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

[Box]

I know! Of course these days hollow 35mm and 22mm bars are top banana in the handling realm but at least it's better than it would've been stock.

Either way another nice surprise, those kind never get old.

[Bitter]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GURIBkndc8Q
I'm more and more strongly considering a pair of the Rigid hyperspot for my Mazda as additional high beam, but I'll see how it is with the new bixenon projectors first. Would also be fun for the Celica in place of the now useless fog lights to get some insane distance reach high beam, but I fear they'd be way too low to the ground and only give me big streaks of light. On the Mazda they'd be higher but still below the head lights and might work better. Neither car has any good way to put them on level with the head lights sadly, not without making holes in the car and I'm not about to try to flush mount lights on my cars, they're not bro-dozers.

[Box]

Funny the differences there, but for almost four times as much you'd kind of hope so.

I've entirely given up on the idea of adding lights to the Firebird, just too big of an ordeal. Unless I wanted to put on a Trans Am bumper anyway:

I want to say they're 4" so should have decent options.

[Bitter]

I don't think you actually need any more light out the front of the car though.

[Box]

More is never enough. Actually that's the other part of it is with the Hella lamps the side illumination is fairly decent which was the main reason for wanting to add lights anyway. I'd imagine the Celica at least would have good lighting with HID lows and 9012 highs. Which I had thought about it after putting in the Hella lamps but it's kind of ironic that sealed beam cars have probably the best halogen lighting available and rather inexpensively.

[Bitter]

Well they only have it because of the ECE conversion lamps. The halogen lows on the Celica with 65W Rally bulbs were no joke either, the HID are crazy wide but don't have a particularly intense hot spot like the halogen had, plenty of light to drive with just not as comfortable at speeds over 80-90MPH which shouldn't be driven at night anyway regardless of lighting. Due to the different shape of the bowls I actually took a hit on the high beam with the HID housings, not much to be done about that sadly, that's why I'm considering some aux high beam augmentation. Those Rigid Hyperspot would really do the trick to give some very long range punch, but I don't have many good mounting places since the car is low anywhere low I put them would probably just make a big long streak of light on the ground and spoil the distance lighting. At their price point I don't want to experiment right now....yet.

[Bitter]

Bought a cheap hot glue gun and confirmed with a little modification I can use it to melt and extrude butyl rubber to reseal headlights more easily and lord knows what else. I'm picking up a 7/16th threaded rod tomorrow to act as a plunger to push the butyl out the nozzle and I need to enlarge the nozzle.

[Box]

Maybe if you put on a TRD front bumper you'd have room to mount some lights into the grille opening?

[Bitter]

I think they're terribly ugly. Look like a guy getting a leaf blower blown in his mouth.

[Box]

Maybe you can modify the bumper and flush mount some lights to the sides of the factory grille then, though it'd be a pain to make it look really nice.

[Bitter]

If anything I'd just bracket them hanging inside the mouth, but that's still pretty low. Not worried about it right now, wanna see how the high beams are on the Mazda with the new projectors first before I go buying expensive stuff, getting a slightly bigger new tool box tomorrow so I am tapped out. Only $1400ish with taxes and stuff, but to be fair marked down from like $2100 cause the poor bastard is getting upside down and has too much inventory. Gives me about 50% more room which is good cause my **** is getting crowded bad, need to get some rails to organize better too.

[Bitter]

Tiguan shrouds or something, they snap right onto the D2S 3.0 and these 4.0 Clone projectors, a couple dabs of JB to make sure they don't go anywhere and I'll be set! I like how they look better than the E46 shrouds and the E46 don't snap in place. Win/Win I think. I'll set about making sure the aim will be correct on the car this weekend and then do the pigtail for the harness and try to find some bulb caps. I lost whatever came with these head lights if any came with. Once I get things sorted out to make sure it works right I'll order the driver side head light but probably go ahead and install the passenger side and ride around crooked eyed for a week till I do the other side. I don't give a **** how stupid it looks, it's the winter beater.

I also like that I get less stray light with these shrouds and projectors, what stray light there is comes off at even steeper and less likely to annoy angles than what I have now. I appreciate the slight housing fill that the shrouds product, it's nothing like an M45 shroud does but it still gives the whole lamp some light.

[Box]

Those do like the nice, headlight looks great!

[Bitter]

They fit JUST right and take up a good deal of space, if they were any different it wouldn't work out.

[Box]

If we were remotely nearby we'd have to compare the D2S and Hella lamps for the hella it, sorry couldn't leave that one alone. I am kind of curious on doing a side by side comparison though, not that it really matters I guess but it'd be interesting nonetheless.

[Bitter]

That would be interesting, at 35W you'd murder my hot spot on low or high beam, at 45W I might be getting closer, I'd be a little wider though on low or high beam. Overall you'd probably win except on width. Those Hella lamps have a really intense hotspot on them and fairly good width at normal wattage, with your boosted bulbs you'd kill it. My lumen advantage is spent making a wider hot spot, yours is spent making a higher center beam intensity. The 80w low beam filament is like doing in the 2000-2500 lumen range or a little more, the 100W high beam filament is probably the 2500-3000 lumen range or a little more, so not far off from HID lumens at 35W, just different focus. It would be interesting!


Point of reference, my Celica halogen on a harness with 65W H7 Rally (rebased H9) had a more intense hot spot and better reach than a 14 BRZ OEM HID and even nearly as wide. Still a brighter hot spot than my OEM HID in the Celica now. Width though is no contest between halogen and HID for the Celica, the Celica is 20 lanes wide, it's nuts.

[Box]

That's one thing I've noticed myself, HID has really wide consistent output where halogen seems more centrally concentrated in intensity. I feel that I see better in in the Firebird than in my brother's Genesis, though I think it'd really benefit from D2S over the H11 retrofit and mini H1. Honestly if it were me I think a bi-xenon D2S for low/high on the outside with a relayed over-wattage H1 halogen for high on the inside would be the best setup versus doing dual HIDs. Of course he's caught up on the look of the headlights he only sees when standing outside of the car more so than the light output of the headlights when in the car, or at least that's how it seems at times. Really the only time I can tell the mini H1 are even on is when going to high beam so their cutoff shield is flipped back

[Box]

Because GM can't make a dashboard to save their life I've bought microsuede vinyl film to recover it, the defining moment between that or trying to repair the crack was when it cracked while measuring it out barely resting my hand on it... That's ok black microsuede won't glare like shiny cheap plastic so there's that at least.

[njccmd2002]

today I realized the box-bitter romance continues..

may have to create an off topic section where these 2 are not allowed

[Box]

Not like anyone else would be around to use it anyway.

So I remembered why I stopped looking for the factory splitters and sideskirts, they're nonexistent. Looks nice though:



This post has been edited by Box: Feb 2, 2017 - 6:38 PM