Projector Retrofit

[matt-c]

Finally got round to doing a projector retrofit to a spare pair of headlights today, and fitted to the car.

The projectors are Chinese knock off's of the much more expensive TRS Mini-Mori's, and whilst I'm sure they're not as good as the TRS items, they cost but a fraction of the price, so worth a punt.

Anyway, I deliberated for a while about what route I was going with these lights - do I paint the inserts, do I fit halos for sidelights, do I just fit LED T10s for sidelights, do I rig up some kind of DRL, etc. Then I remembered that I think DRL's are pretty much pointless, and I couldn't be bothered to fit halos in place of the sidelights, so I decided to just throw the projectors in place of the HB4 dip beams, keep the standard HB3 halogens for main beams, and the LED T10's I had for side lights.

So into the oven at 110-120º C for 5 mins, turning halfway though, and they pulled apart nice and easily. Fitting the projectors are easy; first thing you need to do is remove the rubber boot/dust cover from the rear, and then remove the bulb shield.

These tabs (top and bottom) are what hold the shield to the reflector

Lever them up with a pick, and then straighten them with a pair of pliers. The bulb holder will simply pull out from the front.

Then, with the reflector bare, simply put your projector in (I used the supplied large silicone donut between the projector and the reflector) and tighten the supplied nut down behind it. The nut fits perfectly in the locking ring for the HB4 bulb, so no need to remove it. You'll need a pair of bent-nosed pliers or circlip pliers to hold and tighten it. Do it up pretty tight, but bear in mind you have to be able to rotate the projector by hand later on, to do the alignment.

So with that done, thread the wires for the high beam solenoid through the bottom hole for the bulb shield. make a tiny hole in the rubber boot/dust cover and push it through, and reseat the boot/cover. Then fit your bulb, and go out the the car and fit the headlight (without the chrome insert or front lens. You don't need to "fit it" fit it, just clip the bottom into place and make sure the bolts thread through the wing, so it's sitting in the right place.

With this done, connect them up and you can begin aligning and rotating. Alignment "should" be fine if you haven't messed around with the adjuster screws or motors, as you don't need to take them apart or fiddle with them. The rotation is actually rotation the projector so the cut off is equal across them both - each one has a "step" in the beam, and you the two highest "lines" to be at the same height, and straight. I think I got mine pretty sport on, especially considering my car was parked on the slant and I didn't have a nice flat white wall to shine onto.

Once you're happy with the rotation, remove the headlights from the car, and crank the nut down if need be (I did mine up pretty tight, so they needed two hands to rotate them. Hopefully this way, the silicone donuts keep them in place, so they won't move later on). If you're going to paint the inserts, now's the time to do it, as the next step is to bake them (again, 110-120º for 4-5 mins) and then press the front lens and grey body together tightly, and hold for a while. You could also tape them with masking tape to keep them tight - I just held them for a min or so, then took outside to cool off.

With them completely sealed (hopefully - time will tell!) it's back out to the car for final refitting. I found it easier to fit all the bulbs in first, and just plug them in after, as there's not a lot of room on the passenger side once it's in, and it's just a bit less mucking around.

Then just wait till it gets dark, and go for a drive around like I did to see how they are! I did a good hour or so on country lanes, A and B roads, and one junction of the motorway too, just to see how they faired in all environments, and I'm really pleased with them. I think they could be a touch higher, just to get a bit more throw from them, so at some point I'm gonna take them into an MOT station and see if I can get them on the beam level meter to see if I'm at max height or can manually adjust them up a bit. But the main thing for me was I've got rid of all the scatter and "jaggies" you get with HID bulbs in normal reflector headlights, nearly all the bright spots and now have a beautifully even spread of light across the road. Parked up facing a wall you get a lovely straight line cut off, and pull up behind a car at the lights or in traffic, and you get this pretty blue-ish hue across the top of the cut off. Neat! (plus I think these look loads better with the orange filters removed for the indicators. If you're doing this, use a pair of T20 silvatec bulbs, that look chrome but flash orange, as you'll be able to see the bulb from the outside once it's all fitted).

Link for the projectors I used is http://www.ebay.co.uk/…/2x-2-5-Mini-HID-Bi-xe…/261598102796… - there are other types, with "angel eyes" and/or "demon eyes" incorporated, but I didn't fancy them. Most are bi-xenon, meaning there's an actuator inside that flips the shield down, making them high beam. To use this, you need to thread the two wires (cut the plug off first - it's useless and you won't have anything to plug it into on the car anyway) through the bottom bulb shield slot, make a small hole in the dustcover and poke it through. Then you need to tap into the wiring for the high beam, and join the new wires to it. Then when you flash your lights or put the stalk into "high beam on", not only will your halogen HB3's come on, but your projectors will also go high beam too.

Nice smooth light spread, with next to no bright spots

Brickwork makes it look less straight than it is, but it's nice and clean, with no scatter or jaggy "flares" shining all over the place.

[TigerFish]

Nice result

Sent from my Iphone using Lexus OC

[matt-c]

Well, after a few days with them in, I think I can say I'm really happy with them. Sure, they aren't top-quality ones like the TRS Mori's, but compared to the HID bulbs in the stock reflectors, they're much nicer to love with. On unlit motorways, all three lanes are lit with a smooth, white, glow, country lanes are bright, and it looks great in the fog (well, mist anyway, will have to see what it's like in proper fog when we get some) with the cut off! Definitely worth doing

I've decided not to run these in "bi" mode (both dipped and high beam), and just run them as dipped beam instead, 1) because the halogen big beams throw slightly further, 2) because with the halogens on, you don't really see the Xenon high beam anyway, and 3) because they are from the cheap end of the scale, I don't want the cut-off shields (that flip down when high beam is activated, to allow the whole projector lens to output light) to get stuck or give up or anything. Thankfully when I wired these in, I did it using some spare HB3 harnesses, so I didn't cut into my standard wiring, so it was a simple case of unplugging the harnesses, plugging the stock connector directly back into the halogen HB3 bulbs, and tucking the solenoid/actuator wiring for the projectors out the way.