We put a HID kit in…

…so that means I know all there is to know about doing after market upgrades. 

j/k

I do want to share a few of my observations and tips.

My friend has an 07 Ford Focus (laugh track), so he bought a 8000K HID conversion kit for 9007 style lights. If you do decided to buy your own kit, Google what type of light bulb your vehicle takes.

Installing the kits are very easy. All of the wiring is plug and play.

Here is a video going over the installation process.

Once our installation was complete, we ran into a problem. When we would turn the Focus’ lights on, we had to turn the brights on to get the HIDs to come on. Also, the light would shimmer. This means that the light would change back and forth from blue to white. 

We went back to the after market store where we bought the lights, and they told us that the lights were not getting enough power, so we needed a $25 relay harness that hooked into the battery. That didn’t work either. When we reported our findings, we were told we needed two cancelers for $30. That didn’t sit well with us, so a call was made to the company that made the lights.

They were pretty reluctant to help us since we didn’t buy the lights straight from them, which is sketchy to me. But they did tell us what we needed to do. On some vehicles, the low and high beam wires are reversed from what they are on the connectors for the HIDs, so when we plugged the connector to the lights, we were plugging the the low to high. Once the wires on the connector were switched around (easy to do), the HIDs came on with the low beams activated, and the standard halogen lights came on for the high beams. 

There was also something about how there wasn’t enough power on the high beam wire, but there is enough on the low beam wire. It didn’t completely fix our problem. The lights still shimmered when they first start up, but they became stable after a minute. We were also told that our ballasts were the analog version, and that if we wanted the shimmering to go away completely, we needed to buy the digital versions for $60.

No thanks.

“What kind of bird are you?”

Wes Anderson films are always visual treats. You could have removed all mention of Wes Anderson from this trailer, and I would still be able to tell that this is his film just by the second scene.

Some fun facts.

1) This is the sixth Wes Anderson feature film that Bill Murray has appeared in. He did not appear in Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket, or his short film, Hotel Chevalier. 

2) This is the first Wes Anderson feature film that Owen Wilson does not appeared in.

Click to view the trailer at apple.com

I wonder if Greyhound being the sponsor of this clip is just coincidental, or if it’s metadata magic summoned by Alec Baldwin ticking off Greyhound’s CEO.