Teh Official "Dude Where's My Forum?" Thread, Brought to you by the minds of Box, and her fiancée, Lorelei Options

[Box]

Everything in red is fair game open or closed:

I tried to outline it on the headlamp side about where it is, I really don't see how it'll be that tight of a fit with three inches to spare as it is now. I could go with the Morimoto 4TL-R since they're 18mm shorter than the minis even.

[Bitter]

The issue isn't over all depth, it's room in the right places to get the proper alignment and to be able to install the bulb socket and bulb without bumping into stuff.

[Box]

There should be enough room, behind the bucket is completely open all around and not just front to back. Hell there's the premade kit so I know it can be done. I could say **** it and do a H1 mini conversion, lower the cost and the difficulty somewhat.

[Bitter]

Mini H1 sucks. Honestly you're going to really miss the hot spot and long reach of the halogen, especially if you'd just spend the couple bucks to get the Hella's. They reach like my old halogen in the Celica did with the H7 Rally bulbs, but with the standard Hella H4 that came with the headlights. With the higher wattage bulbs it must be insane.

[Box]

Hmmm, might just do that then since it'd be even easier and cheaper... I was just set on HID's because you get longevity, lumens, and low power consumption all in one. Which I noticed the other day Morimoto has started making LED headlight bulbs, sadly no H4, so the technology must be to the point they're somewhat good if Morimoto is making them now. The Autopals with the CP 100/80 bulbs are pretty good and if the Hella lamps are that much better it'd probably be on par with retrofit HIDs if not better maybe.

Though would it be better than a D2S setup, hmm... If only I could compare a D2S setup like that Blackhawk kit and then my car with Hella lamps and the CP bulbs side by side first.

Then I find reviews like these:

5.0 out of 5 stars Made in Germany!!!
ByBrian Mon June 5, 2016
Verified Purchase
These headlights are pretty good in comparison to factory headlights. The lenses themselves are made in Germany and are not cheap inferior quality lenses you may receive in a cheap kit. The silicone dust covers in this kit are better quality than the rubber dust covers that tend to crack and let moisture inside the lens. In comparison to the Autopal headlights that I had before, these are only slightly better. The Autopal lenses are made in India, these Hella brand ones are made in Germany. My Autopal headlights failed because of a cheap dust cover, the ones on this Hella kit look much better quality. In all I would probably buy this kit over any others.

Maybe I'll just buy one and side by side in person...

This post has been edited by Box: Dec 16, 2016 - 1:05 AM

[Bitter]

You need to keep in mind that most people reviewing headlights are like 'yep there's light on the road, it's awesome!'. The lay person doesn't understand the nuances of where the light should and SHOULD NOT be, the Autopal units flood the foreground with light and put less down near the cut off where it's needed farthest down the road like the Hella do. That alone makes a massive difference, not to mention the much sharper cutoff and better side to side distribution of light.

There are no acceptable LED H4 bulbs that out perform Halogen bulbs. Morimoto's stuff is no better than all the other stuff out there which is inferior to a Halogen bulb. Again the issue with a flooded overly bright foreground is the primary issue there, looks great till you realize you can only see half as far with twice as much light because it's all in the wrong place and your pupils are shrinking down and your eyes are naturally looking down to the brightest area which is NOT out in the distance where you need to look.

[Box]

That's true. I have noticed before a lot of foreground scatter when I'd get out of the car with the lights on at night. It's just aggravating, I bought the Autopals as a hold-me-over to HIDs and to buy the Hellas now it's one of those "Well had I known in the first place" kind of things. I seriously wish I could do a side by side comparison though.

Yeah I had saw even on the TRS site there were only the pics of the beam pattern against their testing wall and not any "on the road" pics. Maybe sometime soon the whole virtual filament technology can be nailed down and they'll be a viable alternative in reflector and projector housings, at the very least maybe on par or exceeding the HID retrofit bulbs.

Oooh, I just found where someone that bought the kit posted a picture of them out of the car so now I can see how it's done. MUWAHAHAHAHA:

From the thread the lenses are siliconed into the retainer rings, for what they cost I find that aspect somewhat disappointing.

At least it gives me an idea as to where things need to be.

I just remembered why I chose the D2S mini, aside from o.e. bulbs and ballasts, initially. Direct fit into H4 housings, durrrr.

This post has been edited by Box: Dec 16, 2016 - 1:24 PM

[Bitter]

I wish I had known too. The Hella rate with twice the lux in the hot spot than the Autopal in testing I found.

[Box]

At least with the D2S conversion the Autopals are still useful to me since they'll become homes for the projectors, otherwise they'll become doorstops or maybe fishbowls. I should've just bought the HID stuff during Black Friday since it was on sale by so much, oh well.

Brother finally got some sound dampening for his car only after talking about it for years, ordered 60 square feet of the stuff from NVX to do the entire car. All together just shy of 50 pounds... Between that, the huge form fitted sub box, and the subwoofer itself it's like he's added a dead body to his car. It'll weigh more than the Firebird for sure now, as it was only 80 pounds lighter to begin with. I keep telling him he's doing it wrong.

This post has been edited by Box: Dec 16, 2016 - 5:35 PM

[rentaspace]

Started trying to sell this:


Because we got this:


And I am still awaiting for this:


This post has been edited by rentaspace: Dec 16, 2016 - 8:57 PM

[Box]

It's like Australia is wagon land or something. I can't remember the last time I saw a wagon. Now stupid trucks, see those all the time.

[rentaspace]

It's like Australia is wagon land or something. I can't remember the last time I saw a wagon. Now stupid trucks, see those all the time.

There are a number of Wagons still here (They were super popular between the mid 90's and mid 00s) but nowa days the most common cars would be Falcon/Commodore/Camry/Corolla and Tradie Utes lol

[Bitter]

At least with the D2S conversion the Autopals are still useful to me since they'll become homes for the projectors, otherwise they'll become doorstops or maybe fishbowls. I should've just bought the HID stuff during Black Friday since it was on sale by so much, oh well.

Brother finally got some sound dampening for his car only after talking about it for years, ordered 60 square feet of the stuff from NVX to do the entire car. All together just shy of 50 pounds... Between that, the huge form fitted sub box, and the subwoofer itself it's like he's added a dead body to his car. It'll weigh more than the Firebird for sure now, as it was only 80 pounds lighter to begin with. I keep telling him he's doing it wrong.

Butyl based stuff I hope, the asphalt stuff sucks, often falls off years later and doesn't dampen as well per lb. I hope he knows he does not need to plaster every single square inch of sheet metal. Common mistake! You only need enough to change the tone, usually a sqft per door cut into strips and distributed across the panel is enough, maybe 1.5 sqft. Use some closed cell foam behind the woofer in the door to deepen it's bass as well. I like using FrostKing FV516 as a replacement vapor barrier wherever needed, it also adds some R value to the doors, but being that you don't have winter that doesn't matter. It does damp some sound but mostly it's somewhat rigid and easy to work with, it'll stick and restick a bunch of times if you need to go back into the panel. Wrap all wiring with cloth loom tape to keep rattles down, you can sleeve lock rods with vinyl tube to help stop rattles but still allow them to move. Have fresh door panel clips on hand too in case some get broken.

[Box]

I wish we got utes over here still, but the El Camino in the mid 80's was the end of the road. These days they claim it'd eat too much into their small truck sales, so what. If anything maybe a ute would be a sale otherwise not made, but should I digress.

Yup it's 100% butyl rubber, and yup that's what I told him and that it's like dampening a drum and he's a drummer so I guess he understood. It's not a tiny car by any means but he wants to do everything; doors, quarters, floors, roof, surround the area around speakers, all through the trunk etc... What's sad is the Firebird is a lot quieter stock for stock. Speaking of closed cell foam I wish I had saved the listing but I found some closed cell neoprene foam that was self adhesive inexpensively when I was looking for a candidate to make a dash pad out of, I'll have to search for it again as it'd come in handy for lining the quarter panels for the subs of the Firebird and the woofers in the doors. We have some cloth tape, actually two rolls now that I think about it but will remember to mention it to him. Which I know on older door latches packing them with grease will make them quiet in terms of NVH and operation. He works at Hyundai now so the employee discount really comes in handy for him. Winter finally arrived, it gets into the 50's now.

[Bitter]

Doing the floor pan won't do a lot for killing road noise, the damper isn't for road noise. I mean it'll help some, but it's more to make the sheet metal interact acoustically with the sound system less. What doing the floor pan can do is increase the cabin gain, ditto for the roof. The stereo can sound louder and have more bass just by making the roof and floor resonate less. The less acoustic energy that's expended shaking sheet metal the more that goes into your ears. To block/absorb road noise you need to use a product like mass loaded vinyl to block/absorb and then some closed cell foam to decouple it from the body so it can't just transmit through. The sound will be turned into heat slightly (insignificant) and vanish. Mass loaded vinyl isn't light, but the thing is you need to cover the whole area you're doing otherwise the sound just comes through somewhere else on the floor pan or door panel and it'll be almost as loud as having done nothing at all. Paint on dampers don't do much for a floor pan to kill noise since they're coupled to the sheet metal the sound just transmits through them, albeit at a lower frequency due to the added mass, but still the same amount of noise, you may hear less but it's still there bonking up the audio.

[Box]

None of it's for road noise, it's because the subwoofer rattles the whole damn car. The decklid actually moves so much you'd think the hinges or latch was broken and it's about to fly off and the quarter panels, doors, and roof flex visibly. Windshield flexes too but not really anything that can be done there. Depending on how he felt about it after doing the dampener he was going to use deadeners like the mass loaded vinyl and closed cell foam, the road noise can be pretty terrible but since the dampener is the first step anyway and with the sound system. Even before doing the coil-overs and going from 18's to 19's it's never been really quiet in terms of road noise, and especially on the interstate.

[Bitter]

Oh here, let me explain the Hella vs Autopal better with a picture. I never got any of the Hella since I was tired of working on the car (had it like a month). I'll get some eventually when I better aim them.


That's H4666 vs Autopal H4. Notice how tall the Autopal blob of light is? In the Hella about 75% of the light is concentrated within 3 inches of the cut off and the start of the rising 'tick' to the right, there's a little further below but it's pretty dim. On the road that Autopal blob of light smears across the road all spread out, most of what you see there ends up being foreground too close to the car to be of any use, that's what she's got fog lights for anyway. Just a quick n dirty way to evaluate a wall shot, tall blob of light is bad, too much foreground, all the light by the cutoff is good, you'll be able to see far away. Like a flood light vs a spot light, you want a spot light for driving, seeing something when it's 1/4 second in front of your bumper is too late, you need to see it when it's a second out so you can have some hope of reacting. The Hella put the light much farther out and much more cleanly. On the wall the Hella cut off is razor sharp and on the road the hot spot is center and goes very far down range. They're more projector like in terms of output, just not as wide but pretty damn good lights.

[Box]

Pictures always help and I can kind of visualize what you're saying. The only time I put them onto a wall was from 25 feet away to adjust them, and from there the beam pattern looks good and then going down the road visibility is fairly good. At any rate even with the standard H4 bulbs and on the stock harness it was better than any other car I'd been in with a dual filament halogen setup and that's a small handful of vehicles, so in that regard hey it's a big improvement and especially next to the sealed beams. That's how it is with anything I guess, compare a plasma TV to a CRT and hey it's a lot better but then compare the plasma to LCD and from there to a Ultra 4K and each new one makes the other look like crap. The Hella lamps would be easy since it's a direct swap but at $100 the difference to HIDs is really just the HID kit at that rate, ahg decisions. Here maybe if I wait long enough the BMW i8 laser headlight technology will trickle down to aftermarket retrofits.

[Bitter]

Just buy one Hella and you won't even want to retro bro.

[Box]

I'm on the fence about saying **** it and just do that, it'd take all of 30 minutes to take the Autopals out and swap over the CP bulbs and put the Hellas in then re-aim later that night. Whereas even with the D2S mini being made for H4 housings so there's no finagling with alignment it still means modifying the headlamps and making lenses etc... on top of rerouting wires and mounting ballasts. I know the Hellas would be an improvement over what I have now and I know it'll work as it's proven, whereas there's still some uncertainty with a HID conversion as far as the projectors relation to the housings and how that'd effect output on top of a bi-xenon setup in comparison to a high powered halogen one.

Also I think another reason why the Autopals never really seemed off in any way is that from inside the car I can't see any foreground, I guess that happens when you have almost two feet of dash and five feet of car in front of you.