celly
disturber of the peace
- Joined
- July 28, 2004
- Messages
- 6,771
- Reaction score
- 27
- City, State
- calgary
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 99 eb 5.0 awd
Bill, I second that assessment as I got mine on this weekend. They're far from "perfect", but I am very happy with this mod. The light pattern is better than OEM so obviously better than Diamonds too (which have horrible beam patterns, especially with HID). I do like the appearance of them too. They give my ride a freshened look without being too cheesy (I was afraid of them looking too ricey). To me, they look about as close as I could expect to taking a set of Diamond Cuts and making them into dual beams (which is a project I could never tackle). I'm not so sure about the halos (I may disconnect them) and I'll most likely swap out the white LEDs with amber eventually.
The cut-off of these lights is captured well by Todd in his photos. Not razor sharp like you'll see on some of those high end retrofits on Hidplanet, but WAY better than the scattered mess that comes out of Diamond cuts, especially with HID kits. I am happy with the focus right out of the box. I don't think I'll adjust them just yet. Doing so involves a bit of trial and error as they can't be adjusted in place while installed (but they're pretty easy to remove as I mention later).
One thing I noticed right off the bat was that I felt almost blind by not having HIDs. I did upgrade the H1 bulbs with Osram Night Breakers (ordered from powerbulbs.com out of UK with free worldwide shipping!). The lighting is excellent, especially the high beams. I don't have my KC Lites quad beam kit yet so I had to hold the "flash to pass" in order to get the effect of all 4 lights at once. Superb coverage and night even lighting. It should be amazing with HID in the projector.
Fact remains, my eyes have grown accustomed to 4300K HID output and halogens just don't cut it for me anymore. The halogens are doing the trick for now (and most people without HID would be very happy), but it won't be long before I put HIDs in the projectors (in transit).
The overall quality of these units is first rate (they feel very solid), but the designers cut some corners along the way. They really need some sort of wiring harness to accumulate all the loose wires for the halos, LEDs and the lone halogen amber corner There are 10 loose wires/side all hooked up to where the corner light was. A simple harness with an adapter to plug into the OEM socket would be ideal. I spent more time wiring up those lights than I did on the whole install. And to make matters worse, all the wires are of differing lengths with some too short to be useful without extending them. I just scored a new Hakko soldering station and put it to good use (a killer soldering iron by the way).
I was also pretty annoyed with how tight the spots for the OEM signal lights are. I had to Dremel one of them just to get the bulb in and the other 3 bulbs are in their pretty tight. I sort of dread having to remove the bulbs some day to replace them.
On that front, you've gotta love the one piece design. It's easy to move the lights in and out (with some finessing) without removing the grille shell. They're held in place by the 2 screws/side that are used for corners right now.
As Todd mentioned, my expectations were low for these things, especially for the price. They have far exceeded my expectations.
I'll get some photos up eventually, but I can't bring myself to posting photos of the winter grime. My front end looks pretty much like Todd's, except I don't have a bug deflector and I do have a Street Scenes Speed Grille. Of course, mine is Amazon Green instead of white. The chrome version of these lights do work well with the chrome grille on my Eddie.
Overall, a killer mod and I'm so glad I stumbled across the group buy thread because I hadn't been around these parts much lately before I saw the thread. I had watched Jamie's posts about his setup, but the cost of getting those to Canada was prohibitive, and the design wasn't what I was looking for. I liked the look of this newer design almost right from the start and I like them even more now that they're finally installed.
ouch.. that is some serious glare that will just be amplified significantly with hid kits.. i guess that's the only compromise when getting aftermarket projector headlamps.. 
