HID Retrofit - DONE RIGHT

[Boostdtalon]

Those look great. I've had some friends that had there bugeye headlights done by lightwerks instead of doing the jdm/edm swap. Could you pm me the cost. I'm curious cause I had looked into sending mine to them before. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/applause.gif

 

[2000GTX]

looks incredible. Great work.

 

i just finished a projector setup from off a infinity j30.
waiting for the hid's to come in...

 

[GSX_TC]

Why is there so much of a gap between the top of the headlight and hood?

 

the infiniti j30 headlights are so close to fitting directly into the vr4.
however, the body of the j30 is rounded and the galant is sqare so the lines are off a bit.
but if you got lazy and you didn't care much, they would fit and the factory bulbs work too.
the two projectors are stepped about an inch stock. this works, but my intercooler pipes got alittle snug to the bulb so i separated the two projectors and mounted each separatly. i had to cut the factory housing up extensively. i used fiberglass resin and mesh to put it back together.
the j30 low beam has a cutoff. the driving/highbeam does not have a oem cutoff. so i will be puttting 9006 6000k hids in the low beams and hopefully hi/lo 9005 bi-xenon hid bulbs(they switch from hid to halogen) for the driving/highs.

the project was very tricky to get right,i still have to get the hood gap right. still burning off steam in the housings too.
the cut off is beautiful. although a bit low, the lines are level and aimed nice.
once i fix the hood gap the lines should be at a better height
i will post driving pictures when the hids's come in.

side note- i like the look of the factory housings at night. the projectors just give you two circles to looks at.
i might have to add angel eyes or led's to make them look more interesting at night.
from behind the wheel, the light is equal from the projectors compared to oem so far.
once the hid's go in the beam should change.

 

[jmorri15]

if you have it id love to see the backs of the housing. would it be possible to just cut the whole back of the projector housing and simply epoxy or fiberglass it onto our headlights, that would eliminate the gap

 

i will take them out tomorrow and take some pictures of the assembly.
the gap is just the mounting bracket being positioned in the wrong position.
hopefully it is gone when i reassemble after the pictures.

 

[jmorri15]

thanks. it looks amazing, props on the job

 

[GVR47111K]

^^That looks MEAN! Way to go, but I think the corner lights need something. I don't know what, but something.

 

[Olson]

Quoting strymeckirules:
i will take them out tomorrow and take some pictures of the assembly.
the gap is just the mounting bracket being positioned in the wrong position.
hopefully it is gone when i reassemble after the pictures.



sorry dude but i have to ask. either its the pic or your camber is way fubar'ed

 

i think i'm gonna try a set of blacked out corners...
the oem look don't look right anymore. if i could somehow keep the light but black out the housing...
if i would have left the housings chromed,it would still flow, but black out needs more black.

and yeah that pic does make my camber look off.
drives straight...even boosts straight... will check tomorrow. maybe evo 8 camber plates moved.
just finishing a abs delete. man that's a 30+ pound weight and a big gaping hole in the engine bay! bleeding tomorrow.

my galant is slowly surpassing my talon in sexy points.

 

 

so i fixed the gap between the lights and hood. it's better, still can be adjusted more when i have more time.
the abs delete was fun, one brake line wouldn't seal, had to keep cutting and flaring. but now i have full SS brakelines and abs delete, and 1gb big front brake kit. the pedal is much firmer.
and my camber was off, put in a few camber bolts and boy does it feel better and turns more aggresively. i will have to get it dialed in professionally soon. for now it's an improvement.

i blacked out one side light, but i think i have to do the old take it apart and paint the back of it and keep the cover clear. know what i mean?

i like the projector look on the car. more heads are turning watching me drive by now. they still don't know what it is though.

as you can see the housings got pretty hacked up to make this work. not for the faint of heart.

 

[jmorri15]

thats awesome. im going to start looking around for donar parts at the local junkyards.

 

[kartorium]

Seems like a lot of hacking and BS just to make it fit less than well. Why didn't you just re-route the IC pipe, seems like a lot easier and cleaner way to make it work. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dunno.gif

 

after doing many junkyard projector pulls, here is my advice.
the best bang for buck bolt on easy to use projector is off of a tiberon -metal housing 2.5".
acura integras have a nice 3" but the aluminum housing is oddly shaped and needs to be hacked to make it easy to mount. i used this one on my snowmobile and it looks great.
kia's have projectors but they are not sealed, they are open to air and sometimes have plastic housings. so you loose light from the housings not holding and projecting the light. it's a kia anyway.
the ones i put in the talon housings are off a subaru svx? metal housings and it's about a 3".

you want the metal, sealed, cutoffed projector housings. sometimes inside they will have more cutoff than you want, for example the j30 projectors have a cut off on the top and bottom. the top one is an inch wide and easliy breakoff able. the bottom cutoff must be maintained to not blind oncoming vehicles.
some times there won't be a cutoff, and these are not suitable projectors for a night driving light, unless it is high beams only.

i have purchased 2 projectors for $17 at the local junkyard.
i purchased the full j30 headlights x 2 for about $40.
the more you take apart of the housing at the junkyard the cheaper they get.
only import cars have them it seems. or the newer domestics have them too.

it's pretty easy to get the cut off line level. if you are doing the project, remove the bulb section of the housing so you can see the cutoff line. make this paralel to the bottom of the headlight housing. then fasten the projector to the headight housing using whatever.

the project would be easyer if i put the projectors centered with the old bulbs. but i put them close together and it caused some issues.
the center 2 center of the oem bulbs is like 6" and the centers for the j30 projectors was 4.5"

and the 3" didn't like to fit. 2.5" would have been easyer.

 

[mitsuturbo]

first set (belonging to OP) looks great

second set... not so much

 

[GVR47111K]

Found this in the post whoring section. I think it looks pretty good.

 

got my 6000k hid's in the mail. have to do some slight aiming to get it perfect, but i like them very much. the cutoff pic was taken at 7 am with the sun rising. i will have to take a night driving pic tonight.
this project was well worth it. night driving visibility is awesome.
i want to change out the high beam/driving projector to one that has a cutoff, so i can run all four lights at the same time. i'm gonna get 8000k for the highbeam/driving so it will be a little more blue than the low beam 6000k. i think that will look very sharp.
and i will also get some angel eyes and wire them off a switch so that i have full control of them.
that last post with the link to the angel eyed galant - who did that? do they have projectors? very curious....

 

[dustyduff]

I'm still waiting to get mine wired up and take output pics. I would have liked to do a quad retrofit, but I didn't want to "hack up" the headlight mounting brackets in order to fit the projectors. I'm hoping the cutoff is a little more "crisp" then the one in your picture though. Quad would make it a bitch to align the cutoff though. Kudos to you for attempting the project on your own though. Certainly a more economical approach for better light output.