Adding Factory HID headlights
 

Factory projector HID headlight units, I understand will not neccesarily be plug and play but are a desired mod.

I am not bothered about the cornering capability of them, I just want better lighting for night driving.

What mods to the wiring are required to get these to work? And to get the cornering functionality would be a bonus.

This has been covered a few times on here and Swedespeed and from memory I think it's not possible as your car left the factory configured and programmed without them, and there's no way to get the original configuration changed to accept them, even if you did the physical mod's. That means they won't turn on / off as intended. It may be worth a google, but that's what I seem to remember.

There's also a question over legality, and insurance.

If it were possible to retro fit with genuine Volvo lighting units I doubt that there would be any legal or insurance problem but if it is not possible because of the electronic configuration of the car, then any fitment that could not be shown to be OEM standard would give rise to these doubts.

The car type has been approved with both kind of lights, so that's less of a problem. But marrying a different kind of controller into the car's system, that's tricky. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's tricky, since Volvo will not support it.

Legality/insurance wouldn't be a problem,
That was thing, I couldn't get a definitive yes or no from swedespeed, every thread just sort of ended with the cliffhanger with "This is what I did". I've got access to vdash, vida, the lot, so if software changes were needed, that's not an issue
Having to physically reach down to manually turn them on/off via the switch wouldn't be an issue either as long as I didn't get the nagging light saying bulb failure etc...

Electronic config could be done via vdash, hopefully. Most of the hardware is headlamp module mounted, the self levelling bits for the cornering I wouldn't be bothered with. As long as the lights were pointing in the right direction.

No it can't. The headlamp type - and switching method - is burned into the CEM at manufacture and cannot be changed after - not by VIDA or VDASH.

HID lamps running on a CEM set up for halogen tend to flicker, cycle off and and on or not work at all.

If you must, your best chance is to install a 55 watt dummy load and a relay from another live. Someone on here has done that on an XC90 but I remember thinking it was a hell of an effort....

Hi.
If you did have any issue with insurance at all then please feel free to drop me a line.
Regards.
Dan.

For a while I had an Xenon headlight assembly on one side, without the ABL function (the "look around the corner" function) available. It worked, but I got an indicator lamp lit all the time, to tell it wasn't working.
But I do have Xenon with ABL normally. The reason for this temporary fix was that my original headlamp was destroyed.

There's quite a difference in how useful the Xenon light is when you add ABL to the equation. I don't understand why you don't care about that - I'd say it's a valuable additional feature.

I've never had to try to change the config of any car - I bought mine with the equipment I sought after, but I've understood that you need to crack some PIN code in the car to do it.

Interesting...I'm going to switch the turning function off next time I drive at night on some bendy roads, just to see what difference it makes :regular_smile: