Everything you need to know about Volvo headlights and upgrades

I noticed just like everyone else that the headlights on these trucks are ill adjusted garbage! I bought a 2014 and decided to tear into it and fix he problem. First of all I noticed the low beams were aimed way to low but seeing as it is one unit, if you lifted the low beams to the proper height then the high beams would light up the top of the trees. my other issue is that the low beams shut off when you turn on the high beams.



this is from 25' away. The top black line is the height the low beam projector is at, the bottom black line is the height the high beam bulb is at. when turned on, the high beam should be aimed parallel with the bottom black line as to shoot straight down the highway, the low beam should be at the red line when the high beam is aimed correctly. the red line is 2" down from parallel so it does not blind oncoming traffic (i believe at the height the light is. dot spec may be 3", but the norm that people go by is 2")



there is the high beam aimed pretty darn close.



Here is where the low beam is, 5-6" below the top black line, complete B.S!!!! Volvo should shake their #### heads!!!

so here is my solution, I need to shave down the projector shield inside the projector as seen here...



I used a dremel and a couple flat files. that dot step is legally mandatory so when you file it down, you have to keep it. it does not take much filing to get it where it needs to be, but now my low beam is where it should be.

I wanted to take this to the next level and will now address another major issue Volvo owners are having right now and that is HID kits. first off lets talk about colour temp. when you order a hid kit and it says "6000k" that refers to the kelvin scale of measuring temperature and colour, it was designed to measure the sun and not hid lighting so the accuracy is not all there. 3000k is yellow, 4300k is white, and 6000k is white with a hint of blue, 8000k is blue. the kelvin scale DOES NOT measure brightness, actually the opposite. lumen's is what measures light output and how it works is the higher up the kelvin scale you get, the less lumen's is being put out so although looking at a guy with bright blue lights, you may think he can see more. that is not true, it is putting out more colour temp and thus glare, behind the wheel he cannot see very well.

most kits are made in a 6000k and while that may be good for a 16 year old in the city in a Honda civic, we are professional drivers and our goal should be seeing the road as clear as possible and not looking cool with a blue light. Anyone who tells you that 6000k is crystal white is a sack of crap who knows nothing. although the bulb may be crystal white, it is the hid ballast white will light it to that colour temp and most cannot. factory cars/trucks with hid use 4300k because you get the most output, and less glare.

make sure you buy a good quality kit as a cheap kit will not light up the bulb hot enough and produce a blue effect and a good kit can light it up to a pure white, on the other side... if a cheap kit can produce enough to light it all the way that kit may burn itself out quickly. I do not want to be changing this crap every couple months.

with these trucks and for that matter any vehicle ALWAYS use a relay harness, on my Volvo i used 2, one for each side (youll see why). call your Volvo dealer and they will tell you that this wiring is designed to handle a max 10amps, a hid ballast usually draws 13-15 amp on a cold start for a couple seconds then goes down to 7amps once warm, but although it may not be enough to pop a fuse, every morning you overheat your wiring for 4 seconds a couple times a day, over the course of time you will corrode the wiring, connections and do serious harm to your very expensive LCM. 2 $30 relay harnesses will solve that and ensure full power to your lights at all time.



there is where I mounted my relay harness, same place on the other light, I ran my power wire straight off the battery.



And here is my HID kit installed

The problem with the hid kits is these Volvos are finicky buggers, everyone says the bulb out warning would be on. Now with the help of Pablo-ua I have found out that you can go to the dealership and get them to change the parameters to disable the warning. the next problem is that hid lights take a few seconds to warm up and every time you switch to high beam then back to low, you are virtually blind until they warm up again, but once again pablo-ua came through and was able to tell me how to change the parameters for that. The problem I have is that Saskatoon Volvo is by far the worst dealership I have ever seen and they told me they refuse to do it. I am also a cheap bugger and decided to save some money and address these issues myself.

with the light out I figured a can bus ballast would fix the problem like it did with my ford fusion.... nope. (this is where the dual relay harnesses come into play) so I bought 2 load control modules for a dodge (any hid supplier will have them.) and bingo, light out warnings gone... $17 each. next i bought some wiring and clips and a couple one way diodes. I made it plug and play as to not wreck my factory harness.



the one pigtail goes in between low beam plug and bulb and the other one to high beam, when the high beam is on the power can go through the one way diode and keep power to the low beam but when the low beam is on the diode will not let power back to the high beam. IMPORTANT *** the only reason this works is because each low beam is drawing 100% of its power from the relay harness directly and not from the factory harness, if you did this without a relay hooked up you would overload the wiring and melt wires**** you can use this custom harness and relay harness with just stock halogen bulbs, you do not need to use hid.



there is my high beams, now the lows stay on as well. here are the plus and minus to this. if you have a competent dealership they can do the low/high and warning cancellation with programming alone. it will cost 200-500 dollars but you will not have all the extra modules and wires stuffed in the headlight. with my method I spent less than $50 so it is cost effective, the down side is there is alot more wiring in the headlight which could get melted etc. so keep a eye on it and make sure its tucked in nicely.

I realize not everyone will have as much time on they're hands as I seem to but at the least you can file down the shield to see miles better, pair it with a pair of piaa extreme whites and problems solved in a half hour, I went overboard but I can promise you I will never regret it.

before attempting any of this Google how relays work, how one way diodes work etc to ensure you are well educated and understand what you are about to do.

I really hope this helps anyone if not everyone.

enough messing around, Im going back to work!!

 

I may or may not have put a bit of mis information on this post. Now that my brains been working I am unsure about the load control module. It worked to get out the warning lights but I believe it does it by adding additional amperage draw to fool the system. With the extra amps tge load control module may or may not be adding, there is a chance that when my quad high beams are enabled that I am overloading the circuit. I apologize for this. I will verify and post my findings but for now I can see great so I'll deal with a pesky warning light.

 

If a company driver tells his shop he can't see, maybe a mechanic would be willing to shave a bit off the shield with a file. Very simple, the rest was just overkill. There are a couple breathers on tge back of the lights, if it's getting too hot drilling another would be a good idea.

I plan on Getting it in for programming soon as I make it to a shop that will do it on a day off seeing as my local shop sucks.

 

UPDATE: I have ran the load control module and hi/lo harness for a long amount of time now with no issues. The wires are not getting warm at all and the lcm has not shut it down due to excessive voltage.

I took this opportunity to take my vision quest one step further, I wanted to drive with my fog/driving lights on as I like how they illuminate the road directly in front of me so when someone comes towards me with high beams on I can still see the lines on the narrow roads I travel.

The problem is the fogs are blinding to other drivers so I came up with a solution. I took off the 4 screws holding the back rubber on and removed the fog reflector, I taped the lower half up and scuffed the top half with a wire brush then sprayed it with a high temp primer. I reinstalled it and with the allan key screw on the front, I adjusted it down. Now I can have my driving lights on during high beam operation without blinding people with my fogs while on low beam.

 

Jeez I forgot all about this thread.... I ended up going to www.deepspacelighting.com and buying their Morimoto md2s3.0 kit, I believe they now offer the md2s4.0

For reference, here is a morimoto md2s4.0 in my peterbilt. This is just low beam on a logging road, absolutely insane output!!!