skizot722
Well-Known LVC Member
Well, late last fall I decided I needed a project to keep my busy over the winter. I knew I wanted to upgrade the lighting on my LS, because although the stock output isn't bad for halogen, it's still halogen. So, I started researching HID lighting and the various options. I did come across a thread on LVC about a $125 kit, but I wanted to do more research before I bought it. From there I came across the forums on HiDPlanet.com, the best place for information on HID lighting. Although, they do have a "kit" forum, I would not go there asking anything about kits. That is, unless you are prepared to hear about how bad they are. And, after reading up on it, you can see why they take that stance.
Now, I know that there's at least one vendor on LVC that sells such kits, so I'm not going to sit here and knock kits. I just hope that after seeing this thread, especially the output pictures below, people will venture to retrofit HID projectors instead of buying kits, as even the cheapest, bottom of the totem pole, HID projectors (Bosch E46) still outshine them (not to mention safer for the '00-'02 LS's that didn't come with reflectors designed for HID.
So, that's exactly what I decided to do - retrofit some projectors into my LS headlight housings. This was my first retro, and even though I'm pretty good with my hands, it was still no easy task. I easily have over 100 hours in the project including design, engineering, etc. since I started in November of last year, and finished in February. It was a pretty tedious project given that I had virtually no room everywhere I turned; everything had to be setup within a few mm tolerance to work correctly. Now you might ask yourself, why is this guy suggesting that people retrofit if it's so time-consuming and difficult? Well, the projectors I chose are some of the largest ones out there, and the LS headlights are pretty small, so that made the whole process tougher than it would be for most. You don't have to retrofit the same projectors as I did; I just chose these because they are regarded as the best projectors out there in terms of performance (you should be able to tell why from the output pictures below ).
I would like to give a huge thanks to the helpful people on the HiDPlanet forums.
Component Information:
Retrofit Vehicle: 2002 Lincoln LS V8
Projectors: Projectors from a 2006 Lexus LS430
Ballasts: Denso Slim ballasts from the same 2006 Lexus LS430
Harness: Custom 9005/9006 relay harness for my ground-switched LS
Projector Information:
The '04-'06 Lexus LS430 projector headlights have the widest beam of any projector out there. They accomplish this with a lower reflector bowl (all other projectors are completely enclosed). Light from the upper/inner bowl shines down through a hole and hits the lower reflector bowl giving the projector its extra width. The light coming from the lower bowl meets with the light coming from the projector lens to create the seamless beam. Hats off to the optical engineers at Toyota for this one, as they really knew what they were doing when they designed this projector. Here are some pictures of it disassembled:
Projector Bowl:
Foreground Limiter:
Fresnel lens and part of projector. Fresnel lenses distribute the light a lot more evenly than clear lenses, but clear lenses seem to be the big thing with retrofitters as you can get a razor-sharp cut-off with them, as opposed to the blurrier cut-off with the fresnel. Personally, I'd rather have the light distributed more evenly, than have a sharp cut-off. Also, with sharp cut-offs, it makes it hard for your eyes to adjust to what's above the cut-off, since there's no blending of light and dark areas.
Cut-off shield:
Shroud:
Projector completely assembled:
On to the project pictures!
Here's one of my headlights before baking. Notice the two cans of retrofitter's fuel in the background.
One of the Lexus LS430 donor headlights.
Comparison of stock Lincoln LS driver-side headlight and Lexus LS430 driver-side headlight. Notice the huge size difference.
Headlight components after opening.
Let the dirty work begin!
Initial aiming / alignment in the garage.
Just pulled back in from some testing outside in the driveway:
Shroud fitment. I had to cut quite a bit of the LS430 shroud in order to get things to fit. Don't mind the rough edges, those were smoothed out. There was also no gap after the shroud was actually screwed into the projector.
Because I wasn't able to mount the ballasts in a sealed location as they were when mounted inside the LS430 stock headlights, I decided to pot them using MG Chemicals Thermally Conductive epoxy.
Here's a link to the HowTo I wrote on potting Denso Slim ballasts: http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14008
Once I finished potting the ballasts I had to find a good place to mount them under the hood. The Denso's have a very short bulb wire, so finding that location was a pain. I used 2 L-brackets per ballast and drilled and tapped holes on the frame of the car.
I built a custom 9005/9006 wire harness for my ground-switched LS. The diode is there to keep the low beams on when the high beams are switched on. The capacitor is there because when the high beams are triggered, there is a very small amount of time where there's no power to either high or low beam stock plugs. So, what would end up happening is that the power would be cut to the ballasts for about 400-500 ms while the highs turned on, and then they'd both have power again. That very quick re-strike is definitely not good for the HID bulbs (and probably not the ballasts either). So, I've put the 4700 uF capacitor across the low beam relay coil, so that during that intermittent power outage, the low beam relay stays closed and continues to draw power from the battery.
To show how far these things stuck out in the back, and that I had to cut the stock housing a little to get them to fit. I ended up cutting a bit more on the top to allow for a bit more adjusment. I used a rubber 3" to 4" PVC adapter (I cut it to fit), PVC pipe (also cut to fit), and 3" knock-out caps to seal the rear housing. I ended up painting the PVC pipe and knock-out caps black.
Both projectors w/shrouds mounted to the stock reflector and ready for assembly.
Headlights re-assembled.
Here's a shot showing the beam from the lens and the bottom reflector bowl (what I was talking about earlier). They meet and the extra width is added seamlessly:
Now, these following pictures will give you an idea of the *very* limited amount of room (practically no room at all) I had. Because of it, I really had to engineer a clever design for sealing the back of the headlights up. What I did was cut the PVC tube just enough to cover everything up, but at the same time it had to be short enough to slide back towards the headlight housing in the 3" to 4" rubber adapter so that I could get one of the headlight mounting bolts in. The area is so confined I had to use a long grabber tool to put the mounting bolt in place, as there was no way I could get my hand down to put the bolt in place. Once I had the bolt in place and tightened, I would slide the PVC pipe back away from the housing and slip in the 3" knock-out cap; I had to slide it all the way back to the frame to get it to cover completely. It does just that, and they are sealed completely in the back. I have yet to have a problem with condensation/moisture, and the car was power-washed several times towards the end of winter.
The first picture here shows the mounting bolt below the PVC pipe on the right. The PVC pipe is slid in all the way.
Here's the PVC pipe slid all the way out with 3" knock-out cap in place on the end.
And the grabber tool I used to put the rear mounting bolts in place.
Some pictures of the final product installed.
And now the money shot output pictures:
Just a normal driveway shot:
The following shots were underexposed to show the perfect alignment between low beam and high beam.
Low Beam:
Low Beam and High Beam perfectly aligned:
Now for the awesome shots.
I couldn't be happier with the results; both the looks and the output. I think they turned out very stock looking, and that's what I was after. Patience and hard work does pay off! And hopefully this just might convince a few of you to retrofit your LS with HID projectors.
Thanks for looking.
Now, I know that there's at least one vendor on LVC that sells such kits, so I'm not going to sit here and knock kits. I just hope that after seeing this thread, especially the output pictures below, people will venture to retrofit HID projectors instead of buying kits, as even the cheapest, bottom of the totem pole, HID projectors (Bosch E46) still outshine them (not to mention safer for the '00-'02 LS's that didn't come with reflectors designed for HID.
So, that's exactly what I decided to do - retrofit some projectors into my LS headlight housings. This was my first retro, and even though I'm pretty good with my hands, it was still no easy task. I easily have over 100 hours in the project including design, engineering, etc. since I started in November of last year, and finished in February. It was a pretty tedious project given that I had virtually no room everywhere I turned; everything had to be setup within a few mm tolerance to work correctly. Now you might ask yourself, why is this guy suggesting that people retrofit if it's so time-consuming and difficult? Well, the projectors I chose are some of the largest ones out there, and the LS headlights are pretty small, so that made the whole process tougher than it would be for most. You don't have to retrofit the same projectors as I did; I just chose these because they are regarded as the best projectors out there in terms of performance (you should be able to tell why from the output pictures below ).
I would like to give a huge thanks to the helpful people on the HiDPlanet forums.
Component Information:
Retrofit Vehicle: 2002 Lincoln LS V8
Projectors: Projectors from a 2006 Lexus LS430
Ballasts: Denso Slim ballasts from the same 2006 Lexus LS430
Harness: Custom 9005/9006 relay harness for my ground-switched LS
Projector Information:
The '04-'06 Lexus LS430 projector headlights have the widest beam of any projector out there. They accomplish this with a lower reflector bowl (all other projectors are completely enclosed). Light from the upper/inner bowl shines down through a hole and hits the lower reflector bowl giving the projector its extra width. The light coming from the lower bowl meets with the light coming from the projector lens to create the seamless beam. Hats off to the optical engineers at Toyota for this one, as they really knew what they were doing when they designed this projector. Here are some pictures of it disassembled:
Projector Bowl:
Foreground Limiter:
Fresnel lens and part of projector. Fresnel lenses distribute the light a lot more evenly than clear lenses, but clear lenses seem to be the big thing with retrofitters as you can get a razor-sharp cut-off with them, as opposed to the blurrier cut-off with the fresnel. Personally, I'd rather have the light distributed more evenly, than have a sharp cut-off. Also, with sharp cut-offs, it makes it hard for your eyes to adjust to what's above the cut-off, since there's no blending of light and dark areas.
Cut-off shield:
Shroud:
Projector completely assembled:
On to the project pictures!
Here's one of my headlights before baking. Notice the two cans of retrofitter's fuel in the background.
One of the Lexus LS430 donor headlights.
Comparison of stock Lincoln LS driver-side headlight and Lexus LS430 driver-side headlight. Notice the huge size difference.
Headlight components after opening.
Let the dirty work begin!
Initial aiming / alignment in the garage.
Just pulled back in from some testing outside in the driveway:
Shroud fitment. I had to cut quite a bit of the LS430 shroud in order to get things to fit. Don't mind the rough edges, those were smoothed out. There was also no gap after the shroud was actually screwed into the projector.
Because I wasn't able to mount the ballasts in a sealed location as they were when mounted inside the LS430 stock headlights, I decided to pot them using MG Chemicals Thermally Conductive epoxy.
Here's a link to the HowTo I wrote on potting Denso Slim ballasts: http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14008
Once I finished potting the ballasts I had to find a good place to mount them under the hood. The Denso's have a very short bulb wire, so finding that location was a pain. I used 2 L-brackets per ballast and drilled and tapped holes on the frame of the car.
I built a custom 9005/9006 wire harness for my ground-switched LS. The diode is there to keep the low beams on when the high beams are switched on. The capacitor is there because when the high beams are triggered, there is a very small amount of time where there's no power to either high or low beam stock plugs. So, what would end up happening is that the power would be cut to the ballasts for about 400-500 ms while the highs turned on, and then they'd both have power again. That very quick re-strike is definitely not good for the HID bulbs (and probably not the ballasts either). So, I've put the 4700 uF capacitor across the low beam relay coil, so that during that intermittent power outage, the low beam relay stays closed and continues to draw power from the battery.
To show how far these things stuck out in the back, and that I had to cut the stock housing a little to get them to fit. I ended up cutting a bit more on the top to allow for a bit more adjusment. I used a rubber 3" to 4" PVC adapter (I cut it to fit), PVC pipe (also cut to fit), and 3" knock-out caps to seal the rear housing. I ended up painting the PVC pipe and knock-out caps black.
Both projectors w/shrouds mounted to the stock reflector and ready for assembly.
Headlights re-assembled.
Here's a shot showing the beam from the lens and the bottom reflector bowl (what I was talking about earlier). They meet and the extra width is added seamlessly:
Now, these following pictures will give you an idea of the *very* limited amount of room (practically no room at all) I had. Because of it, I really had to engineer a clever design for sealing the back of the headlights up. What I did was cut the PVC tube just enough to cover everything up, but at the same time it had to be short enough to slide back towards the headlight housing in the 3" to 4" rubber adapter so that I could get one of the headlight mounting bolts in. The area is so confined I had to use a long grabber tool to put the mounting bolt in place, as there was no way I could get my hand down to put the bolt in place. Once I had the bolt in place and tightened, I would slide the PVC pipe back away from the housing and slip in the 3" knock-out cap; I had to slide it all the way back to the frame to get it to cover completely. It does just that, and they are sealed completely in the back. I have yet to have a problem with condensation/moisture, and the car was power-washed several times towards the end of winter.
The first picture here shows the mounting bolt below the PVC pipe on the right. The PVC pipe is slid in all the way.
Here's the PVC pipe slid all the way out with 3" knock-out cap in place on the end.
And the grabber tool I used to put the rear mounting bolts in place.
Some pictures of the final product installed.
And now the money shot output pictures:
Just a normal driveway shot:
The following shots were underexposed to show the perfect alignment between low beam and high beam.
Low Beam:
Low Beam and High Beam perfectly aligned:
Now for the awesome shots.
I couldn't be happier with the results; both the looks and the output. I think they turned out very stock looking, and that's what I was after. Patience and hard work does pay off! And hopefully this just might convince a few of you to retrofit your LS with HID projectors.
Thanks for looking.