99 Explorer Projector headlights

[00meangreenXLT]

I think I ended up with what you've got. That's was Dreddog recommended for me anyhow and he based that on your install.

I like the virtual "plug and play" aspect to doing this. The headlights don't seem to have much room to work with so getting some huge honkin' projector and cutting the headlights all the hell seemed like massive overkill to me and a real hassle. I like the compact nature of the MH1s and I'm told the performance is excellent. I already have several H1 HID capsules in reserve so I felt it was a no-brainer to go this route.

I don't really "mind" my current setup in the slightest. WAY better than stock and so much better than just slapping a HID kit in reflector housings. Talk about glare (been there, done that before I got my current lights). My headlights have seen better days. I screwed them up a bit during initial install, but otherwise they've held up quite well.

That's why I'll take my time doing the install. I scored some new "Diamond Cut" headlights and corners, in addition to the stuff from the group buy. I was going to get a new set of one piece projector lights before Dreddog put the idea in my head.

Thanks for the comments on the engine bay. Couldn't have done it without mod extraordinaire, "Turdle". He did it for me while I was down there in Kansas two summers ago. Also got the headers and a UI spacer installed while there too (and some upgraded hoot struts). Good times.

The "Explorer V8" badge I think was only available in '96. Sort of hard to come by. I've scored two via eBay in the past. I had my second one sent to Jon (Turdle) and obviously he weaved his magic with that too.

I may need to pick your brain once or twice to do the retrofit. How much time did it take you in total, from start to finish. Any general pointers? I'm hoping to do the deed before a long road trip planned at Christmas (Calgary->Milwaukee area and back). How do you like your setup? I went with 4300K (as I always do when I go HID). I did the "faux Philips" upgrade from TRS.

Cheers,

Brad

Yes the performance from the MH1 is very good for its size, and certainly a lot better than HIDs in the reflector housing (I've been there done that too as you can see in my avatar lol). I decided I wanted to go with them because when Dreddog was doing his original retrofit in his Bronco we put one of his MH1's in an extra stock Explorer housing that I had laying around to see how it would look/work and it fit in nice and snug and I really liked the way it looked. Here's a picture of that test fit:

Now, depending on which diamond headlight housing you have you may have to do a little dremeling (nothing major) so that the projector goes all the way in. I have the ones that had the shield that went over the halogen bulb, as seen here:

After you unscrew and take that shield off you're left with the little protrusion that the shield screwed into, which bumps the bowl of the projector and doesn't allow it to slide in flush with the back of the housing. It has to be dremeled away in order for the projector to fit all the way in.

Other than that, you may want to trim the projector shroud a little because while I got mine in without trimming it, I scratched the hell out of the chrome in the headlight housing on the top and bottom wiggling it in there . (I don't have a pic of the scratching but I'll take one tomorrow when it's light out so you can see what I'm talking about).

I did my retrofit over 2 days slowly (Dreddog wasn't around most of that weekend to help :roll. There were some times when I got a little frustrated but overall it wasn't too hard, but definitely take your time.

Getting the wiring harness for the HID kit to work properly was a whole different story though lol my high beams weren't working at first and it turned out that I had the 9007 connector from the kit pinned the wrong way and it blew a fuse that caused my high beams to not function (I don't remember which fuse number, maybe Dreddog will chime in if he remembers, we spent like 3 hours trying to make it work LOL).

But now that everything is in and working I am very happy with this setup, definetly a huge improvement over the halogen setup I was running before this, and an astronomical improvement over the pnp HID setup I had in the same housings the first few months i had the truck. The low beam is just awesome, and while the high beam on the MH1 isn't the greatest it is certainly a huge improvement from the halogen high beam (my pnp setup basically had no high beam so you can't even compare!).

Hopefully all this made sense, I'm pretty tired at the moment lol let me know if there's anything you need clarified
-John

And yeah those Explorer V8 badges were only on very early 96 V8 models, I've been wanting to get one but have yet to find one

 

[vroomzoomboom]

wow, that looks 10x better then mine do!

 

[celly]

Wow meangreen, good stuff!

Dreddog mentioned the scratching issues. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

My lights/corners are like the ones in the photos (except clear reflectors in the corners).

How hard was it to open the lights. I plan to follow the heating instructions on the TRS site. I think it was 265F for 7 minutes.

What worked for you?

 

[00meangreenXLT]

Wow meangreen, good stuff!

Dreddog mentioned the scratching issues. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

My lights/corners are like the ones in the photos (except clear reflectors in the corners).

How hard was it to open the lights. I plan to follow the heating instructions on the TRS site. I think it was 265F for 7 minutes.

What worked for you?

Thanks! LOL well lets just say my parents didn't appreciate headlights in the oven....so Dreddog and I have been using a heat gun to open the headlights.

You just run the heat gun around the edge where the headlight lense meets the housing (but don't hold it for too long like i did in a few spot or it'll start to melt a little :roll and the glue will start loosen up...I had it easy opening these housings compared to Dreddog's first set of Bronco housings which were a *****!!! The lense basically peeled right out after I heated it up all around and got one of the corners loose with a small flat head screw driver.

 

[00meangreenXLT]

wow, that looks 10x better then mine do!

Thanks!!

 

[dreddog47]

Thanks! LOL well lets just say my parents didn't appreciate headlights in the oven....so Dreddog and I have been using a heat gun to open the headlights.

yeah, both of his parents walked in the kitchen at the same time from different ends and both of them said "what the hell are you two doing!"



You'll get a million different opinions on the oven method, and after 2 failed attempts I went out and bought a 20 dollar heat gun and I've been using that ever since.

 

[dreddog47]

wow, that looks 10x better then mine do!

I'm kinda curious on what you did to get a 3" lensed projector to fit into that housing, even a FX-R which is a 2.5" needs housing trimming...

I've never worked with an E46 so I don't know how big it actually is, I've only worked with an E55 which is also a 3"

 

[TekMan05]

theres two ways to do it... But keep in mind they will glare like a mo fo

One is to take the stock 9145 bulb holder, cut the plug off, stick a H1 HID bulb in and silicone it in place


The other is to get a H10 or 9006 bulb, dremel down one of the tabs, and lock it in just like the stock 9145/h1 setup

Well I already have the H1 bulbs HID's in the projector head lamps now and still have another h1 HID set waiting to be installed. So at this point I need to make the H1 kit work. I wouldn't be happy leaving regular halogens in there. The difference in contrast/hue just doesn't float my boat. I do recall someone on here putting HID's in the fog lamps and having little to no glare. I will have to mess around with it this weekend and see what I can do to get them to work.

 

[dreddog47]

Well I already have the H1 bulbs HID's in the projector head lamps now and still have another h1 HID set waiting to be installed. So at this point I need to make the H1 kit work. I wouldn't be happy leaving regular halogens in there. The difference in contrast/hue just doesn't float my boat. I do recall someone on here putting HID's in the fog lamps and having little to no glare. I will have to mess around with it this weekend and see what I can do to get them to work.

they wont glare much at all if you aim them 3" infront of your car, but if you aim them so they are even somewhat useful for light output, they will have plenty of glare...




take 9145 socket/ cut off plug end, stick HID bulb in, silicone in place, done

 

[vroomzoomboom]

I'm kinda curious on what you did to get a 3" lensed projector to fit into that housing, even a FX-R which is a 2.5" needs housing trimming...

I've never worked with an E46 so I don't know how big it actually is, I've only worked with an E55 which is also a 3"

IIR, the projector sicks out of the housing about 1/2 to 1/4 inch. had to trim the bottom for the solenoid, and cut the opening in the back bigger. to mount them, i used push rods from a motor, with long screws with nuts on the end to hold it tight. i also used the stock housing, and the aftermarket lens because it's clear. had to trim it a tad to work with the stock housing however.

 

[celly]

I'm not longer rocking one piece headlights. Two-piece is in again.

The retrofit went fairly well. They don't provide you with much in the way of instructions with the kit, but I figured it out eventually. In retrospect, it was quite simple.

I used the oven method. 265F for 7 minutes. The projectors do slide in as plug and play. Some trimming of the shrouds made it easier to get them in. They fit snug. With the 9007 adapter ring they provide, it's idiot proof to line these things up correctly.

I haven't used them at night yet (just finished this afternoon). I can tell these things are bright because they look bright in the day. The high beams look effective. For once, I have real high beams and HID.

The Retrofitsource is a great place. Their kits are very well thought out, well packaged and the installation with my truck is very solid.

Now I'm waiting for dark!

Pic below. Yes, I know my truck is dirty.

 

[vroomzoomboom]

nice job brad! i like the look of those more then the other ones you had. these ones make you step back and say "there is something done to it, but i cant put my finger on what it is".

 

[celly]

nice job brad! i like the look of those more then the other ones you had. these ones make you step back and say "there is something done to it, but i cant put my finger on what it is".

Tim, don't get me wrong. I like the look of the Diamond Cut heads/sides, but I really am a function over form modder. I love HID, but I hated them in the Diamond Cut, without projectors. Horrible, blotchy light pattern with a ton of glare.

Looking forward to it getting dark. Won't be long.

 

[00meangreenXLT]

they turned out great Celly!! they really are very easy to aim and line up, definitely one of the main reasons i went with the MH1's as well.

i'm sure you're very eager for it to get dark out lol

 

[vroomzoomboom]

Tim, don't get me wrong. I like the look of the Diamond Cut heads/sides, but I really am a function over form modder. I love HID, but I hated them in the Diamond Cut, without projectors. Horrible, blotchy light pattern with a ton of glare.

Looking forward to it getting dark. Won't be long.

x2 on the blotchy light output with HID's in there without a projector. when i had the HID's in the euro lens i have, they sucked, and bad. they also pencil beamed really bad as well. after i did the retro, it was like the sun was still out, and without blinding someone.

 

[00meangreenXLT]

x2 on the blotchy light output with HID's in there without a projector. when i had the HID's in the euro lens i have, they sucked, and bad. they also pencil beamed really bad as well. after i did the retro, it was like the sun was still out, and without blinding someone.

My god the HID output from those diamond housing reflectors was so horrible!!! There were multiple times where the car coming towards me didn't flash their high beams at me, they left them on till they were past me just cause since I was blinding the crap out of them!!! And I couldn't see anything at night there was more glare than usable light lmao

 

[celly]

My god the HID output from those diamond housing reflectors was so horrible!!! There were multiple times where the car coming towards me didn't flash their high beams at me, they left them on till they were past me just cause since I was blinding the crap out of them!!! And I couldn't see anything at night there was more glare than usable light lmao

It took me a long time to get a beam pattern that didn't piss off oncoming traffic. It involved pointing the beam very low and to the right. It was so blotchy that my wife even commented about how odd my beam pattern looked and she never comments about my truck.

The new lights are sweet, but I definitely have to tweak my focus a bit. Not as straight as I'd like. I was messing around with my adjusters so much this weekend when I installed them (including having the replace one; I scored once from the junkyard).

I must say, they are bright. I especially like how the highbeam actually seems to work instead of just moving a blotchy light pattern around like those "bixenon" HID kits do when installed in reflector housings. I did like the highbeams in my projector housings, but of course they're just halogens.

So far, so good. I do like the "refreshed" look of my truck much better.

 

[dreddog47]

hah, damn celly that was quick... Those headlights look 300% better then those ebay ones



If you have to adjust your rotational alignment, you can grip the bulb holder with a pair of plyers and rotate if need be, but so far I've been getting lucky and getting the alignment spot on in the first try... I think they made the 9007 adapter rings better since I got my first set, because those I still had to do a fine adjustment on.

 

[celly]

hah, damn celly that was quick... Those headlights look 300% better then those ebay ones

If you have to adjust your rotational alignment, you can grip the bulb holder with a pair of plyers and rotate if need be, but so far I've been getting lucky and getting the alignment spot on in the first try... I think they made the 9007 adapter rings better since I got my first set, because those I still had to do a fine adjustment on.

I didn't plan on doing the retrofit this weekend. I had some older Diamond cuts to practice the oven method on and it started from there. I didn't have any lingering smell at all.

Thanks for the pointers on tweaking the adjustment. I was thinking of trying something like that. The driver's side looks pretty good. It's the passenger side that's off a bit.

I'm not blinding anyone or creating glare or anything so I should get by before I have more time. I spent so much time doing it this past weekend. I don't think my wife/son were impressed.

 

[TekMan05]

Here's a couple pics of my setup with the HID's in the fogs. I haven't driven it yet with the HID's in the fogs yet because I just used sillicone to hold the bulbs in place and I wanted it to sit and dry. It's only temporary because I had to hurry and get the truck back to the shop this morning. Not to get too far off topic but when I was wiring everything down I notice my plastic shroud cover that bolts on the sub-frame to cover the bottom of the radiator was gone. I Mean just flat disappeared. It did not come loose because there was a piece still hanging to the bolt on each side. It's like a monster reached up from a man hole tried grabbing my truck and just ripped the shroud cover completely off. So anyways I gotta get the U-Pick it yard to get a new one and I'll probably get new fog casings and actually drill a hole to fit the H1's in. I honestly like the HID's in the fogs. It looks very sharp, although I'd been happy with a super white Halogen too.

Here's a pic with the Mustang in the fore ground. Keep in mind it has just regular Silverstar bulbs in it. The difference is incredible. Not to fear my Trusty pony. You're next in line for the same upgrade.