evilg

I'm trying to stuff low beam projectors into a CWest sleek light kit. I think my best bet is with a 50mm hella.

David, you are correct, the quality of the lights is great. I held a 50mm unit when I was looking at the sizing. .... just wish they could make one with a bit less depth to it (The CWest pod has hardly any room for it)

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

^Yeah I wish they made them with less depth too. It would be perfect if that were the case.

Looks pretty good Dave! Glad you didn't dyno too lol.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

Yes, the dyno would have been interesting with gas bubbling out of the tank. I would have said, "Jesus, it's on fire!" and they would have thought it is a good thing.

The 50mm units have the least amount of depth and certainly will light up the road so that is not a bad way to go. If you could get a 60mm in there, I think they make that size in a bi-xenon so you could have them on for both low and high.

Ceylon

iTrader: (3)

I have a set of Knightsports pop-ups lying around. I'm thinking of doing a HID conversion, I think I would have to mod the structure of lights to fit them in..But shouldn't be a problem.

I was planning on using S2k projectors, as I hear they are pretty much the best of the best.

Would be interesting to see how yours turns out

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

I'll post up the results. You can retrofit S2Ks but then you need to source the parts for a kit. With the Hellas, you can order a complete, new OEM set from www.rallylights.com.

Ceylon

iTrader: (3)

Thanks for the link!

Sourcing the parts is not an issue here as I have all but the projectors already.

But its nice to see what else is available

Thanks

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

Looks great David. Thanks for sharing. I've had my eyes on that exact combination for a while. Just haven't had time to more forward with it. Looking forward to seeing more.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

You can get the projectors here:

http://store.theretrofitsource.com/

He doesn't list S2K ones but several others will work.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

My pleasure, it was time to do this or forget it. Kilo Racing is busy modifying the mechanical links to make this work. The fallback is modifying the actual motor but we're trying to bypass the motor raising the lights to full OEM height before going back down.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

Quickie update on this: Kilo Racing was able to modify the long portion of the mechanical control arm to shorten the height of the pop ups so it looks like this project will be a "go". A few pics sent by Kilo:







Sorry for the blurry pics but I think these were taken with Jesus' cell phone. The light you see in the right side housing is a 90mm unit that we were using to determine how high the popup needed to be. We'll add in a 50mm unit to the right for Xenon low beams.

Note the empty holes for the turn signal units - I have these at home and have been trying to do an "Audi" style LED retrofit on them but it's not going to work. I can't get the lens covers off of them and I don't want to risk damaging them. I tried baking them in the oven for 10 minutes at 250 but the only thing this did was to start to melt the plastic and the chrome.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

Jesus has now retrofitted one side of the lights and I love them. He has the mechanical arm linkage working correctly so the lights popup to the appropriate height and then close correctly. He has modified a 90mm and a 50mm mounting bracket together and installed it in the headlamp bucket so the lights are now fully adjustable just like OEM ones. He's now going to have someone make a shroud for the lights to complete the conversion.

Based on his success, I just ordered two Hella 90mm halogen high beam units and two 50mm Xenon low beams for the conversion. I'm stoked!

Pics:

Now you see them:


Now you don't!:

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

Cool! It looks good!

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

Thanks, I am excited. Once the shroud is made, I think it will give the car a nice updated lighting solution. The Xenon low beams are 300% brighter than stock bulbs and the highs use a high output H9 bulb which makes 1800 lumens compared with 1650/1000 Lumens for an H4 so it is a win/win all the way around.

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

OK, kind of an update on this.

I figured it's been a little bit since someone mentioned OLED lights, so I was searching for some earlier today and I started seeing stuff about LED lights, so I started looking at those too. I just did a search for LED lights and came up with this...

http://www.rigidindustries.com/4_HID.../rgdl4ac50.htm

It's 4" diameter so it MIGHT work for me. That's 11.6mm more than what I was looking for originally though. And I noticed they are replacements for the GE 4509 aircraft landing light so I did a search for that and came up with this...

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...ndinglight.php

LED too!

The only problem with either of these is that I'd have to rig up some kind of way to mount them, but I can handle that I think.

What do you guys think?

KaiFD3S

iTrader: (37)

The only problem I see is that you would need to rig something up so that way it has a cutoff, otherwise you will be blinding other cars

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

^Yeah I'm not sure how these things fare on the road. Good call. When you say cutoff, you're talking about something physically blocking the light or what? These things are going to be sitting pretty far back into the housing too though, pretty much all the way back, so I don't think there would be much of a problem with light emitting too much out the sides. Not only that, the cover we're making (similar to the R Magic lights) will cover a portion of the top of the light too so there won't be much out that way either.

After looking at that second one it says it's 4.5" diameter so that won't work anyway.

I did a search for 90mm LED lights and came up with this...

http://www.autobarn.net/hella-009599801.html

And info on the Hella site for these...

http://www.myhellalights.com/index.p.../90mm-led-drl/

My main fear is not getting enough light out of these actually. I need enough to actually use them on the road. If I need to scale back then I'll address that too, somehow lol.

Another thing, the lights I've gotten so far (PIAA fog lights for the smaller inside lights and some cheapo Pilot lights from Autozone (because they were the right size) for the outer lights), they actually work OK I think, but I'd like to have them rigged up to where the outer lights are in use for regular lights, and the inner lights come on when I turn on the brights. Well, every way I've had them wired so far I don't get what I'm looking for. If I hook them up to turn on the inner lights for brights, then it severely dims the outer lights. So I'm stuck on the wiring mainly, no matter what lights I get...unless of course it comes already wired the way I need it or with the "Wiring for Dummies" book lol.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

Sorry to say it but none of those will work adequately for use as headlights. Simply, they are woefully underpowered so stay away from them for sure. As DRLs, they are fine, but not for headlights. Your main fear of not getting enough and appropriate light would come true.

To illustrate what I mean, check out this pic of the new Audi R8 LED headlamp assembly:



Audi uses 14 LEDs in its low beam assembly and three projector lenses to focus the light. They then use two high beams with 4 LEDs in each array. If I am correct, they use the Phillips Luxeon LEDs which average about 100 lumens per LED. So for the low beams, they have around 1,400 lumens.

If the info I have is correct about lumens and mcds (millicandelas), a 2,800 mcd LED is a little over 1 lumen. What you are proposing to use has 160,000 mcds so it is the equivalent of 57 lumens (160,000 / 2,800 mcds in one lumen). Now back to Audi - how many lumens do they use in their low beam? They have 14 LEDs at 100 lumens per LED so that is 1,400 lumens compared to your 57 lumen solution so you get the point right?

Check out what I just did on my turn signals:
https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...25733&page=136

Each of the LEDs I used are the brightness of the solution you propose and I have 10 LEDs per light and I could never use these as headlights.

The other problem is what others have described as cutoff. Your low beam headlights should use a focused (projector) light source that does not splash (cutoff) the light all over the road. An improper solution will blind the oncoming traffic. That is why most of today's headlamp modules use a lens that has a cutoff line on it so it properly aims the light source while keeping from blinding oncoming traffic. Solutions where you just shove a HID bulb in a non-hid assembly end up blinding traffic. The units you mention will certainly do this.

I love being creative for sure but safety comes first with headlights so stick to any of the Hella "headlamp modules" (not fog lights) and you will be good to go. Good luck.

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

I think I remember seeing your new LED setup in the pics thread but I didn't know anything about how you did it.

Well that sucks. Oh well. I still don't want to hack into the metal to mount those Hellas, so I guess I'll be keeping my stock popups.

David Hayes

iTrader: (6)

That setup was a strip of leds from oznium.com. The new setup has much brighter leds mounted inside of the turn lamp assemblies. The shop that did the setup might make them available for sale so I will keep you posted.

As for my sleepy eye popup headlight conversion, I am no finished with it and I can't be happier. The quality of the light is outstanding and I used the lights I recommended to you. Here is the thread:

https://www.rx7club.com/potential-advertisers-223/fd-sleepy-eye-hid-conversion-879394/

No cutting of the metal required. These most likely will also be offered as a kit, with a halogen (lower price) option and then the HId setup I have. Another forum member is currently the guinea pig tester for the halogen version so we shall see how it all turns out.

speedjunkie

iTrader: (3)

^I'll think about the LED turn lamp things, thanks! As for the lights...I don't really want to use them with the pop ups though. If I switch to the double round lights I want to fit them similar to RE-A/R Magic.