Wobz

[derbo]

I'm very curious how the output will look like with the shutter from the projector.

I'll dig around on how the wiring works in the headlight later today and we can chat.


I'm happy with these bulbs in my civic so hopefully you will be too!

Photo bomb







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[az3579]

Today was the day; I attempted the retrofit.

There is some mixed news: good, bad, and not sure. Let me break it down:

The Good:
* I was able to successfully install these bulbs without the need for any splitters or extra hardware by using the 9006 connector meant for the ballast.
* Everything works, including the LED bulbs and the shutters.
* The headlight bulb cover fits perfectly over the Morimotos! No external wiring that was meant to be internal is showing on the outside of the housing.

The Bad:
* ZKW makes the shittiest lights I've ever seen. Not only are their projectors shitty (don't worry, I've already changed them out [twice, with different brands for different reasons]), but their wiring is also garbage. I lost count of the number of breaks in the insulation for these wires all over the place. It really is scary. Both of my headlights are going to need a full internal wiring rebuild. Ugh.

Not Sure:
* The bulbs don't look as bright as the Xenons on high beam in the daytime, whereas with HIDs you can usually tell when they're on high beam during daylight by looking at them. Illumination against the garage door looks fine compared to the HID though, but it is only a couple of feet away, so that's subjective. I will find out tonight when I go for a drive.





For this retrofit, I took my headlight assemblies out entirely as I had to get access to the ballasts underneath the housings. Once the ballast was unbolted, I found a disaster with the wiring. At first I only saw this:

IMG_20170416_130447 by botond.pal, on Flickr



But, as I started to disconnect things, it just got worse:

IMG_20170416_130901 by botond.pal, on Flickr



The damn insulation was flaking off before my eyes. Unbelievable.

Had to go to the store with only one eye to pick up some liquid electrical tape.

IMG_20170416_132411 by botond.pal, on Flickr




After some prompt liquid electrical tape work, I proceeded with the install.

IMG_20170416_140625 by botond.pal, on Flickr





As you can see, the ballast uses a standard 9006 connector, which is exactly where I plugged in my LED drivers. It's a direct swap - ballast for driver.

IMG_20170416_130827 by botond.pal, on Flickr

IMG_20170416_130843 by botond.pal, on Flickr



Here is a demonstration of why 2Strokes produce usable light compared to some bulbs. The illumination point is in the same place, so the light should reflect in a similar pattern. Granted, not as much light bounces around as an HID because the HID lights up all the way around the bulb, where the LED has a bulb on each side of it, but not on all sides.

IMG_20170416_142357 by botond.pal, on Flickr



After making the connection for the driver, I ended up stuffing the LED driver and its wiring into the housing itself, allowing me to push the 9006 connector back in as well. I don't like this setup at the moment, but I'll re-think how I'll route stuff when I re-wire the headlights.

IMG_20170416_153516 by botond.pal, on Flickr



The drivers fit beautifully in the housing. Thankfully, our E46 headlight housings have a ton of room.

IMG_20170416_153521 by botond.pal, on Flickr



I was able to fit not only the LED driver, but also was able to leave the factory ignitor in place until I decide whether I want to keep the LEDs or switch back.

IMG_20170416_153552 by botond.pal, on Flickr



Comparison shot of the Morimoto 2Stroke LED on the driver's side and the aftermarket craptastic 6k Xenon bulbs on the right:

Low beams. The HID bulbs right now are very blue, which you can see from the picture. They have a brighter hotspot in the middle, where the Morimoto 2Stroke bulbs have a more even light distribution.

IMG_20170416_144443 by botond.pal, on Flickr

High beams. Don't mind the yellow. I have yellow high beam bowls with LED bulbs in them as well. They are coded to turn on with the high beams.

IMG_20170416_144508 by botond.pal, on Flickr



It is interesting that you can see the two illumination points of the bulbs through the lens:

IMG_20170416_162106 by botond.pal, on Flickr

IMG_20170416_162131 by botond.pal, on Flickr



And finally, both bulbs in.

IMG_20170416_162235 by botond.pal, on Flickr

IMG_20170416_163534 by botond.pal, on Flickr



Now I must wait for nightfall to get a real-world idea of how they perform. Stay tuned!

[BMWCurves]

Very cool. I'm interested to see what the output is like at night. Bummer to hear about crumbling insulation for your headlight wiring, that's a bitch.

[anandoc]

Extremely impressive work, BP! And thanks for detailing everything so well for the rest of us.

I am scared to see how the wiring inside my ZKW would look like at this point - yikes! I do have a spare ZKW housing, maybe I can steal some of its wiring and replace my headlight's wiring.

Also, nice to see Wobz inside the garage of your new place

EDIT: BP, do you think one can use the H7 Morimoto 2stroke LED bulbs for our high beams? They are rated at 5000 lumens - much higher than my current Osram Rallye 65W rated at 2100 lumen. Link: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/le...o-2stroke.html

[nextelbuddy]

nice! never heard of these before. where did you get them? do they fit into the standard D2S/D2R bases in the headlight housing?

[cakM3]

Damn BP....... damn.......

[slater]

High beams. Don't mind the yellow. I have yellow high beam bowls with LED bulbs in them as well. They are coded to turn on with the high beams.

BP, i would be interested in doing this also - more light output is always good.

bummer about the insulation issues. i will be examining mine now before they go into the Touring.

[az3579]

Very cool. I'm interested to see what the output is like at night. Bummer to hear about crumbling insulation for your headlight wiring, that's a bitch.

Yeah, the insulation royally pissed me off. Whatever; at least it'll be perfect once it gets re-wired, better than any OE headlight.

Extremely impressive work, BP! And thanks for detailing everything so well for the rest of us.

I am scared to see how the wiring inside my ZKW would look like at this point - yikes! I do have a spare ZKW housing, maybe I can steal some of its wiring and replace my headlight's wiring.

You should definitely check your housing to see what condition the wires are in. I would not, however, re-use crappy ZKW wiring from any other used headlight. I recommend you buy the wiring here (thanks Derek for the link!):

https://www.eficonnection.com/home/c...terForm=Filter

They have all the proper color-coded wires to do the job right.

Also, nice to see Wobz inside the garage of your new place

Yeah, tell me about it!

EDIT: BP, do you think one can use the H7 Morimoto 2stroke LED bulbs for our high beams? They are rated at 5000 lumens - much higher than my current Osram Rallye 65W rated at 2100 lumen. Link: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/le...o-2stroke.html

I don't see why not.

nice! never heard of these before. where did you get them? do they fit into the standard D2S/D2R bases in the headlight housing?

I bought these from The Retrofit Source (direct product link: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/le...o-2stroke.html). They fit in to a variety of sockets, depending on which adapters you order them with. The D2S version fits perfectly behind the factory cover.

BP, i would be interested in doing this also - more light output is always good.

I did call this very point out earlier; these are NOT better than Xenons. This is expected; LEDs don't have as good of a throw for distant light as HIDs do. What I can tell you is that these have a better light disbursement compared to my crappy aftermarket HID bulbs I had before. The light is better spread in the foreground, and dare I say, they added light in the foreground to a projector that is known for not having any foreground (FX-R v1). I'm really surprised by how it added foreground to the area that was never lit with any of my bulbs before, not that it matters since that area is irrelevant at speed.

Anyway, I did go out for a sighting run yesterday. Unfortunately, it rained hard the whole time. As you know, you can't see headlights at all when it's raining out, so that was almost pointless. It did slow down a bit towards the time I was getting home, so I found a nice dark road to check 'em out with.

Note: I've come to the realization that I need to raise my headlight adjustment a little bit. They were pointed a little too low, so I think that's partially why I didn't get the full distance the bulbs can achieve. Also note that the pics show the light a little bit more intensely than in reality, as pictures usually do. These pics were off my Pixel phone (with which I'm also impressed, for its low light capabilities ).

Low beams:

IMG_20170416_211534 by botond.pal, on Flickr



High beams (ignore the yellow, forgot to turn off the H7 high beams in coding):

IMG_20170416_211552 by botond.pal, on Flickr



They were super intense inside my buddy's garage before I headed home, but then again, that was only a few feet away:

IMG_20170416_195044 by botond.pal, on Flickr



Here are some "dusk" photos. The sun was going down and it was getting dark. This was at 19:34, outside my buddy's shop:

2017-04-16_07-34-59 by botond.pal, on Flickr



This was earlier on the way to his shop. The picture was taken at 19:04. You can faintly see the cutoff of the projectors on the Jersey barrier. I'm not sure how this stacks up agains the Xenons; I never paid attention to it before.

Edit: Looking at it now, it seems that you can't see it in the picture. You could definitely see it in person, but it was very faint as it wasn't dark enough out yet to be able to clearly distinguish a cutoff there.

IMG_20170416_190450 by botond.pal, on Flickr



I will go going out again tonight to take some better pics, since it'll be dry outside and it should give a better idea of how these light up the road. I'll also be adjusting my headlights before going out just to be sure I get a fair representation of how these should look.

[NoVAphotog]

Yeah, the insulation royally pissed me off. Whatever; at least it'll be perfect once it gets re-wired, better than any OE headlight.



You should definitely check your housing to see what condition the wires are in. I would not, however, re-use crappy ZKW wiring from any other used headlight. I recommend you buy the wiring here (thanks Derek for the link!):

https://www.eficonnection.com/home/c...terForm=Filter

They have all the proper color-coded wires to do the job right.



Yeah, tell me about it!



I don't see why not.



I bought these from The Retrofit Source (direct product link: https://www.theretrofitsource.com/le...o-2stroke.html). They fit in to a variety of sockets, depending on which adapters you order them with. The D2S version fits perfectly behind the factory cover.



I did call this very point out earlier; these are NOT better than Xenons. This is expected; LEDs don't have as good of a throw for distant light as HIDs do. What I can tell you is that these have a better light disbursement compared to my crappy aftermarket HID bulbs I had before. The light is better spread in the foreground, and dare I say, they added light in the foreground to a projector that is known for not having any foreground (FX-R v1). I'm really surprised by how it added foreground to the area that was never lit with any of my bulbs before, not that it matters since that area is irrelevant at speed.

Anyway, I did go out for a sighting run yesterday. Unfortunately, it rained hard the whole time. As you know, you can't see headlights at all when it's raining out, so that was almost pointless. It did slow down a bit towards the time I was getting home, so I found a nice dark road to check 'em out with.

Note: I've come to the realization that I need to raise my headlight adjustment a little bit. They were pointed a little too low, so I think that's partially why I didn't get the full distance the bulbs can achieve. Also note that the pics show the light a little bit more intensely than in reality, as pictures usually do. These pics were off my Pixel phone (with which I'm also impressed, for its low light capabilities ).

Low beams:

IMG_20170416_211534 by botond.pal, on Flickr



High beams (ignore the yellow, forgot to turn off the H7 high beams in coding):

IMG_20170416_211552 by botond.pal, on Flickr



They were super intense inside my buddy's garage before I headed home, but then again, that was only a few feet away:

IMG_20170416_195044 by botond.pal, on Flickr



Here are some "dusk" photos. The sun was going down and it was getting dark. This was at 19:34, outside my buddy's shop:

2017-04-16_07-34-59 by botond.pal, on Flickr



This was earlier on the way to his shop. The picture was taken at 19:04. You can faintly see the cutoff of the projectors on the Jersey barrier. I'm not sure how this stacks up agains the Xenons; I never paid attention to it before.

Edit: Looking at it now, it seems that you can't see it in the picture. You could definitely see it in person, but it was very faint as it wasn't dark enough out yet to be able to clearly distinguish a cutoff there.

IMG_20170416_190450 by botond.pal, on Flickr



I will go going out again tonight to take some better pics, since it'll be dry outside and it should give a better idea of how these light up the road. I'll also be adjusting my headlights before going out just to be sure I get a fair representation of how these should look.

All I see in that last pic is the 428,524 km (266,272mi)!!!! I think you'll be the first ZHP on here to break 300...

[slater]

I did call this very point out earlier; these are NOT better than Xenons.

i was referring to coding the halogen high beams to come on with the bi-xenon high beams.