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HID Install – 2002 Crown Vic

Background

I have never been satisfied with the headlights on either of my crown vics. Both have lenses in good shape, good

quality bulbs, as well as an aftermarket headlight relay harness that allows direct battery current to feed the

headlights instead of trying to route the amperage load through the LCM and headlight switch. The harness was a

big improvement – if you are not interested in HID’s, then at least install the relay harness. There are wiring

diagrams available to build your own, or you can buy one from www.suvlights.com or a similar aftermarket

vendor. For the record, the pre-98 vics use 9006/9005 bulbs for lo/hi beams and the 98+ vics use 9007

combination hi-lo bulbs.

However, even with these improvements, there was still an issue with weak lighting, especially as compared to

the headlight design of newer vehicles – even the newer halogen equipped vehicles seem to do a good job of

lighting the road. However, the trend seems to be going to high intensity discharge (HID) lighting that uses a

ballast and ignitor to create an electric arc in a gas – commonly xenon – to create that white/blue light distinctive

to these types of lights.

This write-up will describe how I installed HID bi-xenon projector lighting in my 2002 CV HPP. Check for legality in

your area and whatever type of HID you install, do it safely and properly. Not only do you not want to blind

everybody on the road (great way to get pulled over) but you also want an installation that is clean and

dependable to avoid components frying or being stranded. Any legal or damage responsibility is yours. You also

need to do the research as needed to find out about HID lighting in general.

I also want to mention and thank another cvnet member, Larryo340 the LED King, for the help and advice he gave,

not only for the HID retrofit, but for the complete interior lighting conversion to LED’s done on my car as well. It is

of great benefit to have another set of eyes looking at what you are doing and I really appreciated his input and

tech help along the way. I’m talking about 120 messages back and forth, so he definitely had time invested.

You can install a universal aftermarket HID bulb/ballast kit into the OEM headlights for a lot less money and work,

but unless you are very careful about alignment, the results can be less than satisfactory. In this case you get what

you pay for. The light itself will be brighter but not focused due to the design of the factory headlights and can

result in a lot of annoyance to other drivers. The ideal method of controlling and focusing the intense xenon light

is use of projectors, which is why vehicle manufacturers use them. But whatever you install, bear in mind that

higher temp rating does not mean brighter/better lighting. It only changes the color of the light. OEM level is in

the 3500K to 4800K range - anything above that starts to reduce light output and increase the amount of blue into

the light range.

Before I did anything I listed some criteria that I wanted to include in the HID retrofit:

Final result and installation (including wiring) to look good with clean installation

OEM light output and appearance

Safe and dependable operation

Accessibility for bulb replacement and adjustability for levelling/rotation of projectors

Include the turn signal area of headlight in the upgrade

There are an increasing number of HID projectors being installed on vehicles, so I really don’t have a specific

recommendation on what you should use. I can suggest that a 3” diameter HID projector/lens has about the right

proportion for a Crown Vic headlight. If installing into 98+, you will want to use a bi-xenon setup, which simply

means that the single projector is equipped to provide both lo and hi beams. This is done either by a solenoid-

operated shutter or a small motor that actually shifts the projector up and down. You will also need some sort of

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bezel and shroud for the projector. These can be separate or combined and can be purchased or fabricated.

Parts Sources

After going through this retrofit and dealing with a number of vendors, I felt that I could recommend a particular

vendor, www.theretrofitsource.com. Retrofitsource in particular was excellent to work with, a lot of their value-

line (blemished) parts would be equal to some other vendors first-line stuff I have seen. They also take an interest

in your particular project and have a ton of HID parts, accessories, and advice to help you.

Projectors

I used a set of 3” diameter E55 projectors in this install because they were the right size for the cv headlight -

these are commonly used in the Mercedes e-series cars as well as some BMW’s/Volvos/Audis in various

configurations. Using smaller projectors may be easier, but they will not look right in the housings. Mine also came

with motor-driven left-right adjusters, but I did not need this feature so I removed them. However, I did want to

be able to adjust the projectors individually when installed so I added manual adjustment screws to the projector

mounts and also made a wrench specifically to use to do this. This will allow me to get the headlight assembly

generally aligned, then be able to fine tune height and rotation to get the projector cut-off and slope set correctly.

This is really important for the b-xenon installations to avoid blinding traffic and risking unwanted attention from

law enforcement. The E55’s are equipped with a simple 2-wire solenoid-operated shutter that is activated for hi

beams.

If you are looking at HID projectors, you should find out if they came from a European or North American vehicle.

The reason for this is that the HID projectors have what is called a slope that angles the light downward either left

or right in order to avoid glare at oncoming traffic. In the U.S. we drive on the right side of the road so the slope is

on the left, in Europe it is the opposite. You can still buy the European versions but you will need to either flip the

lo-hi beam shutter or do something to change the slope for U.S. driving. The E55’s that I bought were from a U.S.

car so I did not need to do anything.

Another required feature is to be able to get that horizontal cut-off adjusted properly for the general load

condition that your car sees most of the time. The European cars have load-sensor capability built into the PCM

that automatically adjusts the up-down level of the headlight depending on road and load conditions. Pretty nice –

if you load up the trunk, the lights adjust downwards to stay aligned, and vice-versa. Some U.S. cars have a

manual switch adjustment – you move the dial to position 0 to 4 and the headlights adjust up or down via step

motors. I will do this on the next retrofit, but in this first case I went with a simpler manual screw adjustment. My

Vic has the RAS (Rear Air Suspension) that generally keeps the car at a specified ride height so any load changes

should be compensated and the lights should stay pretty closely aligned.

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CCFL (Angel Eyes)

CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) Halos or Angel Eyes are also getting more common in various applications -

I think it was BMW that originally had them. They can provide a nice ambient light effect when the parking lights

are on, but care needs to be taken that they are not overdone. There are also LED halos available but in my

opinion the best look is from the CCFL halos. The CCFL’s also each use an inverter to ignite the gas in the tube, so

remember that it needs to be mounted somewhere as well, plus the wiring should include a separate relay for the

ignitors as shown in the wiring diagram.

I went back and forth on whether or not to install CCFL’s. I bought a couple of sets of CCFL’s from a crownvic.net

member but found that they were a bit too large for what I wanted to do, which was to fit them over the shroud

just behind the bezel. It is a very tight fit inside the headlight assembly so the CCFL sizing has to be fairly precise. I

did a little ebay shopping and found a set that was close to what I needed but nothing exact. After thinking about

maintaining a clean and simple look I decided to not install CCFL’s, but I did include them in the wiring diagram in

case someone else wanted to install them. In my opinion, the look is nice but I think that it will look dated soon.

Projector Installation into CV Headlights

With the projectors in hand, I bought a new set of ebay aftermarket headlights to work with to avoid destroying

the ones currently on the car. This also let me take my time to set up the HID’s as close to plug-n-play as I could.

Next set of HID retro’s will probably use better quality OEM headlights, but the aftermarket lights were fine for

this first try. Plus if I messed up completely the car would not be without lights.

First thing was to remove the lens from the new headlights – about 5-10 minutes in a 350 degree heated oven did

the trick. Remove the adjusters and any vent hoses/plastic parts on the headlights before heating them. You

should be able to slowly pull the lens off of the housing with a bit of effort. If you are prying and really having to

pull hard, heat the light assembly a little more to avoid snapping plastic. Wear gloves or oven mitts – the plastic

will be HOT. After the lens and housings are apart, you will also need to remove the adhesive from each of them.

You can do this while they are still “oven-fresh” or do it later with a heat gun. This will ensure a nice clean channel

for new silicone sealant when you put the lens back on. I was a little impatient and wound up snapping a little bit

of the channel lip off of the housing when removing the lens but some JB-Weld and light sanding repaired them

just fine. My plan was to black-out the bottom and sides of the housings but to leave the rear reflector face alone,

so doing the repairs was no big deal. Obviously if you are leaving the housings as-is, take a lot of care when you

take them apart. That reflective finish is pretty fragile too, so protect it with painters tape, and when you remove

the painters tape do it very slowly and from a non-cut plastic edge so it does not pull up the reflector coating.

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With the housings apart, it was time to start figuring out how and where to cut. I made a set of alignment marks

on the back so that I could keep a reference mark of where the center of the original halogen bulb was. This would

also be my center reference for the HID projectors.

I also removed the front shield from each reflector – it’s that plastic bullet-shaped piece that sits in front of the

bulb. It pulls staight out from the housing but you have to pry on it a bit.

Note also that the back face of the housing where the halogen and where the turn signal bulbs attach are parallel

with each other in relation to the entire housing. Remember that the housings are slightly angled when installed

on the car – it is very important to keep the HID projector aligned with the turn signal so that both will remain

pointed straight ahead when installed back on the car. This picture is a bit further along in the fabrication process,

but it shows the alignment needed.

I needed a cardboard template of the minimum amount of space needed to cut for the projector, but before doing

that I made center reference marks on the projector that I transferred onto the cardboard template. I then used

the marks on the template to align with the marks I made on the back of the housing and to make the outline of

where to cut. Keeping the alignment marks for cuts and projectors was very important to be the projectors were

always centered in the housings. I took the cardboard template and cut a piece of 16 ga steel to match – this

would become the attachment plate for the projector and would also be molded with fiberglass into the housing.

It would also have 4 threaded studs welded into it to allow for individual projector adjustment without having to

adjust the entire headlight housing.

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I was now ready to start cutting the housing for the projector, but before doing anything I masked off the rear

reflector to protect it. The plastic “chrome” surface is very delicate so I used medium strength masking/painters

tape. I used a metal cut-off wheel to make the cut, worked great but made a lot of dust – wear a mask. The hole

only needed to be big enough to install the projector and to allow the shutter solenoid to work properly. This was

a key step because you don’t want the hole to be too big since it needs to be covered by the HID bezel/shroud.

The best way to do all this was to make the initial cut, then check and recheck to trim off small amounts as needed

to get the projector to fit initially. The hole sizing will be fine-tuned a bit later. Caution! Do not assume that you

know which way the projectors go just by looking at them. I did this and almost wound up installing them upside

down. Hook up a projector with bulb and ballast to be sure which is right side up so the cut-off and hi-beams are

up and not down.

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With the holes cut for the projectors, the next step was to mold in the projector mounting plates for secure

projector mounting. I don’t want the headlights bouncing around going down the road. I set the steel mounting

plates in place with some masking tape so that the surface of the steel plate was parallel to the surface of the turn

signal housing. This relates back to ensuring that projector and turn signal are pointing straight ahead when the

completed housings are installed into the car. I also made sure that the centering marks were aligned with the

marks on the housing. With the mounting plate centered and aligned correctly, I used JB-Weld in a few places to

first just hold the plate in place. The final attachment would be from using fiberglass to mold it securely into the

housing, but sometimes it’s easier to get the parts temporarily set up before trying to apply the fiberglass.

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With the projector mounting plates done, it was time to fine-tune the holes cut into the housing to allow for

adjustment and slight rotation of the projectors. The 4 screw adjusters at the corners would enable me to adjust

the projector to any angle, and slotted holes in the projector housing would give me the ability to rotate it slightly

as well. The combination of these adjustments was to ensure accurate alignment of the horizontal cut-off as well

as proper alignment of the light height and beam slope.

I went back and forth installing and removing the projectors while tweaking the hole size to allow for a bit of

adjustment as well as enough room for the solenoid shutter arm to move without hitting the housing. Once I was

satisfied with the results the final step was to clean and then paint the bottom and sides of the headlight housing

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a gloss black using Valspar plastic paint.

HID Bezels and Shrouds

Just like the types of projectors, there are lots of choices for front bezel and shrouds for the projector housing.

These are used for appearance as well as to keep light contained within the projector, and most are vented as well

– the xenon bulbs produce a lot of heat. Some of these are a one-piece cover and others are the front bezel only,

depending on the original headlight they were designed for, plus there are some shrouds made for aftermarket

applications as well. Try to get shrouds that clip onto the projector – it makes assembly easier.

I wound up spending more time than I thought to get the shrouds like I wanted them. I went through modifying

one set of shrouds before I decided that I didn’t like the look so I scrapped them and contacted The Retrofit

Source for another pair to work with.

They carry a line of bezels (shrouds) called E55-R’s that gave me a clean simple look. They also carry these in a

“value line” at half price – these are bezels that may have some light scratches. In my case I had planned to paint

them so the value line fit the bill. However when I got the shrouds I was pleasantly surprised to find that their

quality as blemished was about equal to other suppliers first-line products - I could have installed them without

any need for paint.

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At this time I already had the turn signal housing made and painted, so I wanted to make both the turn signals and

HID’s complement each other but not make them identical. I took the HID shrouds and painted the outer

perimeter with the black plastic spray paint, then lightly misted a gloss silver paint on the front face of the

shrouds. I left a section of chrome finish showing. General tip on making sharp edges with paint – use 3M Fineline

tape or similar product to make the edge, then use regular painter tape on the Fineline tape, but set back from the

edge just a bit. The Fineline tape will make a nice crisp edge – peel it up slowly and away from the painted surface.

What I also liked about these bezels is that the retrofitsource puts the dimensions on the website. As mentioned,

the fit inside the cv headlight is pretty tight, especially when needing some room for HID adjustment, venting, and

covering the hole made in the headlight housing for the HID projector. Although the look of these bezels is round

(matched the turn signal housing), the overall shape is more oval and very well suited to the cv headlight housing.

Top-to-bottom dimension was 4.0”, side-to side dimension was 4.9” This was ideal for the available space inside of

the headlight housing and also gave a good overlap to cover the cut in the housing.

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After setting these into place on the HID projectors, I saw that the projectors still needed a means to limit stray

light, so I made a set of shrouds from some light gauge sheet aluminum. This was done by just simply rolling the

metal into a cylinder sized to cover the projector yet still fit behind the retrofitsource bezel. These shrouds did not

need to be painted – in fact, it was better to leave the aluminium finish alone so that they blended better with the

reflector. The shrouds were attached with a couple of aluminium rivets.

Turn Signals

I think that when looking at headlights with HID projectors installed, just having the turn signal bulb sitting there

by itself looks kind of silly, so I decided to do something about that. I wanted to have a similar “HID” look for the

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turn signal, but smaller and proportional to the area of the housing that it fits into. That led me to decide to make

my own lens/housing for the turn signal bulb to generally match the larger HID headlight bezel/shroud. However, I

wanted to keep the factory bulb mounting intact so that it would still be easy to change the bulb.

I took a walk through the plumbing section in Lowes and found a couple of plumbing flanges that looked ideal for

what I wanted to do.

It’s obvious that the factory headlight assembly was designed to reflect the factory halogen bulb as well as the

turn signal bulb. I knew that if I contained the turn signal bulb inside of its own housing, combined with blackening

out the bottom and sides of the headlight assembly, it could really reduce the visibility of the turn signal. I wanted

to be sure that the signal could be seen from a wide arc across the front of the car, not just only from directly in

front of the car. With that in mind I decided to include the flashing sidemarker modification along with any turn

signal modifications that I did. This would help to insure that the turn signal could be clearly seen. This

modification is listed in the cv.net Body of Knowledge section in the forums and is very easy to do (and

recommended!) whether you are installing HID’s or not.

I took the larger plumbing flange and reshaped the back face to match the curve of the rear reflector, using a

cardboard template to get the shape right. I also drilled 3 holes on the top and bottom areas of the flange for a

couple of reasons. First was to allow some heat to escape from inside the housing and the second was to allow

light beams from the bulb to hit the rear reflector to increase overall visibility.

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I also decided to install a lens into the turn signal housing (plumbing flange). After looking around for basic glass

lenses around 2.5” in diameter I realized that the glass (not plastic) lens from a cheap magnifying glass would give

a similar rounded look as the projector lens and would also magnify the light from the bulb.

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The next step was to keep the lens anchored in the housing so I made a couple of snap-rings from slices of pvc

pipe.

These were then used to hold the lens in place inside of the flange while I applied fiberglass resin all around the

edge of the pvc ring/flange. This arrangement worked great.

This was followed by attaching a couple of threaded studs to the inside of the flange to make a very simple but

strong attachment through the rear reflector. JB-Weld was used to anchor the studs. The housings were then

painted gloss black. I took the smaller plumbing flanges and painted them a gloss silver to mimic an HID bezel, but

left a bit of shine along the inside and outside edges for contrast. These were attached to the turn signal housings

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with JB-Weld, with holes drilled into the face of the housing to let the JB-Weld ooze through just a bit for

complete anchoring. The hardware and insides of the housings are hidden by the bulb. This is the end result.

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I checked the park/turn lighting output by temporarily connecting the bulb to a battery. The bulb was very

noticeable and the holes in housing let additional light spots reflect off of the rear reflector of the housing. The

picture is of the park light and as you can see there is plenty of light even for the lower filament (park) light. The

turn signal is very bright.

Headlight Assembly and Installation

With the turn signals finished, I went ahead and installed the HID projectors with the bezel/shroud assembly. As

mentioned, care (and tape) had to be used to be sure I did not scratch reflector or painted surfaces. The headlight

front lenses were left off until after the headlights were completely installed into the car with drive test and final

adjustments made just in case I needed to go back to change something.

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A couple of modifications were needed to the radiator core support to give additional space for the larger HID

projector housing and the D2S adapter harness. I was actually surprised that the modifications are pretty minimal.

The first modification was to enlarge the existing stock opening to allow enough room for not only the projector

housing itself, but also a little more to allow for projector adjustment. It was very easy to cut through the

fiberglass to make the larger opening.

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The second modification was also very straightforward. This mod was to cut a small notch into the top of the core

support so that the D2S connector harness could be routed from where it connected to the ballast, down into the

top of the core support where it would be located just right to connect to the bulb. This also kept it protected and

away from excessive heat. Although this is all covered by the large plastic radiator core cover, I still wanted the

install to look good. The first step was to cut a small notch into the core support and to then bend the cut strip

downward as shown.

The edges of the cut were filed down and then a rubber grommet was modified a bit to fit into the groove created

by the cut. The grommet is very important to avoid any cut wires.

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I then made a small cover plate to keep the D2S connector harness in place and installed everything. The

connector harness is held in place, but it can still be moved a bit as needed to reach the bulb.

As you can see, it’s a little more work to replace the D2S bulbs over the stock halogen setup in that the headlights

will probably need to be pulled out a bit, but that’s ok, replacement should not be that frequent. One final

adjustment that needed to be made was a small opening cut into the plastic radiator core cover so that the D2S

connector harness could make more of a bend and not be crimped.

Wiring

I am a big believer in good wiring and connections, relays, and circuit protection devices. Headlight wiring is

especially critical –the last thing that you want to see (or not see) are the lights cutting off as you are going down

the highway. IMPORTANT – do NOT do this modification if you do not know how to do the wiring properly! Not

only can you run the risk of failed headlights, but in worse cases you can run the risk of wiring harness damage or

even an accident.

Here is the general wiring diagram that I did for the HID retrofit. It does not show a lot of detail such as wiring

gauge or routing, but you can get the idea of the basics. Note that any power feeds are powered directly from the

battery through a circuit breaker and relay. Relays are your friends. This ensures that all existing OEM wiring is

only used to energize a relay, which typically only needs milli-amps to function. Feed power is not run through any

switches or existing wiring, in fact the lighting amperage load is now reduced from original OEM specs. As

mentioned, I did not install CCFL’s but have still included them in the wiring diagram for reference.

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In the wiring diagram above, the passenger side original factory headlight connector is used to energize the HID

and solenoid relays. You will note that I used 2 relays for the headlights, one for each right and left HID – if there is

a problem, having each headlight on its own circuit will at least allow one headlight to remain working. It is more

work but much better to have some redundancy in the headlight circuitry.

Since these are bi-xenon projectors there is only a single xenon bulb that produces both lo and hi beam lighting.

The projectors are equipped with a shutter (flap) that is controlled by a solenoid – when the solenoid is energized,

the shutter moves slightly to allow the light output to shift upwards to produce hi beams. The same factory

connector that plugged into the OEM halogen bulb is also used to energize the solenoid (hi-beam) relay.

One thing to remember is that when hi beams are selected, the original factory wiring drops power to the lo beam

(55w) side of the halogen bulb and routed power instead to the hi beam (65w) side of the halogen bulb. A diode is

used to connect the hi beam relay wiring to the lo beam relay wiring so that power is sent to the lo beam relay at

the same time. Otherwise, the lights will shut off when hi-beam is selected. Since this is only a very low amperage

that only serves to energize the relays, almost any basic diode will do. In my case I used a 1N4001 diode from

Radio Shack. You could also use a 1N4004 or 1N4005 diode, anything that will simply limit the flow of voltage.

Ballasts

I originally used the 35W slim ballast kit from www.ddmtuning.com – which includes the ignitors for the xenon

bulbs. I also bought the adapters that allow the kit to be connected to the D2S bulbs that are used in the E55

projectors. This is another area where more wattage is not necessarily better. The 35W kit has more than enough

capacity for the D2S bulbs – it’s the ignitors that are used to fire the bulbs anyway. Speaking of the ignitors, they

produce somewhere around 25,000 volts to fire the bulbs, so keep the connectors away from you and the car

body! Here is a picture of the kit.

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LATER EDIT: Unfortunately, within a short period of time one of the ballasts failed. After doing some additional

research I found that there is very little difference between the DDM Tuning ballasts and those that can be bought

directly from China, as they basically come from the same factories. DDM Tuning does offer a lifetime warranty,

but of course you first need to send the ballasts back. The learning curve on this for me was to have a cheapie

spare set of ballasts on the shelf in case the ones on the car fail. That gives you some flexibility in replacement.

That research that I did also led me back to The Retrofit Source and the quality line of ballasts that they carry. This

includes Denso, Matsushita, and Morimoto brands, all at less than OEM cost. Even though I sent in both of the

DDM Tuning ballasts for replacement, I went ahead and ordered a set of Morimoto slim ballasts to use in the car.

The Morimotos have a 2 year warranty. I also orderd a set of their 4500K Morimoto xenon bulbs while I was at it,

giving me the original DDM Tuning bulbs provided in the DDM Tuning ballast kit as spares. Once again the

response and info/assistance from TRS was outstanding and I am confident in recommending them. Here is a

picture of the Morimoto ballasts. You will see that one major difference is that the Morimoto ballasts do not have

a separate ignitor – the ignitor is contained within the ballast.

LATER EDIT: Although the ballasts have now been replaced, the pictures that follow of the DDM Tuning ballasts

still apply since the Morimoto ballasts installed right into the same location and had similar connectors as well.

The ballasts need to be mounted away from direct water spray and as far from heat source as possible. After

looking at different locations I found a good spot in the inside face of the core support at the headlight opening.

The ballasts are small and fit perfectly into this location, plus they are shielded from direct water spray and debris.

This location also provided for a good wire routing for power and projectors, leaving the ignitors protected but still

accessible. Remember that the ballasts themselves produce heat so don’t stick them in a plastic sealed box, they

can overheat and fail.

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Wiring Harness

I wanted to be sure that the primary battery feeds and circuit breakers were protected, so these were placed

inside of a basic Radio Shack plastic enclosure. The enclosure was then mounted on the passenger side inner

fender away from direct water and severe engine heat. I made a mounting bracket so that the enclosure would be

secure and level on the fender liner and also drilled some vent holes into the bottom side of the enclosure to

allow air to circulate. Holes were also drilled for the harness and grommets were installed for protection.

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In order to connect the battery feed to the ballasts, I bought a xenon ballast wiring harness from ebay - these are

fairly common and inexpensive. This ballast harness was made for a 9007 (combination hi/lo) factory bulb. It

connects at one end to the battery and has connectors at the other end to each of the ballasts. Since I was using 2

relay harnesses (one for each ballast/headlight) I only wanted the harness for the ballast and 9007 connectors.

With the locations of all the main electrical components determined, the next step was to make a new wiring

harness to connect everything together and to keep the install looking like a factory harness. I determined wire

length and tee locations by simply following the wiring diagram and running wires to the actual locations on the

car. I then used masking tape to bundle the harness to verify that everything fit right. All wiring connections were

soldered and covered with heat-shrink tubing. All wiring was also labeled before being placed into plastic loom –

this will let me easily identify what wire goes where later on when I have forgotten all this. The wire numbers

were added to the wiring diagram and I stuck a copy in the glove box as well since troubles don’t always happen in

your driveway. A couple of spare relays and circuit breakers also went into the glove box along with two D2S bulbs

to keep on hand as spares.

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The end result was a direct-fit harness that plugged into all the main electrical components with the right

connectors and tees and was attached properly to the car with rosebud connectors for plastic loom. It was made

as a plug-n-play harness to avoid cutting or modifying the factory harness to the headlights. Since the car already

had the suvlights relay harness installed for the halogen bulbs, this also let me simply remove the entire suvlights

harness as one unit and replace it with the new HID harness.

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I generally get my electrical supplies from www.waytekwire.com or www.delcity.net .

Initial Installation

At this point the headlight assemblies were (finally) ready for installation, general aiming, and HID projector fine-

tuning. Only after ensuring operation and aiming was good would the lenses be siliconed back into place onto the

assemblies.

I installed the three factory adjusters onto the back of each headlight housing, then test-fit each headlight into the

car to be sure it was installed with even gaps around the edges. I considered this only to be general aiming to get

the lights looking right when mounted on the car, the final tuning would relate to getting the projectors aligned.

HID Projector Adjustment

Once the headlights were in place it was time to set the projector slope and cut-off. This is where the HID

adjusters and small wrench I made would hopefully work as planned. To do this, I first needed to determine the

horizontal and vertical centerlines of the projectors. I used the back door of my shop as a guide.

Horizontal Centerlines - The distance from the floor to each projector centerline was measured and the average of

the two was marked on the door. Another set of marks was placed 2 inches below that first height measurement –

the second set of marks is what was used to set the lower drivers side lower cutoff to be sure that the light height

was lower than the projector height (and also below oncoming drivers’ eyes). This is shown by the horizontal lines

in the picture.

Vertical Centerlines – I drove the car right up to the door and put a mark on the door corresponding with the

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centerline of the car. Then I measured from the car centerline to the center of each projector and made

corresponding marks on the door for left and right lights. This is shown by the vertical lines in the picture.

The car was then backed up (straight) 25 ft from the door. This distance is generally recommended for headlight

adjustment and needs to be done on a level surface. With the target points marked on the door I could now set

the lo beam cutoff and also verify where the slope started. This took some trial and error to get it where I thought

it needed to be, but the adjusters made it much easier to get the projectors set without having to shift the entire

headlight housing. For appearance sake, you want the headlight housings to look aligned in the car. In the picture

you can see the small wrench I made being used with a rachet wrench to set the projector angle.

Here was the result of the alignment work. You can see the drivers side lo cutoff as well as the slope from each

projector. The upper cutoff is not a sharp line due to the Fresnel design of the projector lens but as you can see

the light quality is well above the level of regular halogen bulbs and is focused. This picture was taken during the

day inside my shop with skylights above. These were the lo beams (same pic as above).

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Here are the hi beams – there is more than enough light to light up everything down the road. You can also see

that the main band of light is directly in front of the car where it needs to be.

I took a few pictures of the car with the lights on to verify that there is no glare into your eyes and that the light is

focused. Also visible is the parking light - notice that the white and amber light areas are proportional to the

dimensions of the housing. I did not think that small pinpoint lighting would look very good on the larger vics.

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Final Assembly and Installation

At this point the last things to do were to to seal up the back of the housings and to install the lenses.

There was a gap between the steel mounting plate and the projector housing. To avoid dirt entry into the

projector, the gap needed to have some sort of cover. I considered some different materials but finally decided on

aluminium foil tape. It’s easy to work with, can mold to any shape and one key feature is that it is removable. It’s

good for about 175 degrees so I will have to see how it holds up on the projector housings. The foil tape was used

around the projectors as well as over the attachment nuts for the turn signal housings. A bit of silicone was used

to seal the solenoid connector to the foil. The tape cannot be seen, so it was ok to leave it as-is.

For the final lens installation, I first made sure that the interior of the headlight housing and the inside of the

lenses was clean and dust-free (no fingerprints either). I used a bead of clear high-quality silicone in the channel of

the housing and then carefully set the lens into the bead. There are 2 metal clips top and bottom that retain the

lens to the housing – these were installed right away to keep everything in place. The silicone should ensure a

watertight seal but would hopefully still allow the lenses to be removed later for repairs or to replace a lens if

cracked or yellowed. The lights were set aside to cure overnight. Here is the final result.

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Final installation into the car was straightforward, generally a repeat of the many times I had trial-fit them. I

rechecked the headlight alignment and adjustment, then ran the car for a while to be sure there were no strange

or bad things happening. Here are some finished pictures except for the Marauder corner lights that have yet to

be installed.

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First Drive and Summary

Obviously, this was a fairly involved project, but worth going through the steps to get a huge improvement in

OEM-look HID lighting. I may have gone further than some folks for some of the details but I wanted to have an

overall factory looking installation. I try not to exaggerate things but the first drive was as though I was in a

completely different car. Light output was much higher than halogens and the light quality was a very even clean-

white color. I estimate that there is about a 150 degree range of light in front of the car. I was never flashed by

another car so I suppose that the adjustments made were correct. It does take a little getting used to the lighting

moving up and down a bit as the car goes down the road – the reason it’s noticeable is because the cut-off is well

defined. You can see the slope going downward to the left opposite shoulder and upward to light up the right

hand shoulder. I am already spoiled after just a couple of days of driving. No issues with wiring either.

I’m not that great with camera night shots but I will follow up with a few pics on the road to show the real results.

I will also include a pic of the Marauder corner lights installed – they are a perfect match to the headlights, thanks

to Sgt Taz for the suggestion.

One thing that helped a lot was that I did this as a stand-alone project and left the existing lights on the car until I

was ready to install the complete HID retrofit. As mentioned, you can install xenon bulbs into the stock factory

housings, but for those that want to go through the effort to get to that next step, I think the extra work and cost

is worth it. This was also a complete learning curve – on the next version, I may use a different set of projectors

and I know that I can cut the fabrication timeframe down considerably. I also intend to install motorized adjusters

so that the projectors can be moved using a switch inside the car.

General summary of costs:

I did not include cost of stuff I messed up or bought and did not use

I did not include cost of new Marauder corner lights

Ebay aftermarket headlights $50

Ebay 9007 relay harness $12

DDMTuning 35w ballast kit w/ D2S adapters $65 (REPLACED)

Retrofit Source 35w Morimoto ballast kit $110

Retrofit Source 4500K Morimoto bulbs $45

Ebay used E55 projectors with solenoids $85

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Assorted paint $10

Assorted wiring supplies (loom/relays/connectors/etc) $40

Radio Shack electronic project box $6

RetrofitSource E-55-R shrouds $25

Lowes plumbing flanges $20

Misc supplies, silcone, tape, etc $20