Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

I just thought I would share a few things I've been doing to my car lately.

Its hard for me to see at night especially during rain storms and its becoming irritating having to make last second flinches because I can't see the road dip away from me until the last second and I have absolutely no vision of anything infront of me to my left or right at night..like the bicycle I almost creamed making a left turn while he was still crossing the crosswalk at 4 AM. When I turn around and drive my mom's G35 the difference in lighting is night and day. You can see EVERYTHING in that car. I have desired to have my Camaro illuminate the roads in a similar fashion and I know a standard Halogen bulb is just not going to be able to cut the trick.. so my goal was to upgrade to an HID kit.

I am aware there are many options to go with for HID lighting, including BLS or going eBay. The headlights that came with my car were old but they were not stock. They appeared to be those Spyder models you see on eBay but they were faded, rubber torn up, looked like complete crap. Regardless of what I did, I needed new headlight assemblies and wanted something plug and play, something with a projector already installed so I didn't have to fab anything. I wanted to go with BLS at first because I like how they are tailored explicitly to our cars, have done their homework, knows what works and what doesn't but my car is now being daily driven both to and from work at night and its becoming more and more difficult to see and I don't have the opportunity to save up the coin for those headlights. Does this mean to say I went "cheap" ? No... not exactly. I probably just didn't go the route that most would go.

I could have went with the Spyder models again and got the set for around $140 shipped and two Ballasts from eBay for approximately $25 making a grand total of $165 but looking at my current spyders completely faded with normal bulbs only gave me chills about the projector melting into playdough with HID's.

I had been googling around and found a place by the name of Dash Z Racing and they seem to support a pretty big aftermarket of lighting for our cars. I ordered Twin CCFL Halo LED Projector Headlights in Black. I ordered a 4300k 35W Ballast with it for several reasons.
#1 I heard that the 4300k is the longest lasting bulb
#2 35W because although I have more confidence in these than the Spyders, I'm still not sure how the projector will hold up to the HID's.
When I received my kit they mistakenly forgot to send me my Ballasts but were kind enough to send it 2 day delivery after I advised them of the mistake.

Now the fun parts.

I've never installed HID's before on a stock system so it took me a moment to understand how the Ballast and Bulb wired into the system. The black ground cable on the old H1 bulb terminates on a socket that holds the retaining clip down. Fortunately you can remove the wire from the socket without removing the socket itself and the new bulb will go in no issues. I was left with an extra set of cables incase I didnt have standard Halogen Connectors so it could connect to my Ballast but I didn't need that. I just plugged my Halogen connector directly to my Ballast...and walaaaa... it didn't work. Called them and they told me to reverse the polarities (Positive side to negative / vise versa)...and that fixed it.

While I had them out I completely replaced my side marker / turn signal lights with new corner lenses because the old ones were full of water. I am banking on the hope that since I'm using LED's they wont get hot enough to warp the housing and be fairly effective at stopping water from getting inside. Since they dont get HOT, I also wrapped them with plastic.

There is one other thing the Manufactures should tell you about this brand of headlight however... the stock F-Body screw will be to small, it wont thread. I had to get a special screw from Home Depot to screw in there.

Anyway.. I spent right under $300 for everything installed..which was the ballpark I was looking for. It may not be a Hella projector but for what I paid, and what I wanted, I think I met my goal.









This is before aiming them:




In verdict...I can see MUCH...MUCH better, although there's still work to be done.

I want to replace my fog lights with a larger assembly. I also need to do the brightlight / headlight mod.

Blackbirdws6

iTrader: (7)

Any closer shots of the lights and output up against the wall?

Neko

No offense man, but I'm not sure how you can see with those things. There's no width, output is splotchy, and the beams are basically pencils. I'd look into swapping the projectors themselves out if you like the housings...you can probably find something that would fit from TRS or a similar retrofit company. It'll be well worth it for the ability to see. I'll be whistler modding mine and seeing how well an RX330 projector swap works out, haha.

I like the look of the lenses themselves, but the projectors in them are pretty much just aesthetics.

ThoR294

iTrader: (6)

Holy crap that light pattern looks like **** dude

slowbrakiller

iTrader: (10)

Ya thats pretty terrible

elephantrider

iTrader: (2)

that will be worse than what you had.

Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

They were aimed wrong in that photo. I didn't get a lot of time to adjust them because I was running late for work and it was not dark enough when they were installed. I adjusted them a bit last night and they look much better but I will have to wait until tonight to get another shot.

Neko

Unfortunately, it's not an aiming issue--it's the projectors themselves. You'll need to do a proper retrofit if you want usable HID output. The beam pattern is extremely splotchy, and even if you aim the hotspots for distance, you won't see anything. Check out the output from some of the guys running proper retrofits (or some OE HID-equipped cars) and you'll see the difference. It's literally night and day.

Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

The beams were aimed directly at the ground in the previous photo. Even with them like that I could still see 5x better than my halogens allowed me to but there was almost no width. After adjusting I did get some width but alot more distance. I'm pretty sure there are better projectors for HID's than the ones that came with these units but for right now its doing a much better job than my stock lamps were. Also I should note that there appears to be alot of light bleeding directly to the side of the car itself, that is not from the projectors. That is coming from the Halo's. I'm going to turn those off the next time I take a photo.

Daniel Richards

iTrader: (1)

THIS is what you should see with PROPER retrofits. Notice the straight (with the step) cutoff line and the uniform color of the light, not that rainbow you have, no amount of aiming is going to give you that proper cutoff, you would have been better off with the Spyder brand projectors, but all the NON-retrofit projectors suffer the same fatal flaw, they use FOG LIGHT bulbs in their housings, a proper retrofit will give you MUCH more usable light and won't blind the crap out of on-coming traffic with the way those flare upwards at the outside. Bright bulbs when you look directly at them does NOT automatically mean good light on the road. I've literally had halogen fog lights that lit the road better then your pictures.

Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

Yeah that does look much better. As far as retrofitting how can I do that without tearing up the entire housing?

Daniel Richards

iTrader: (1)

there is a process of using your oven to heat them up enough to soften the glue so you can pull the covers off, I know there are videos on youtube of people doing it, aftermarket housings tend to be easier to get apart then stock ones, it's what all the guys with trailblazers that do retrofits do. you might have to do some cutting and fitting depending on what is left after you remove the existing projector, I got lucky I have a firebird and the retrofit is pretty much all assembly, no baking required.

that pic was just my low beams on my BLS V2 kit that was on my firebird, here is a shot of the quad high beams (the V2 kit used the Mini D2S 2.0 projectors which are a bi-xenon, meaning they have a solenoid that drops the cut-off shield out of the way when you switch to highs effectively making the lows beams high beams along side the high beams), here is a shot of the high beams.

Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

I'll probably just get BLS units down the road. baking open my headlights makes me nervous. For now its better than my halogen bulbs. hopefully no one getting blinded down the road.

tophatjimmy

iTrader: (1)

Opening the stock headlights was way easier than I ever thought it would be when I did my Morimoto H1 retrofit.

I put them in the oven, one at a time, 250 degrees for 10 minutes. With just a little persuasion with a flat bladed screwdriver they literally popped apart.

I put them back together with black RTV and it's been a year and many high pressure car washes later and I haven't had a single problem.

VIP1

As others have said, that beam pattern is bad.

Check out the Lighting FAQ for more info and options on retrofits.
https://ls1tech.com/forums/appearanc...hting-faq.html

Tipnitty

iTrader: (3)

As other have said, those lights are garbage. Retrofit is the only way to go.

Need4Camaro

iTrader: (1)

Its mildly tempting to retrofit and I may / may not do it down the road depending on how I feel about taking the housing apart when I get time to see how thats done. I...probably... wont though. Probably will just go with BLS units down the road .. which is kind of a bummer because I like the appearance of these housings but I dont want to throw away additional money trying to open them / reseal them, waste two brand new projectors, ect.

This is what I got after aiming them. They're still much much much better than my older headlamps. can see much further and much more but light is going more places than it should be and its very unfocused so Im kinda concerned about blinding people or getting pulled over haha.

omarrakeen

iTrader: (2)

wow the output/pattern is way too bad lol! retrofit some mini H1s and never look back! i love mine and theyre cheap!
that color is absolutely beautiful though!

Daniel Richards

iTrader: (1)

better then I expected from the before shots in terms of output, but the biggest issue is that uptick at the outside on the drivers-side and the uptick in the middle from the passenger side is exactly the type of thing that blinds oncoming traffic.

Neko

It's hard to see anything that close up/bright, but I imagine when you back up to about 25 feet the output will look like two half-circles with the cutoff. There's a lot of glare/streaks above as well. It might not be unbearable to oncoming drivers since the car is so low, but it's not exactly ideal, either. I know you have reservations about retrofitting, but I would say before going with BLS, since you like the housings, try putting proper projectors in them first. If that doesn't work out, go with BLS, and sell the projectors.