sfliberal

I see a lot of hatchbacks and coupes getting the HID treatment. Not too many sedans, though, which is unfortunate, because they sure could use it. Now, my stocker halogen headlights work just fine, but I've gotten spoiled by Mercedes-Benzes over the last couple of years. Done several headlight assembly refurbishments and retrofits, and all of them turned out well. I thought, well, if they can have good headlights, why can't our Civics? :-)

So, here's what I used.

1.) Osram Xenarc 66240 Classic. Yeah, the so-called "low-end" Osram. LOL
2.) Morimoto Mini-D2S bi-xenon projectors with E55 shrouds
3.) New low/high beam housings with the clear, non-fluted glass lens
4.) Hylux 2A88 AMP ballasts, used primarily 'cause they're small
5.) AMP-to-D2S adaptors
6.) Black headlight sealant

The Mini-D2S projectors fit right into the 9003/H4 housing. There was a little trimming I had to do to get the projector cut-off line to be horizontal. Some careful chiseling took care of that.

The wiring, I had to figure out. Learned about the "diode trick" for the high-beams and keeping the bulb on. So, I overengineered the diode capacity and used 6A diodes, just in case. They were only $5.00 apiece, so no problem far as I'm concerned.

Took some work to get everything fitted in and aimed right. Those adjustment screws are a PAIN to get to.

Anyway, it works great. I get better lights, with a "somewhat stock-ish" look, without blinding oncoming traffic.

Pics to follow.

94 Civic Si

Looking forward to seeing the pics!

Where did you get the new glass housings - non-fluted?

sfliberal

Picked 'em up on FleaBay for $60/pair. Since I'm going for as close to the stock look as one can get with HID projectors, I got the chrome ones. I bought just the low/high beam parts and am sticking with stock turn signals. They're actually a decent fit into the car.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-1992-19...72.m2749.l2649

Definitely had to trim the E55 shrouds. Wasn't quite Michelangelo's handiwork, far from it, and I will certainly do a better job on the next EG Civic. But for a first trim job, I guess it doesn't look too bad.

The new turn signal housings are on order from HondaPartsNow. That was done because the original turn signal housings work just fine, but they've got 24 years of road chips on 'em, and next to those brand-new low/high beam sections, they don't look quite so good. So, I went with new ones.

Currently looking for some LED replacements for the 3496 dual-filament front turn-signals. Google telleth me that the 1157 LED, either clear or amber, would work for this; anybody who's done this, please do chime in.

94 Civic Si

Those look good! And can take the stock (H4?) bulb insert? That might be a cool first step...

I will wait to see your pictures!

98civdx

Happy to see more guys are getting into retrofiting these cars.


I did my 98 years ago and still have only seen one other 96-00 with retrofits.

mk378

The only difference between the 3496 and the 1157 is the size of the glass bulb. The base is the same. Many "1157" LEDs have smaller outside dimensions than the glass 1157, so they could work.

countrynoob

How are the high beams for the mini D2S? I might put mines into the civic if I can find them. Seeing on video and seeing in real life are 2 different things.
Back then, I had some old Denji's that I retrofitted some TSX clears into them. A lot better visibility compared to my Acura TL.
Although it was nice, it was short-lived when my cousin wanted to test out my OBX lsd....on the dirt road.

sfliberal

OK, here are pics of the output. What we have here is a comparison of my car with my best friend's Mercedes-Benz S500, also with projector HID's. The same bulb type was used in both cars.

The Honda still needed some finishing-touch aiming when these pictures were taken. That aiming was completed just last night at arounc 9:00pm.

The thumbnails *are* clickable for larger versions.

First, the low-beams of the newly-converted Civic.



Right side only:



Left side only:



Low beam output compared to that of the Mercedes S500. The Civic is on the right. You can see here that both cars could stand a little aiming; the Civic is a little low and to the right here (that's what I fixed last night--it's dead-on now).



Light output directly in front of each car onto street (also know as, are foglights superfluous?). I'm standing to the right of the Civic.



Same thing, this time from the left, standing just to the left of the Mercedes. There are street lights kinda drowning out the light output, but both pairs do light up the road in front of the cars, with a slight edge to the Benz.



High beams of the Civic:



High beams of the S500:



Both cars' high beams at once.



As can be seen here, the low beams of the S500 are just slightly brighter than the Civic's. However, the high beam outputs are darn near equal. There may even be a slight advantage to the Civic's high-beam outputs here.

Now, back to low beams for a moment. This is more of a "light output immediately in front of the car" evaluation. You can see that both sets perform pretty well here, so foglights aren't strictly necessary. The S500's bulb output looks bluer here because of the angle at which I was standing; both cars use the exact same model of bulb. The camera was held as high as I could hold it for this picture.



And now looking at the bulbs from just below the low-beam cutoff line. Note the S500's bulbs now look more yellow. Goes to show, angle of photography matters a lot with that.



Immediately in front of each car. The S500 does light up the ground a little better, but not by much. These Mini-D2S's in the Civic are actually doing pretty well.



Now let's look at high beam output, just for fun. Holding the camera up high....



...and now down low. Pretty meaningless; again, it was just for fun.



Left headlight in action. I wasn't sure which would turn up better, so I took two snaps. Gotta learn.




And the right side in action. You'll note that I'm using the factory amber turn-signal indicators here, for that OEM look (I kinda like OEM). Matter of fact, I bought a couple of new ones from HondaPartsNow.com because these original ones looked fine compared to the stock fluted halogen assemblies. But compared to these brand-new, clear lens low/high beam assemblies, these amber indicators showed the 24 years of road time. So, time for new OEM ones, which had already arrived and thus also got installed last night.



Now, these pics are from yesterday, shortly before I got to work on re-aiming the headlights.

This pic was taken with the phone camera's flash. Despite it being cloudy overcast daytime, it looks like nighttime. Like I said, gotta learn. But it is an interesting photographic effect! :-)



Lesson learned; turn off the flash. Let's try that again. :-)



Here's the right hand side, taken one minute later. Again, I'm going for as OEM a look as I can with this retrofit.




I'll post pics of the engine bay as soon as my best friend finishes emailing 'em to me (we used her smartphone for this).

sfliberal

You're right, real life is different. Even before I got done fine-tuning the aim, the output was surprisingly good. The Mercedes-Benz featured above uses Morimoto E46 projectors. Up against the wall, the Mini-D2S's look just a tad brighter--just a hair. However, on the road, there's no appreciable difference between the two. Both light up the road far, far better than the halogen stockers did. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

One thing I haven't yet figured out on Civic EG's is how to access the headlamp alignment screw adjustments without taking the front bumper cover off. Fortunately, it's not a difficult operation to pop it off, but it'd be nice to avoid that step just to adjust the lights if/when necessary.

Would I do it again?

Yeah, I would. HID's are in a totally different league from halogens, enough that it's worth the hassle to do it. Matter of fact, I just might on a mechanically-sound '95 Civic EX coupe that needs a little bodywork. I picked it up as a fun project for dirt-cheap. We'll see.

sfliberal

Thanks! This set of side marker bulbs is starting to show a bit of the black deposit on the glass (both of 'em), so when they go bye-bye, I'll pop some 1157's in there.

sfliberal

Yep, they do. They're actually meant to do that.

This is, indeed, why I went with the Morimoto Mini-D2S projector. By design, it slides right into the H4 bulb insert hole and is secured with a screw ring. The fit is rather good. Again, my housing needed a bit of a trimming in the H4 "tab" slots to get the low-beam cutoff line level. But it wasn't too hard. About 3/16 of an inch was all that was needed in each tab slot. This kinda makes sense, since halogen bulbs don't have cut-off lines, so you'd never need to care about that at all unless you tried an HID retrofit like this.

sfliberal

Funny you mention that. My best friend also has a '97 Civic Sedan, which I was thinking about doing. I know it's been a while since you did it, but any suggestions on where to mount the ballasts, any traps, gotchas, etc.?

94 Civic Si

The pictures are clickable, but they do not enlarge...

sfliberal

Just tried it, and the same thing happened for just a moment. Then it started working again.

Can you give it another shot?

sfliberal

Engine bay pics. No, this is not a "super clean" wiring harness setup at all. Far from it. But it works, and things are out of the way, which is what matters to me for now with this car as a daily driver.

Thumbnails are clickable.

Left side of engine bay. You can see the ballast Velcro'd onto that well where the strut fits into (I don't know that part's official name yet). Since the Hylux 2A88 ballast is a CANbus error-canceling ballast, you can see the "Error Canceller" as well, next to the timing belt cover. Obviously, CANbus error cancellers aren't needed on Civic EG's, but it doesn't seem to hurt either if your ballast happens to have them. Any ballast small enough to physically fit into the car would work just as well here. I found it somewhat tough to find a good place for a ballast in the EG's, and this took the majority of my time. You can see the red and black (+ and -) wires as well, held in place by some clips.



Closeup of the ballast on the left side.



How I ran the wires. Like I said, not super-clean, no. But it's functional.



At the battery.



Location of the ballast on the car's right side. This side was much easier to find a good place to locate the ballast. Velcro was used here as well to secure the ballast in place. That big red fused wire on the right hand side is for the 12" subwoofer's amplifier in the trunk. Makes the 1812 Overture with those cannon shots sound really good. :-)

94 Civic Si

Uh-oh, now no pictures!

sfliberal

That's strange...I tried looking at it before logging in, and the pics were coming right up. Still comes up after I log into honda-tech. The image hoster I'm using is pixhost.org (EDIT MARCH 30, 2020: changed to pixhost.to because pixhost.org got seized by USA authoritahs).

At some employers where I've worked, they've blocked some pix hosts, but not others, as "Social Media" or something similar. At my previous employer, pixhost.org was in that blocked category. Could this be what's happening?

Also, if you're running Firefox with the NoScript add-on, as I do, my NoScript is set to allow the following domains.

ajax.googleapis.com
google.com
gstatic.com

You can also add honda-tech.com, but it doesn't appear to be required to view pics...though things like Bold, Italic, Underline, and all that rich-text editing stuff does need that.

Hopefully this helps.

94 Civic Si

That could be it - corp-o-rat IT could be blocking...

94 Civic Si

I am not sure what this means at all. Not sure if you got any pictures of the trimming? It is probably intuitively obvious as soon as you have the parts in hand...

sfliberal

The headlights are installed at the moment, and it is a DD, so I'll see if I can get a pic of the stock ones (they have the same tab slots).

98civdx

On my car I mounted behind the bumper.
On other installs I always try and hide everything, often times that meant cutting/extending wires.

on the 97 ( I assume you are using a TRS relay harness) if you extend the +12V wire you can easily get the relay in a hidden location, which makes it a lot easy with hiding the ballasts.
What i always did was used brackets and mounted the ballasts to the lower headlight mount. if you aren't opposed to drilling, you mount in the opening of the wheel well agasint the frame well. the cool thing with parts like these, you can damn near put them anywhere if you are willing to put in the work.

for the high current lines, TRS offers a full line of extended cables, ect.

98civdx

I'm honestly kind of surprised it required trimming.

I had Morimoto H1 7.0's, and there was no trimming required.

sfliberal

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the projectors were made right. It's very likely the housings that were off a little bit that way. Remember, with halogens, you can get away with pretty wide tolerances with this.

Here are the photos showing where to trim, using the factory headlights, since those are out of the car.

Here we show "normal configuration" for a halogen assembly, with the bulb installed into its receptacle and held in by that metal spring. The bulb is there. You see the three metal tabs on the H4/9003 bulb to line up in their slots.



What I needed to do with my aftermarket housings was trim that some. The aftermarket ones are solid material in the areas marked. This allowed me to turn the projector so the low-beam cutoff line was flat instead of tilted (in my case, raised up on the left side).



Yes, you do have to remove that screw on the bottom right to do the trimming.

sfliberal

OK, we've got photos showing where to trim. I'll update the post.

tony_2018