Headlight upgrade ideas

[witchcraftz]

I bought a pair of angel eyes.


Not the prettiest but I was thinking of making some changes:
- retrofit 2.5" Hella H3 projectors into the second bulb location with mini gatling gun shrouds. The current 9006 projectors are the low beams and I'd retrofit the H3 into the high beams.
- remove angel eyes (not sure if I'm a fan of them on a VW)
- repaint interior in matte black (or maybe PG to match my car?)
- remove fog lights and put into the lower grille and retrofit dual blinkers (maybe)

So I'd have dual projectors/dual blinkers.

Any suggestions to improve my idea?

[P Arkus]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

Everyone has their own style and opinions, but I would start with a different base that looks just a bit more OEM and not so much cheap ebay. I like the direction you're going with it, and if you like the look of the headlight then by all means go for it (after all its your car/project), however i'm just not a fan of those lights at all. Personally I think a set of OEM HID reps or just regular Jetta lights retrofitted with a nice projector looks MUCH cleaner. Either way, good luck with your build and i'm in to see the results.

*Note* you asked for ideas.....Please dont take what was said above as bashing or hating. Just constructive criticism

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

Thanks for the thoughts!

You can't bash me because I'm always looking for ideas and to me any criticism is a personal view. I tend to do different things so I often get a good 50% of people not liking my projects but that's okay with me.

I did a quick (terrible, lots of things not right lol) photoshop of two looks for my idea.

[MechEngg]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

With all my retrofitting experience i would NOT recommend following that plan for a few reasons:
- Halogen projectors are not meant for HIDS, if you are planning on running halogens then i would recommend using HIDs in proper HID projectors for a far superior output, no comparison really.
- These particular projectors are not very well made. If you start running HIDs in the low beams as it sits right now you run the fairly high risk of burning the chrome reflective surface on the inside of the projector. They are not meant for that type of heat.
- If the Hella H3 projectors are the ones that I'm familiar with they are a fog projector and not a bi-xenon projector that are used for high beams. If the projector is one that i haven't heard of and is only high beam then running HID's in it would be useless because of the warm up time that the HIDs have if you don't go all OEM (H3 is not an OEM bulb style)


Now what i would do if you wanted to do a dual projector setup is to retrofit FX-R bi-xenon HID projectors into the current high beam position. Then i would open up the current 9006 projectors and remove the cutoff shield and use 9006 halogen bulbs and usethose as your additional high beams. The final output would be FX-R HID projectors as your low beams, and then you could wire up both the 9006 halogen projectors and the FX-R's to be used as your high beams.

Let me know if i understood your plan or if i got anything wrong

[CGDoig]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

Also if you are driving somewhere where you'll constantly be switching your highs on and off, I'm pretty sure you'll go through bulbs like no tomorrow.

[P Arkus]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

With the photoshops you quickly threw together, I must say I dont mind the all black ones too much. Of course its always different once its done and on the car, but you have my respect for trying something different!

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

With all my retrofitting experience i would NOT recommend following that plan for a few reasons:
- Halogen projectors are not meant for HIDS, if you are planning on running halogens then i would recommend using HIDs in proper HID projectors for a far superior output, no comparison really.
- These particular projectors are not very well made. If you start running HIDs in the low beams as it sits right now you run the fairly high risk of burning the chrome reflective surface on the inside of the projector. They are not meant for that type of heat.
- If the Hella H3 projectors are the ones that I'm familiar with they are a fog projector and not a bi-xenon projector that are used for high beams. If the projector is one that i haven't heard of and is only high beam then running HID's in it would be useless because of the warm up time that the HIDs have if you don't go all OEM (H3 is not an OEM bulb style)


Now what i would do if you wanted to do a dual projector setup is to retrofit FX-R bi-xenon HID projectors into the current high beam position. Then i would open up the current 9006 projectors and remove the cutoff shield and use 9006 halogen bulbs and usethose as your additional high beams. The final output would be FX-R HID projectors as your low beams, and then you could wire up both the 9006 halogen projectors and the FX-R's to be used as your high beams.

Let me know if i understood your plan or if i got anything wrong

I haven't actually mentioned putting in HIDs in the halogen projectors.

I do appreciate your thoughts, you are right this is basically what I was thinking of doing, but with the Hella projectors. I know the FX-R projectors are amazing but cost too much for this project.

If those Hella projectors aren't recommended, I was looking into some OEM TT D2S projectors instead or maybe some E55 with clear lenses? I'm worried about how deep some of these will go though. Any other decent bi-xenon projectors out there are are "cheap-er" and decent?

Thoughts?

[MechEngg]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

I honestly wouldn't be too concerned with the length of the projector, i fit TL's and they are quite large. I would focus on finding a projector with a better low beam output than a high beam output if you are planning on using the current halogen projectors as high beams. The E55's have a great high beam but their low beam is not very good at all. Not sure about the OEM TT projectors

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

Thanks for the info, I'll look into the low beam characteristics of the projectors.

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

I have found a nice set of GTI bi-xenon projectors, I think these will work well for my retrofit. They have a 3 wire shutter system.

I've been reading and reading some more but I'm missing information and I don't want to tackle this project without more knowledge.

Questions:

1 - There is a shutter. I haven't found how people wire the shutter system to be controlled? How do I tap into the low/high beam signal?
2 - What is the best way to adjust the hid projectors?
3 - Where is a full wiring diagram of how an hid adapter harness hooks up into an MK4 harness?
4 - Should I just cut, tape-up and tuck the wires going to the angel eyes when they are removed?
5 - As this is a pretty cheap test project I'm considering getting a set of ebay bulbs and ballasts (4300k 35W), how well/long do these things work?

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

Here's what I've figured out so far:

Stock Setup



HID Setup



How do I connect those 3 cables (arrow) for the shutters coming from the projectors so that they work?

[MechEngg]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

That harness that you have pictured is for a low beam only setup

If you want to use a bi-xenon projector you are going to have to buy a 9007 harness and it will have a positive and negative wire for the solenoid coming out right beside the wire that connects to the pink lead on the ballasts. These two wires pull the shield forward for the high beams. You will need to wire up the blue connector correctly to the correct 3 pins to make it work but shouldn't be that difficult to do.

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

I took a look at the 9007 harness from the retrofit source and it has some extra leads coming out from the 9007 plug, so I guess those are the wires?
If so I'll have to run wiring myself from those two leads then to each solenoid?
But I have 3 wires coming from the solenoid and there are only 2 coming from the harness, do I need to do some soldering?

[MechEngg]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

My solenoid only had 2 wires. My best guess is that one of the wires is ground, one is 9V and one is 12V. And yes you can run just one wire from the high beam pin to the solenoid 12V wire and then ground the other side. For some projectors it matters which is + and which is -

[witchcraftz]

Re: Headlight upgrade ideas

I think you're right, one is 9v and the other 12v. I found someone who said they were using "Wolfsen Tech solenoid controllers" on vwvortex (link) which change 3 wires to 2 wires.

However I can't find these anywhere and someone else said the easier solution is just to wire both 9v and 12v to the red and it should work - thinking this may damage something though, I thought perhaps adding a resistor before the 9V lead would help?

One last question: the D2S bi-xenon bulbs do not have 2 filaments or 2 bulbs, the high/low is done by the shutter, right?