Who has blacked-ot their headlights AND front corners? Need pic of light output..

[dtmenace]

[atchipmunk]

Heh. Haven't looked at this thread in a while and wow did it go downhill really quickly. Heh.

I guess I should clarify something...i'm not really looking to black out the turn reflectors and maintain the stock location turn bulbs....mainly because the light output would definitely suffer. Was just curious to see what it looked like picturewise. I do, however, like the look of the blacked out reflector with the diffuser strip still in place. So, what I was thinking of doing when I get around to taking my headlights apart for a true Bi-Xenon projector rerofit is to build some high-quality super bright amber LED's into a circuit to mount behind the diffusers. I have directional LED reflectors from a pair of '10 BMW E90 tailights that i'm gonna incorporate to give the proper lighting directionality. I should be able to fit about 7 or 8 LED's behind the diffuser on each side with the forward-most LED's facing forward, and the rear-most ones facing the side so the light can be seen properly from any angle. Instead of the complete reflector lighting up, visually it would just be the diffuser lighting up when activated. I dunno...it's an idea i've been throwing around...especially since I have the LED reflectors to make it work. Thoughts?

[gr4v3r]

[allgrownup]

Heh. Haven't looked at this thread in a while and wow did it go downhill really quickly. Heh.

I guess I should clarify something...i'm not really looking to black out the turn reflectors and maintain the stock location turn bulbs....mainly because the light output would definitely suffer. Was just curious to see what it looked like picturewise. I do, however, like the look of the blacked out reflector with the diffuser strip still in place. So, what I was thinking of doing when I get around to taking my headlights apart for a true Bi-Xenon projector rerofit is to build some high-quality super bright amber LED's into a circuit to mount behind the diffusers. I have directional LED reflectors from a pair of '10 BMW E90 tailights that i'm gonna incorporate to give the proper lighting directionality. I should be able to fit about 7 or 8 LED's behind the diffuser on each side with the forward-most LED's facing forward, and the rear-most ones facing the side so the light can be seen properly from any angle. Instead of the complete reflector lighting up, visually it would just be the diffuser lighting up when activated. I dunno...it's an idea i've been throwing around...especially since I have the LED reflectors to make it work. Thoughts?

 

I think that could look really good, it would enable a much cleaner look and would provide excellent turn signal visibility. Just don't go too bright, try and retain an OEM appearance a la BMW.

 

All this E-Thuggin is ridiculous, grow up. All of us at one point have done something utterly terrible to our cars....For me, in H.S. I put blue bulbs on the interior of my Jeep, also behind the amber parking lights... and yes blue and yellow do make green. Isn't that what most of us are here to do, customize are cars? Even Chip Foose and other legendary fabricators like Xzibit() have made some hideous cars.

 

We are all here to enjoy our cars Tburkhart has done a ton for showing us whats possible with our headlights, and at the very least given us a look into what it would look like if an Audi and a LGT fornicated, not my style but still respect his efforts!

[atchipmunk]

Btw...thburkhart...while I don't care for the Audi-ish LED treatment you've given your headlights, I do have a question. If you're gonna go through the hassle of heating them up and pulling your headlights apart, why not take the extra time and do a real xenon retrofit with real xenon projectors, etc? It wouldn't have been that much more work since you alrady had them aoart, and Trust me...it is WAY better than the garbage Plug&play kits with the cheap, rebased xenon bulbs in a projector designed for halogens. In my E36, I have the euro-spec ZKW elliipsoid headlights. I used to run a 35W DDM H1 kit in the halogen projector, but later did a complete retrofit to some bi-xenon E46 M3 projectors and the light output is night and day. There really is NO comparison. Plus, the OEM D2S bulbs are known to burn much cooler than the cheap china-made rebased xenon capsules used in the kits.

[luchadorjose]

let's just hope you don't get your nose smashed off by someone when you're pulling out of a blindspot. Their insurance will have a field day NOT paying you for altering safety equipment

[bmx045]

and FWIW, audi's LED strip turn off while the blinker flashes on that particular headlight so that the LED's don't washout and "overpower" the blinker

[allgrownup]

the stock housing works well with HID bulbs. virtually identical to rx330 - where HIDs were more common.

 

i am thinking about doing LED's for the highbeams - via a Dually from rigid induistries. would have to rip the headlamps open again and fit them somewhere..

 

I would reccomend the Dually D2's in that application, which may not be better than the factory high beams, the dually's are great but not high beam great! they are both identical in size (3X3) I also have the Flood Pattern.

 

the picture I showed you was the SR30 (30 inch bar) check my updated Fog thread for Dually pictures

[bmx045]

He's right. Altering visual safety equipment can sometimes leave you at fault

[atchipmunk]

the stock housing works well with HID bulbs. virtually identical to rx330 - where HIDs were more common.

 

i am thinking about doing LED's for the highbeams - via a Dually from rigid induistries. would have to rip the headlamps open again and fit them somewhere..

 

Hmm...i'm gonna do some comparison testing then. I still have that 35W DDM kit that I used to use in my E36 before laying around somewhere. Maybe i'll pick up some rebased H7 Xenon bulbs and toss em into the LGT for the time being. Then, once I get around to doing the real bi-xenon retrofit I can compare outputs of the two.

Honestly though...I think one of THE best reasons to go with a real xenon retrofit is the ability to retrofit bi-xenon projectors in for true xenon high-beams. For my retrofit, I'm planning on retrofitting in RX350 Bi-xenon projectors. Since they'll be bi-xenons, I'm also planning on taking the stock halogen projectors, removing the cutoff shield, and relocating them in place of the stock highbeam reflector for a "quad" reflector setup. However, the relocated stockers with only be used for flash-to-pass operation. Also gonna use the same ballasts I used in my E36 retrofit...the Bosch/AL bi-xenon ballasts, mainly because I want to use a little trick I came up with on my E36. The Bosch/AL ballasts are pretty easy to modify to boost output up from the stock 35W by adding in some parallel resistors onto the circuit board. On my E36, I designed a little circuit using some resistors and micro-relays that mount inside of the ballast casing that allow me to boost them via an electronic signal. I then had that circuit wired so that the ballasts normally output the stock 35W, but when I activated the highbeam solenoid for "high-beams" it would not only open the highbeam solenoid, but it would also instantly boost the output to approximately 60W. I also had them wired so that I could also manually boost the ballasts via a dash mounted switch without actuating the highbeam solenoids for use on empty stretches of highway, etc. I want to incorporate those same features into my retrofit on the LGT Wagon as well.

 

Now, the turn signals...that's a whole different animal. I want to incorporate the blacked-out look without negatively affecting light output and visibility. Here's the stuff i'm planning on incorporating into the turn signals...

 

Here's a pic of one of the 2010 BMW E90 tailights with the red plastic outer lens removed...each tailight has 3 rows of LED's for the brake lights with directional reflectors for each LED...

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk56/atchipmunk/05%20LGT%20Wagon/E90Tails-1.jpg

 

Here's the LED portion removed from the tailight assembly...

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk56/atchipmunk/05%20LGT%20Wagon/E90Tails-3.jpg

 

And finally the LED reflectors themselves separated from the rest of the LED circuitry...

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk56/atchipmunk/05%20LGT%20Wagon/E90Tails-9.jpg

 

Each row of these reflectors is about the perfect width to fit behind the center diffuser strip in the turn signals. I'm planning on mounting them behind the diffuser and building some circuits for them using high-quality ultra-bright LED's. I can fit a total of about 7 of the reflectors behind each diffuser and I plan on having the outer most ones directed towards the side and the forward-most ones aimed straight forward with the other ones at different angles in between. This should give a good, even distribution of the light so it will be visible from any angle, and since i'll be using high-quality LED's (not the cheap LED's you find on eBay that will burn out in a few months) it should be as bright, if not brighter than the light output from the stock turn signals. The goal is to have the look of the blacked-out turn signals with the clear diffuser in the middle (which I like), but with much better light output than the stock bulbs give in the blacked-out reflectors (that I don't like). Anyway, that's the plan at least. I'm still pulling together the parts I need for the whole project and also need to find an extra pair of OEM headlights I can do the work on since there will be some fabrication involved and it'll probably take me some time to build them. I can't afford the downtime on the LGT since I use it as my daily driver now. Whenever I get around to actually starting the project i'll be sure to take a ton of pics and will definitely post a build thread to chronicle the work.

Anyway, i'm curious to hear thoughts on this idea from others...both positive and negative.

[atchipmunk]

They'd basically look similar to this (with projectors in place of the stock highbeam reflectors), but just the clear diffuser strip would light up amber for the parking lights and turn signals...http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee359/frkkevin/feeler_retro/IMG_0820.jpg

 

Sorry...stole this pic from another thread. It was from frkkevin. Sorry dude...lemme know if you care if I use this pic and i'll take it down. Just needed an example...

[maniaxzero]

should get these to complete the look of your front end

 

http://www.coolgizmotoys.com/images/2012/02/lash1.jpg

 

All fun and games till you spot one in real life.

 

http://i.imgur.com/mnzi0l.jpg

[maniaxzero]

Output sucks but that's what our LED mirrors are for..

 

http://i.imgur.com/BzCOll.jpg