Im thinking about buying those projectors on ebay, the ones that are basiaclly the whole headlight housing, they dont come with directions, are they plug and play pretty much or does this require any wire splicing and all of that..
I hate to bash, but i have to say they look so ricey. Back before all these kits hit ebay, I retrofitted old BMW projectors into clear lens headlights made for an explorer. Heres the end result
EDIT: I took the 4.0 symbol off and ignore the name. Old signature pic
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I LOVE that projector light. is there anyway i could buy it somewhere or would someone make them for me? i love the one projector light by itself! that looks awesome. very nicely done
Does anybody have the projectors with the HID's in them from ebay or will the ebay kits not let you have HID's in them?
All you are doing is changing the light bulbs from halagen to HID and adding a harness & ballast
Preety much plug & play.....
...and celly, i no longer have 5L envy
here is where i may piss some people off. i did the same as afboy143 around the time the group buy that celly is talking about. i will admit, i haven't seen the output of those projectors, but have seen only one par of them on another members trucks. i am biest i guess, but i do like the ones that i retro'd in. the plus side is, they have a hi-beam without using a second pair of bulbs. the down side is, they do take a little bit of fabrication skills. it took in total about 40 hours or so to make. i do like mine better, the cut off is not as sharp as a pair that a friend has on his grand prix gt, and mind throw off way more light then his (yes i know i am making apples to oranges comparison) and i have never been "beamed" and they do not blind people. some members on here have seen them in person, and were surprised on how good they looked.
I saw your retro at carlisle and I cant figure it out, what projectors are you running?
i had seen you mention that some place (cant remember where), and sorry, i cant remember meeting you (unless i wasn't around). i am using BMW E46 projectors, mounted into stock housings using clear lens. i had the HID kit, just had to buy bulbs.
price break down (remember, i made these just as the plug and play started coming into the market)
eruo lens (which i had on the truck before i started the retro) 100
projectors that came with shrouds 140
bulbs 40
HID kit (which i had already) 100
mic 30
and made them using this thread
oh nice, E46's have a really good high beam distance... Did you swap the fresnel lens on the projector out for a clear lens?
You need to throw a set of corner lights on to really finish off the look
I think you were around but I didn't really talk to many EF people. I was there with a friend off this site and we talked to explorersport77 for a while, then I said hi to SuRrEaLNJ and went back to roaming all around
All you are doing is changing the light bulbs from halagen to HID and adding a harness & ballast
Preety much plug & play.....
as far as i know, they are stock lens from a bmw or range rover. i have corner lights on it, they just look amber because of the bulbs.
trying to think....where you with parli?
they must also make a big difference. i know when tara was zoomin around with evil at night, she could not believe how well they lit the road up. i'm used to them now, so i cant really say just how good they are, but the bulbs are about 2 maybe 3 years and i am sure they have dimmed down a lot since new
On a lot of projectors, especially the e46, I like the beam pattern better with the stock lens. Most of the time, the only reason guys put the smooth lenses on is to create a more colorful cutoff and make a "better" flicker, but there was actually a reason smooth lenses weren't used in the first place, and believe me, it isn't because some HID retrofitters were keeping smooth lens technology out of BMW's hands.
What kind of bulbs are you using? OEM > aftermarket
aftermarket 6000K from vvme. i would like to get a pair of oem ones, but d2's arent cheep.
Uh almost but not quite right...
First off, ZKW E46's DO have a clear lens, so do AP1 honda S2000's... Cars did have them from the factory, so to say theres a reason they weren't used in OEM applications is asinine...
Secondly, the reason fresnel lenses are used is to make the cutoff line softer and get rid of the color to make it easier on the general consumers eyes. Most people that buy cars with HID projectors dont have a clue what the hell they are, they just care if they can see.
Lastly, while clear lenses do give a razor sharp cutoff, or a nice blue band (depending on how the lens/shield is spaced) they also have a slight increase in output. Why? think about it, a fresnel lens is not 100% transparent, so the projector isn't giving maximum output with a blurry lens... The same way a faded and yellow headlight housing diminishes light output.