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Still working on this. Making progress but slowly. I will be honest- these are taking longer to make than I had expected. I don’t think I’m going to be able to hit the target price but we will see. Time is the bigger issue at the moment. I have a lab oven now so I can do heat endurance testing as well as post curing of the urethane.
Getting close guys.. I am now a dealer for TRS (Morimoto) AND Spyder Auto so I will be able to offer the best pricing and also a warranty on the projector assemblies! I am also considering outsourcing the urethane castings, but that depends on the quantity of orders I received once the announcement is made. Stay tuned!
Im just sitting here with a stack of cash ready to throw at my screen mate
If it is possible i would love the option for an unpainted "kit" i could mod myself. Like color matching the shroud to the car or something. Unless you can manage a chrome finish like the inside of the headlight, then that would be ace!
Did some heat testing over the weekend. Not looking great. Should have done this much sooner. It looks like I will be testing a higher temperature urethane resin. Hopefully I don't need to redesign the whole thing and start over.
Also the glues I have been testing aren't what I was hoping for. Might be testing some epoxies next.
Full disclosure, I got burned out on this project and needed a break. I had previously made over 20 castings with the old resin, until I found out that it just wouldn't hold up to the heat without softening and losing gasket compression. Lesson learned.
The good news is that in the mean time, I have gotten my FD on the road for the first time in 18 months and I have had a few opportunities to test the headlights on the road. I would never sell anything without personally testing it first so this was a critical step and was part of the reason for the delay. They perform quite well. I had no trouble aiming them just right (again, without trimming the headlight bracket whatsoever). So far I haven't had any heat issues in practice, but then again I am not sitting in stop and go traffic with the headlights on in 100+ degree weather with hot oil coolers just below the headlights (yet). Funny anecdote: one of the two projector assemblies in my car is being held into the main housing with only two small pieces of masking tape, and it hasn't moved. I expected the tape to fail from heat/vibration but it has lasted over 100 miles! This gives me some comfort knowing that the glue I will be using obviously doesn't need to be incredibly strong or anything.
I have the new high temperature resin on hand and my goal is to test it out within the next week. The heat deflection temperature of this resin is at least 70 degrees higher, which should be plenty. This resin comes with some additional headaches though - it the parts need to be baked in an oven to achieve full performance. I have acquired a laboratory oven for this purpose and was hoping to retrofit a digital temperature controller into it but that might have to wait a while. In the mean time it is usable but will need some supervision.
I see that Sakebomb has started a new group buy and has dramatically lowered their price. I am still targeting sub $900, but their option is still a good one if you want HID or are just tired of waiting. I did get quotes from three different suppliers to see if I could feasibly outsource the castings and still make some money, but sadly it just wouldn't make sense unless I was able to do hundreds of sets. So these will continue to be hand made by me, one at a time. I cannot give a firm release date yet. But I can tell you that they will be released when I am satisfied that they will perform well and will hold up to real-world conditions. If all goes well with the next batch of castings then I would expect to be able to make an announcement within three or four weeks. I am too far into this now to give up - but I am not going to rush to compete and risk putting out a flawed product.
Here are some more recent pictures of the headlights in my car. NOTE: I blocked off the "M" on one light, but not the other. I suspect most people will want this blocked off...
The sleepy and sleek kits are just not for me, and I like this kit because there's zero modification to the stock HL buckets or ballasts. So still tuned in for sure. The stock lighting is underwhelming. Almost dangerous in the context of modern autos.
03-26-19, 10:48 AM
