My HID Retro Fit

[Blurred Talon]

I'm at my wits end with this retro fit, arg.

Went to aim the lights tonight. Now from what azdave has said, Talons/Eclipses don't need a wiring harness so I just made a plug and play harness from the harness on my retro housings. Plug the harness in, run the switch, nothing.....wtf... Checked my connections, try again, nothing. Pull the stock, I hear the bi xenon solenoids open but my ballasts/bulbs are still off.

I know the ballasts and bulbs are good, I've used them many a time before with my power supply at home and directly off a car battery.

The ballasts themselves are Bosch AL gen 2s. They have their OEM harness and brackets, I am using the brown and yellow wires to turn them on.

I know that the Talon/Eclipse is ground switched. I'm 95% sure the headlights are wired the same as the colors are the same and the lights are interchangable between the two cars.
Black is 12V Common.
Green is Low Beam Ground
Pink is High Beam Ground.

I have them wired up to the ballasts, green to brown and black to yellow, that should allow the ballasts to turn on, WTF is going on here?

 

[azdave]

I'm at my wits end with this retro fit, arg.

It seems like you have all of you wiring in order but without seeing how it was all adapted I can only guess that you have something wrong if the ballasts were working okay when run from a power supply.

When your headlights turn on the (low beam setting) both low beam and high beam ballasts should have +12V power on the yellow wire at the AL connector to the ballasts. The brown wire of the low beam ballast should have a permanent ground to the chassis and this should fire the low beam ballast. The high beam ballast does not get a ground condition until you use the stalk switch inside the car. The ground for the high beam ballast is actually inside the stalk switch.

I do mention in several threads that the OEM harness is up to the task of supporting HID ballasts however, that was always in reference to the low beam circuit and way before it became common for people to start running quad set ups. Someone about a year back was going to use an HID kit for low and high beams and in that case I recommended a mod to the OEM wires so that the stalk switch was not required to support the inrush current of the high beam ballast firing up. I have never run HID on the high beams but if I did I would add a simple relay under the hood to provide a better ground path for the high beam circuit and relieve the load on the stalk switch.

I think you should unplug all ballasts and then confirm that the low beam ballasts work as before. Next try to wire them up installed in the car with only the low beams plugged into the chassis harness. Worry about the high beams later.

 

[Blurred Talon]

I aim only doing the high beams Dave. The E55s are controlled by the cars wiring while the FX-Rs are on a completely different circuit with a separate switch, relay, fuses and wiring.

When I pull the stock, the E55s bi xenon shutter is opening.

The really funny thing is the person I got these ballasts off of had the same issue when trying to use them on his car.

I'm going to check and confirm the wiring before I go to work today.

 

[fedj18]

I didn't have too much trouble with my ballast setup, but I am also running the Matsushita ballasts that you find on Nissan/Infiniti and various other cars.

 

[azdave]

I aim only doing the high beams Dave. The E55s are controlled by the cars wiring while the FX-Rs are on a completely different circuit with a separate switch, relay, fuses and wiring.

When I pull the stock, the E55s bi xenon shutter is opening.

The really funny thing is the person I got these ballasts off of had the same issue when trying to use them on his car.

I'm going to check and confirm the wiring before I go to work today.

Okay. Well drop back to a known good point. Try to fire the ballasts with only the low beams hooked directly to your original power supply when all systems worked. You can even disconnect the bi-xenon shutters until you get the ballasts to fire using the car wiring. Maybe you have some kind of cross-connection going? It's so hard to trouble shoot this stuff without being there in person.

I've used boosted Bosch AL ballasts for aver a year on OEM wires with no issues. If your car could have corrosion issues or suspect wiring due to age then go for a HID harness instead and abandon the OEM wires.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Turns out I had it wired wrong. I've corrected it and everything works perfect.

Here's the wire call outs for a 96 Talon headlight side harness.
Black - Common Ground
Green - Low Beam 12V+
Pink - High Beam 12V+

So after that was corrected, I plugged the lights in for a little test action. I will aim them tomorrow. Right now the beam is not centered at all and the cut off is not horizontal. I'll correct it tomorrow.

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[Blurred Talon]

Started aiming the lights tonight....
The driver's side is not aligned at all, I had to redrill one of the mounting holes, a bit better now but still needs to move. I'll fix it tomorrow.

Stock halogens

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Mis-aligned and unlevel driver side E55.

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Driver side FX-R, I want to bring this one up a bit but other then that it looks good to me.

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[Blurred Talon]

Got the FX-Rs mounted tonight. I gave up on thinking of ways to mount them to what was left of the high beam reflector. Instead I just mounted them right to the headlight housing. Tight fit for sure, I need some more sealing washers. I'll add nuts on top and some lock tight to hold them in place.

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Tomorrow after work I'm going to sort out the alignment issue and if I can, aim them.
Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll be ready to seal them up again.

 

[Blurred Talon]

I started on the wiring of the lights tonight. The E55s will be run off the factory wiring. DSMs have very beefy head light wiring and relays stock so I will be using that instead of creating another harness.

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Plug and play too.

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Just need some split loom and the E55 harness is complete.

For the FX-Rs I'm building a completely new harness with independent switches.
PedroDaGr8 on HIDPlanet helped me with this so my hat is off to him. Only change is I will be running a separate switch for the high beams instead of one switch.

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The capacitor is there to prevent flickering of the ballasts when I switch from low beams to high beams.

The main battery feed, need to add an inline fuse still. Thought I picked on up, guess not.

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Relays and relay connectors.

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I will not be using pin 87A on the relay so I cut the wire on the harness and capped it off.

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Lastly, I extended the bi-xenon wires on both projectors. These will be run inside the housing and pass through a factory hole, just need to get the right size grommet.

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Going to order the LEDs and some weather pack connectors this week. Should have this wrapped up very soon.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Haven't updated this in a bit, I've been busy with work the past month so this project took a side line but now I'm back at it.
I have everything to finish the retro and seal the lights, just need to find the time, end of this month it will be done. I completed the Demon eyes tonight which is just 2 superflux leds per projector. I think it looks down right evil.

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[97 GSX 97]

I'm still following this. I'm very interested in the end result. I'd like it better if it was a set of 2GB lights but we can't all be perfect now can we.

 

[Blurred Talon]

I might redo them next winter and if I do, it will be with 2GB lights.

 

[Blurred Talon]

The lights will be on the car this weekend I'm busting my balls to finish them.

All the wiring on the headlight side is pretty much done, need to extend the demon eye wires though. They will be powered by a relay, they don't need one but it will make it easier. I also covered the turn signal housing in chrome tape since it was painted black.

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One headlight lens is ready to go, going to start sanding the other now.

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[Squirrel82]

Looks great man.Lots of good info for when I go to install Tl projectors in the factory housings.

 

[johnmarines]

Looks great

 

[bpestilence]

Work looks good, but I am still confused why you are running two projectors.... To double the weight and cost? The bixenon is all you need, the others are superfluous. There is no law that says you have to have four lights on the front, but even if there was you could just keep the high beam reflector stock. On the other hand, it does LOOK pretty awesome with all that hardware in there.
I also wonder why you started with "cheap Talon headlights" when your job would have been a lot easier starting with aftermarket halogen projector lights. Expense doesn't seem to be an issue...

 

[azdave]

I'm sure he chose to try and mod the stock housings for the same reasons I did...because you have them on hand and don't know until you try how it will or won't work.

I gave up trying to mod the OEM housings with only bi-xenons in the low beam position once I realized that I would have to vacuum-form bezels to hide all the mounting problems. I had just sold all my vacuum-forming equipment and wasn't wild about starting all of that again. I also didn't want to consider resin with stretch fabric with all the rlated mess and sanding required.

I switched to aftermarket housings and made life way easier. I stayed with bi-xenons in the low beam position and "fake" high beam and turn signal projectors just to get the whole "look" that I was after. I don't even have bulbs in my old high beam position. The E55 bi-xenons with 65W boosted ballasts takes care of all the extra light I need.

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[Blurred Talon]

I'm sure he chose to try and mod the stock housings for the same reasons I did...because you have them on hand and don't know until you try how it will or won't work.

I gave up trying to mod the OEM housings with only bi-xenons in the low beam position once I realized that I would have to vacuum-form bezels to hide all the mounting problems. I had just sold all my vacuum-forming equipment and wasn't wild about starting all of that again. I also didn't want to consider resin with stretch fabric with all the rlated mess and sanding required.

I switched to aftermarket housings and made life way easier. I stayed with bi-xenons in the low beam position and "fake" high beam and turn signal projectors just to get the whole "look" that I was after. I don't even have bulbs in my old high beam position. The E55 bi-xenons with 65W boosted ballasts takes care of all the extra light I need.

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Dave hit the nail on the head. I was using what I had available to me at the time.
I'm doing quad projectors simply because I like to do crazy off the wall stuff that no one has done before.

Now, as for these lights, they have been trashed. The aim was so off it wasn't even funny, over all I was not happy with the out come. The good thing is this was a great learning exp for me. I picked up another set of lights very similar to the ones Dave has but with a chrome housing. This time around I will build a jig for the lights so the aim will be spot on (any tips on build the jig Dave? I know you used one with your lights).

Anyhow, here's some pictures.

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On the car:

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Here you can see how bad they off:

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Disassembled:

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As I said, this was a good learning experience for me. I'm only out $40 for a set of junk headlights so that's not too bad imo.

 

[azdave]

This time around I will build a jig for the lights so the aim will be spot on (any tips on build the jig Dave? I know you used one with your lights).

Before I started my first retro I made a holding jig for the OEM headlights that duplicated the mounting points in the car. Next I clamped the lights and the jig to a Black and Decker Workmate bench. I then shot a laser level front and rear and side to side to be sure I could repeat the mounting jig position for future tests. Shining the OEM light beam on a far wall I marked the position of the cutoffs and recorded it on the jig. With that info I now knew that any housing bolted into my leveled jig should shine a properly aimed cutoff in the same place. This allowed me to have very little need for gross adjustments once the projectors were in place.

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[bpestilence]

Yeah, I can see that. Good learning experience. But really I would recommend starting with some aftermarket lights. They have some with 2.5" projectors that look like they would swap straight out with some low-beams out of an RX330, and others with 3" projectors that it might be possible to swap some bixenons in.

I wasn't satisfied with my first HID conversion, either:

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Note that this car only came stock with 2 lights, not 4. There are a lot of cars like this. No law against it.

 

[azdave]

But really I would recommend starting with some aftermarket lights.

The OP mentioned he just got a set of aftermarket projectors to do the swap.

I have always recommended aftermarket as well for the swap but it doesn't hurt to do a conversion with a cheap set of OEM housings as a starter project.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Having the 4 projectors had nothing to do with the law at all. It was simply the look I wanted. Did it add cost, sure but that's not a big deal to me. Plus if my 35W E55s aren't bright enough, I can shut them off and run my 55w FXs.

Dave, thanks for the info on your jig.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Been a while since I've updated this thread.

I'm currently, slowly I might add, finishing my retro. I'm using Sonar headlight housings, 4 FX-R projectors (E55s were sold), Boost Bosch AL Gen 2 ballasts for the outer (low beam spot) projectors, Retro Solutions 55w Ballasts for the inner (high beam spot) projectors.

The housings.

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Disassembling them.

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Getting the housings ready to mount the FX-Rs. I had to cut the mounts for the OEM projectors out.

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I tapped all 4 projectors with a 1/4-20 tap and started to mount them.

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I then built a jig from some aluminium tubing and mounted the housings so I could aim them. I now want to mount the housings to the car and make 100% sure the aim is perfect. I'll be doing that next week. The rotation is a bit bad, hence why I want to mount them too the car.
Here's the jig in action.

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I decided that all the angel eyes, LEDs, etc are more then I want to deal with right now (plus a bit tacky). They've all been ditched for now.
However I still wanted the lights to have a different look to them so I painted the projector cut off shields with high heat red.

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More updates next week I hope. I hurt my back at work so I have to be careful what I do.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Tonight was a GREAT night!
All but 1 projector is pretty damn good. The driver side inner is way too high and I ran out of adjustment plus the rotation is off, I'll see what I can do about that. The passenger side out is slightly off but I can live with it and it shouldn't blind other drivers.

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Now I need to secure the other projectors 100% and address the driver's side inner.

I can see the finish line finally!!

 

[Blurred Talon]

I need to go out tonight and get them aimed better, they are a touch too low, so no beam shots. I think the lens are causing a bit of glare because they are in such bad shape, they really softened my cut off which pisses me off. After I move I'll pick up another set of the same lights off eBay to hack up for parts.

Here's some day time pics and a night pic, yes my car is dirty as hell thanks to the rain lately. Cleaning never ends with a black car.

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Got them aimed tonight and took a bunch of pictures.

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In front of the car, below the cut off.

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Above the cut off.

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Lastly a couple randoms.

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