Recieved the headlights today. Overall in great condition, little bit dirty but no problem. Driver side has silicone on the seam and inside the groove. Took them apart and cleaned the driver side headlights lens and housing.

Driver Side




Passenger side


Driver side lens removed.

Removed silicone.


Housing cleaned

 

Bezel preped for paint, scuffed the chrome a little for better adhesion.


Primed


2 coats of Gun Metalic and 2 coats of clear


The amber reflector on driver side ( I think ) didn't want to stay on so I welded it to the housing using PP plastic rod. Why welds, well it is faster to cure than epoxy and I ran out of epoxy at the moment.

Lenses cleaned and gave it a quick buff.

Projectors are fitted and aimed
Passenger side
Halogen beam pattern.

Mini H1

The thing about Mini H1 is that you don't need to do any rotational adjusment since there is a ring adaptor that locates the projector in the housing correctly, but from time to time the tolerances between parts are too much and you will have rotational mis-allignment. I aimed the projector based on the Halogen beam pattern and most of the time the cut off should be level but to make sure that projector cut off are dead horizontal/flat, I shaved the locating ring tabs to allow for rotational adjustment once the projector is mounted in the car. Note the black sharpie on the two tabs, there is still some room left to rotate CW /CCW if need to.

Driver side
Halogen beam pattern.



Shrouds fitted and cut



Healdights are done waiting for the clear coat to dry and ready to seal.






I really like the Gun Metal with clear coat.

 

Got the fresh butyl tape. Use about 1/2 of the roll to seal both headlights.

Passanger side




Driver Side


Seal access hole


We'll wait overnight before applying clear silicone to fill all the gaps and better handling the headlights ( this butyl is kinda tacky even at cold condition).

 

Applied clear silicone for extra protection.




Final check.
Driver side about 80 feet away

Passenger side

Wall shot

http://youtu.be/N6sfVCpp_Lw
http://youtu.be/_BoiGW409j0

Ready to ship.

 

im too scared to do this..lol...another member here offered to sell me his set for 400. im debating if ishould pick up or not.

great write up op!

 

Hope the write up would only motivate you

 

When I did my retrofit last year, I really wanted to paint my housing like you did but wasn't sure how it would turn out. Your pictures are really clear and crisp and it looks pretty good from what I can tell. Do you have any pictures from a distance with the headlights installed? I have to open my headlights anyways (for like the 20th time -.-) to fix one of my shields so I may just end up painting the housing as well.

 

This is not for my car unfortunelty, but I could ask the owner if he is willing to share once he installs them on the car.

 

Here is the vertical adjsutment. Your MAIN Up/Down adjustment is the screw at the top in this picture below.

 

To adjust the rotation:

1. Park the car at flat ground, Look at the wall shot at about 20 feet away and determine which direction the cut off is slanted. If the cut off is slanted clockwise(CW) then you need to turn the projector assy counter clockwise (CCW) and vice versa.
2. Take the headlight off the car and set it at a table or something flat and fire it up again.
3. Now you see the cut off on the wall and ready to rotate the projector in the direction that you desire.
4. There are 3 tabs on the adaptor mounting plate (1,2,3 on the picture). You can see that there is a litlte bit of space around every tab. Those are your adjustment range. Take a flat screw driver and using the tip of the screw driver, move those 3 tabs CW/CCW depending on what you need. Be extra carefull doing this as it can damage the reflector. The projector is held to the reflector tightly by a nut, but you should be able to rotate the projector.


Give the method above a try first and If it doesn't rotate, do not force it, you might need to take the bulb out and loosen the nut and rotate the projector that way. I will guide you to do this when you need to.
Here is what the projector looks like without the bulb and its retainer, that nut is what holding the projector tight.

 

How much do you charge to do this?

 

I really like the gunmetal color. Usually it would be either left alone or painted matte black. This gives me another alternative color to look at. Thanks!