DEPO Light Bi-zenon upgrade

[Silent Runner]

This turns out to be a bit easier than I thought it would be. First I found and ordered a set of 4300K bi-zenon projectors, through Aliexeppress for about $135. They arrived within a week, and I put my OE lamps back in while doing mods. Remove the metal clips, then... Preheat your oven to about 200F. They stick them in for about 15-20min. Remove the lights from the oven with mitts, and use 1-2 flat edge screwdrivers to start prying the clear lense off the front of the assembly, from the top. It really should just pop off after a a little prying to get it started. If you have ordered the right kit, your new projector, really will just screw into the spot where your old 9006, used to fit, with lots of room between it and your clear lense. I have a tiny bit more work to do to incorporate the white "angel eye" feature that these lights have, and properly aim them, but I'll post that as soon as its done.

[OceanView]

looks interesting.
Would love to see more pics and info on how you did it.

[Silent Runner]

Sorry guys for the delay, but an important family matter came up, and I had to suspend the zenon-DEPO, upgrade for a week until this coming weekend. I will post more pictures and info on the projectors at that time if the forum will let me restart this post. It really is a pretty straight forward operation, so far. The projectors are nice bi-zenon units that simply insert and screw into the depo housings, with lots of room to spare between them and the clear lense. The wireing is very complete and includes just about everything you might need. Get back at ya soon!

[iovaykind]

Cool! Yeah, china bixenon units are great looking, they sure make the headlights jump out at ya. The only caveat I have is that the output is not going to be what you expect. Actually.. I'm not sure what you're expecting. But compared to stock its better. Compared to modern cars, it sucks. Whatever you do, don't catch the HID projector craze like I did, next thing you know you'll have done over 5 retrofits for your own car -.-

[EEngineer]

nice, i wanna see the final result

[Silent Runner]

Next logical step was to make a hole for the controller and ccfl, "angel eye" wiring. I just drilled out the mounting point for the original glare shield, I'm not going to have any use for it now, and it just a big piece of chrome junk in there.

Then put in the wiring:

Then you seal them up and plug in the wiring! This is with the CCFL "Angel Eyes", acting as the DRL function:

This is with the lights illuminated. There is a bit of backsplash through openings in the projector casing that give the headlight back area a bit of illumination, but no glare.

I had time to get a basic aiming job done tonight, but my camera wasn't handy at the time. I'll follow with pics., but lets just say the difference between the basic DEPOS, and this "China Light", projector upgrade are absolutely stunning! No even better, fabulous! Super sharp cut-off line for the low beams, with a nice wide, low light pattern. The high beams, compliment the originally excellent output of the DEPO's high beam lighting, (in combination), to produce the best long range lighting I've ever seen, including when I had 550W of lighting hooked up to my old Celica in Rally form.

[Silent Runner]

Oh what the hey, right? It's Sat. night, I should probably stay up late once in a while and post a pic on TN, to show my first results from the HID/DEPO, projector upgrade. This pic is not quite on the level yet for a good low beam pic. (front of car to low), but it does give you an idea of how good and sharp the cut-off is, and how good the illumination is.

Before:

After: Despite the dumb Volkwagen in the way, I think the difference is evident.

[Silent Runner]

Hmm, thought a few more people might be interested in an easy and very good upgrade to the DEPO light thing. You get great appearance, but with very poor lighting with the DEPO's. For about $135 US, you get a bi-zenon upgrade that is really easy to install, and produces outstanding results. Compare this to a few repair projects, or other performance upgrades and its a real tangible bargain for the performance/safety $.

Really, at $140 (before they just discounted them), this is one of the biggest, most real, practical and demonstrable improvements I have ever made to this car for the $. :cool

This is where I got them:

:http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm...olesalers.html

[iovaykind]

You could've gotten a set from me for a lot less, just saying.

[Silent Runner]

Originally Posted by iovaykind

Cool! Yeah, china bixenon units are great looking, they sure make the headlights jump out at ya. The only caveat I have is that the output is not going to be what you expect. Actually.. I'm not sure what you're expecting. But compared to stock its better. Compared to modern cars, it sucks. Whatever you do, don't catch the HID projector craze like I did, next thing you know you'll have done over 5 retrofits for your own car -.-

Hey maybe I got lucky with a good set, but these lights work at least as well, and have as good of a cut-off for low-high, as my neibours BMW, and anothers Audi. In fact at my 4300K choise, they seem to work a little better than the blueish light coming out of those cars.

[71Corolla]

Had ordered the identical kit as Silent Runner, finally got around to completing the job. Things did not go as well as I would have liked. Installing the projectors was actually not hard at all, here's what they looks like.



The kit comes with everything you need, ballasts, wiring harness, and controller/relay. I plugged everything in temporarily to see if it all worked, it did. Only problem is the interface connector that goes between the low beam harness on the car and the HID controller was missing, so I had to make my own. I don't know if I did something wrong or not (don't think so) but the relay stopped working after about 30 minutes, it started making a buzzing sound, concluded it was defective.

So I either had to get another one (don't know if you can just buy the relay separately) or make my own controller. Decided to rig up my own, ended up being a bit of a challenge. Turns out there are plenty of spare locations in the fuse box, but there are no terminals or wiring in the blank spaces. Using terminals and a relay I got from a donor car, I was able to make it work.

New terminals and fuse installed


New relay, exact same as the one beside it. It's rated at 22 amps, perfect seeing it is on a 20 amp fuse.


I tapped into the main power wire, which is connected to one of the fusible links.


Wired it all up, works fine. Problem is, no high beam solenoid function for the projectors. That requires a special circuit, it's not simply a matter of giving the solenoid power when the high beams are on, it's a mechanical toggle. 2 second pulse -Polarity one way, high beam, polarity reversed, low beam. That's what the supplied controller is supposed to do, too bad it fried itself.

Also made two custom brackets out of aluminum alloy to mount the ballasts, the fit neatly under the headlights.

Brackets


Ballast mounted


At least I have it working for now, will either get a replacement relay or make my own circuit for high beam, might do that not sure I trust that controller at this point.

[Silent Runner]

Wow! That is a super nice installation job. As stated the installation of the lights themselves is a relative breeze, but making up a clean showable wiring job is a neat combination of art and tech. My own job was thorough on the lights themselves, but I have yet to clean-up the wiring.

My kit did come with a harness to integrate it with a 9005-9006 headlight system, but I noted on hooking it up that it did not work properly with our Canadian DRL system. I decided to disable the high beam circuit immediately, and sort it out later (I'm just starting another week of holidays now). Funny, I decided to use the Can. DRL circuit to power the "angel eyes" feature of the lights off of my side lights at full voltage, and that works well to have the stock DRL's work along with the stock DRL's based off of the high beam lights at reduced voltage.

The problem was that with my headlights off, and the DRL function working, it wanted to power-up everything. High beams on, Projectors on High beam. When I turned the headlights on, they all worked properly, low beams were: low beam projector. High beams were: high beams (stock) on and projectors on high beam. Back and forth, it worked properly.

My "patch", was going to be to install an additional switch, to control headlight function between "highway" and "City". The low beams are so good that I'll never need high beams in the city in regular driving, so a switch that disables the DRL input to the projectors (and the stock high beams), will never really be missed in most of my driving. When I'm planning to drive in the dark with my lights on, I will simply enable that switch, along with turning my headlights on,.. and everything works as it should. (incidently this combines my projectors high beams with the cars stock ones).

Now if there is a more fluid and natural way of doing this I would love to hear it! I'm a egg-nut head of many trades, and I have to cook stuff up in my brain for along time to come up with the really sweet way of doing it in specialty areas like electronics. My first instinct on hooking everything up was that the DRL's were bugging the controller and making it power things it shouldn't. So I dis-connected the high beam circuit, probably saved the controller in my case on dumb luck.

Note to China: Candian and US cars are wired differently!

I've been working on the aiming a bit, and this is sweet!. Best of all though is that I can get a decent aiming without having my DEPO lights stick out from the grill, and mess-up all of the gaps and clearances from side lights, bumper and hood!

[71Corolla]

It would have been a great help if this kit came with proper wiring instructions. It does not show what every wire does . So I had to experiment seeing I did not have the complete harness, so for all I know I fried something. But I don't think so because it was working.

For the wiring, I found it impossible to do a neat job without putting the ballasts under the headlights. Wish I would have thought of it earlier, I actually did the wiring job twice, the first time I had my custom relay setup inside of a DRL box right beside the original, but I didn't like the clutter and it made it impossible to get to the back of the headlight. I like it much better now, just have to find the time to make my own high beam circuit.

I have a question on how you managed to get your projectors level. There is a ring that goes on the light and is keyed to the shape of the original bulb/holder. When tightening the nut, it turns so far until the ring contacts the body of the headlight, make sense? But that seems to put the projector just a bit out of level. I can loosen the nut and rotate the projector, but then when I go to tighten the nut it rotates until the ring hits the stop. How did you get around this, or did you have to?

BTW, to get around the DRL problem, you need to tap into whatever wire comes from headlight switch, not what comes from the DRL controller. That controller has two relays, it basically switches the high beam bulb from being in series so they run at half voltage, and normal/full voltage. So if you connect your harness to the high beam connector, it will confuse the HID controller. When I have some time I'll trace what the correct wire is.

[Silent Runner]

Originally Posted by 71Corolla

It would have been a great help if this kit came with proper wiring instructions. It does not show what every wire does . So I had to experiment seeing I did not have the complete harness, so for all I know I fried something. But I don't think so because it was working.

For the wiring, I found it impossible to do a neat job without putting the ballasts under the headlights. Wish I would have thought of it earlier, I actually did the wiring job twice, the first time I had my custom relay setup inside of a DRL box right beside the original, but I didn't like the clutter and it made it impossible to get to the back of the headlight. I like it much better now, just have to find the time to make my own high beam circuit.

I have a question on how you managed to get your projectors level. There is a ring that goes on the light and is keyed to the shape of the original bulb/holder. When tightening the nut, it turns so far until the ring contacts the body of the headlight, make sense? But that seems to put the projector just a bit out of level. I can loosen the nut and rotate the projector, but then when I go to tighten the nut it rotates until the ring hits the stop. How did you get around this, or did you have to?

BTW, to get around the DRL problem, you need to tap into whatever wire comes from headlight switch, not what comes from the DRL controller. That controller has two relays, it basically switches the high beam bulb from being in series so they run at half voltage, and normal/full voltage. So if you connect your harness to the high beam connector, it will confuse the HID controller. When I have some time I'll trace what the correct wire is.

The wiring instructions were relatively poor foor sure. I had to guess which wires were for high and low beams, but I guessed right the first time, so I got a freeby there. Sorting out the DRL interferance with the controller is yet to be done.

The aiming issue I had to think a little harder about.. Turns out as I remember, that I actually unscrewed (and removed) the orginal bulb locking and alignment assembly from the DEPO's, before tightening the projectors into the headlight assembly. They were getting in the way while I was trying to fully tighten the projectors into the assembly, and align them properly in a rough visual manner. After tightening the projectors up and getting them level, I threaded the wiring through the bulb locking assembly and screwed them back on. At the time, I really just though this made them easier to tighten-up, and I only put them back on because I hate to throw away the OE stuff and they seemed to protect the wiring area around the back of the HID bulbs a bit. I never occurred to me that they may interfere with aligning the projectors properly. I actually forgot to put one of the aligning rings onto one of my headlights (it was sitting there with my old glare shields and mounting hardware).

I hope this helps.

[astatcamry956]

So how did these just fit in the 9006 hole.? looks like a good mod