, there is no 50% power feature... which causes the bulbs to flicker. This has a few solutions; if you stick with halogen bulbs you will not have this problem.
  • solution #1 - If you do not live in Canada, you can simply turn off your DRL from the settings in your touchscreen system. However if you are Canadian (like me) DRL lights are mandatory by law, and cannot be shut off in the system. Please see solution 2 or 3!
  • solution #2 - you can buy a new wiring harness, which will supply a constant supply of 12v to your HIDs and allow them to run as your DRL. This can be bought here: HID Morimoto Lowbeam Relay Harness. However this will mean that your lowbeams will be on 100% of the time.
  • solution #3 - if you do not want your HID lights running as DRL, which will of course burn them out faster since they will always be on, you can reprogram your charger to use a different light source as your DRL. Don't let this scare you, it is actually quite simple... and is actually the solution that I used. You can do this with a Bluetooth enabled OBDLink, which is the error reading tool that plugs into your car. If you do not have one, you can buy them on amazon here:
    OBDLink MX+
    OBDLink MX+
    or borrow a friends if they have one. On top of this, you will also need the https://www.alfaobd.com/ for your phone, or PC. This app allows you to connect to the OBDLink through Bluetooth and modify thousands of features on your car. I used this to reprogram the DRL to run as my fog lights. If you do not have fog lights, you can have it run other lights as well.
  • solution #4 - if you do not want to buy any more parts, or can not afford them because of budget constraints for a bit. A simple work around is to not use your 'auto' headlights, and instead always turn your headlights on manually every time you are in the car (day or night) and turn them back off when you get out. While this is not ideal, it worked for me for a week until I found a fix that I was happy with!