Having had enough with the stock headlights (or lack thereof), I decided to retrofit some BiXenons out of an E46 into a pair of aftermarket housings that I got on ebay for $50. Scored on a pair of projectors for $60. Starting out:
after sticking the housings in the oven for a couple of minutes, I popped the lenses off. A little custom fitting with the dremel and ...well okay a lot of that.
Annnnnnd one housing about half done. I have to make some bosses on the back of the housing for the mounting screws to pass through. Also need to do get shrouds to cover up the rest of the projector, and do just a little sealing.
Last edited by Indy on Fri May 07, 2010 9:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
Indy DOHC Turbo SD4.....someday.
Oh, and f*ck the envelope. (RFT Insurgent)
How precisely do those point? How firmly are they mounted?
Bouncing headlights are a real pisser (espcially to people driving Fieros in front of you) and it would suck to run out of travel on the adjustment screw before you got them aimed right.
I've tried to rough-position the projector as close as possible to the stock headlight axis. I'm shooting for a pattern indistinguishable from HID's at a similar mounting height, like on a Cayenne or Escalade. They aren't mounted yet, but the projector will have 4 .25" screws running to stiffened bosses on the housing. I don't have the ballasts or bulbs yet, so I'm going to wait on those before I do the final mounting. Once I have those, I'll get the housings into the truck, and make sure I can hit my aiming points with the cuts I've already made. After that, I'll drill the mounting holes in, check for aiming one more time, then semi-permantly seal up the relief cut for the shutter solenoid and seal the rear of the projector to the housing with something like high-temp RTV, which should also dampen any kind of vibration.
I've ridden in a couple of cars with factory HID projectors (Acura TSX and an Escalade) and they bounce around alot. I think alot of that comes from the auto-leveling systems. I'm definitely going to try to remove as much of that bounce as possible, and have the cutoff a little low. I like other people to be able to see when they're pointing their car at me.
The reason for the swap is that I do 90% of my night driving above 60-70MPH, with my high beams on, as there's hardly ever any human oncoming traffic in BFE. I've had 7-8 close encounters (100% braking) with deer just this spring, and I usually see at least one on my way into work every morning. Hit one last year with the Equinox, but the lighting is much better on that car. I was going 65 when I barely saw the first one approaching the ditch from a tall grass field, full run. I managed to get slowed down to about 4-5mph by the time the 4th one came across and I clipped her. HAVE to love Chevy brakes. So far I'm the only one in our family that hasn't damaged or totalled a car due to a deer strike. I would LOVE to keep that title for as long as possible. Brake upgrade is next on the list.
