DM's G5-BRT Bi-Xenon Retrofit

[Drift Monkey]

So I thought I document my progress on this project and post questions for issues I come across. Shout out to everyone who gave me great tips/suggestions on my pre-build thread.


Parts list:

• TYC Sport Housings
• 03-09 4Runner D2S 5.0/G5-R Brackets
• G5 Stage III Parts Package
• Bixenon Projectors: G5-BRT (3")
• Compatible Ballasts/igniters: Hylux A0050 (45W) W/ D2S Adapters
• D2S HID Bulbs2S: Osram 66240 Nightbreaker Laser (4200K)
• Shroud Style: No Shrouds Required
• Wiring Harness: (match stock bulb size) HD Relay: H11/H9/H8
• Headlight Sealant Gray: RetroRubber
• 2x High Beam Splitter (Single) Version: 9005 Male > 9005/9006 Female

Ordered from Lightwerkz last sunday, USPS was late by 2 days, but I started last night and immediately ran into an issue while baking the TYC housings. They don't use butyl sealant - they use that permaseal gabrage. Not only was splitting them a royal PITA - cleaning the old permaseal off was a royal PITA - I used a heat gun, a flat head, and alot of cussing.

Pretty new TYC housings.

But the insides hide a demon, waiting to torment you. :flamethrwoer2:

:flipoff:

Got most of it off...one ONE SIDE...fml

I've test mounted it, but have been made aware (per Lightwerkz) that D2S (4.0/5.0/G5) projectors require a slight upward tilt so the xenon high and stock reflector high beams are correctly aimed, otherwise the stock high beams will be too high (in the trees). So I have yet ANOTHER thing to worry about.

vs stock projector:

Test fitment:

As you can see, my cutoff is also a little clockwise, so that's nice. Will have to mess with that to get it straight as well. I do REALLY dig the color though.

My hands hurt like hell. If anyone knows how many washers I should be using to get that upward tilt, please let me know. Edit: I figured it out after a bit of trial and error.

 

[Drift Monkey]

Ok, so I think I got it figured out - 4 washers on the bottom between the projector and the bracket and it should line up with the stock high beam reflector.

Now if I could figure out how to rotate the projector so the cutoff is straight.

 

[Drift Monkey]

Aight, so I got both sides open and both test fitted. I still have some rotation on the passenger side but it could be due to how the headlamp bolts into the body - the OEM was like that too so I'm not sure.

Anyway, some quick and dirty garage cutoff shots:

Passenger side still kinda cockeye'd. Not sure why the passenger side cutoff is sharper as well.

High beams are pretty aligned.

Testing.

Seems to fit fine.

Not sure if I should seal back up or keep working at it...

 

[Drift Monkey]

Welp, gonna have to put this on hold. I sealed everything up and the alignment is wayyy off. I even opened the passenger side back up to try and fix it but it’s wayyy too low now, even cranked all the way up to max vertical on the adjuster. Both sides aim weird now, drivers side seems to not want to move at all? Something with the alignment/adjusters is off, sigh. I’m really not sure what’s going on but I do know they’ll probably have to be cracked open again to fix. It’s strange because the pictures above during testing had a pretty usable alignment, not sure what happened when I sealed ‘em back up?

In the mean time I salvaged a projector bowl from one of the TYCs, and, you guessed it, baked the passenger side lamp again and swapped it in for now. It’s weird having light on that side - it’s actually brighter since a H9 bulbis plugged into that side lol. I was able to make adjustments with the OEM lights no problem - I’m really curious wtf is going on with the TYCs...

I’m contemplating swapping everything over to the OEM backs and plopping the TYC lenses over and seeing if that works...I’m exhausted though. If I do that I also won’t have a backup set I know works in case anything goes wrong. I spent 2 days on this and still don’t have it right...

In the meantime everything is back to stock. Womp womp.

 

[Ventil8]

Don't rush it, it's a pain...It took me a few months to figure it out. Same thing happened to my setup as well. Alignment looked good, sealed the headlight, test drove it at night....wayyyy off, wtf!!!

 

[Ventil8]

I forgot to mention...is the driveway you're alightment level and not at an incline? You have to make sure to find level/flat ground to align the headlights and to use that same spot for any adjustments.

 

[Drift Monkey]

Don't rush it, it's a pain...It took me a few months to figure it out. Same thing happened to my setup as well. Alignment looked good, sealed the headlight, test drove it at night....wayyyy off, wtf!!!

I forgot to mention...is the driveway you're alightment level and not at an incline? You have to make sure to find level/flat ground to align the headlights and to use that same spot for any adjustments.

I thought taking nearly 2 full days (started like 6-7pm Friday, stayed up all night, 4-5 hours sleep - stayed up all night again) was taking it slow. hwell: It's a pain, but seems like it should be worth it - I'm just way too tired to deal with it for now - my fingers are pretty torn up from all the work done. I'm a perfectionist too so you know it's probably take me a few months as well lmfao. I did go for a quick spin around the neighborhood and basically HAD to use the high beams in order to see :laugh: To be fair the very low cutoff bouncing off the ground as the truck went over bumps was pretty hilarious in hindsight - I was too delirious to laugh at the time.

My driveway has a pretty steep incline (I'm over on the west side of town). Kinda hard to find a nearby spot I can drive to with no lenses - I really was just hoping I could get it relatively close in the driveway and then take it to a wall once I verified all the adjusters were working...so much for that.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement, fellow Austinite. I won't give up just yet.

 

[apohl17]

I thought taking nearly 2 full days (started like 6-7pm Friday, stayed up all night, 4-5 hours sleep - stayed up all night again) was taking it slow. hwell: It's a pain, but seems like it should be worth it - I'm just way too tired to deal with it for now - my fingers are pretty torn up from all the work done. I'm a perfectionist too so you know it's probably take me a few months as well lmfao. I did go for a quick spin around the neighborhood and basically HAD to use the high beams in order to see :laugh: To be fair the very low cutoff bouncing off the ground as the truck went over bumps was pretty hilarious in hindsight - I was too delirious to laugh at the time.

My driveway has a pretty steep incline (I'm over on the west side of town). Kinda hard to find a nearby spot I can drive to with no lenses - I really was just hoping I could get it relatively close in the driveway and then take it to a wall once I verified all the adjusters were working...so much for that.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement, fellow Austinite. I won't give up just yet.

Hmmm... Sounds like you have some issues I had, and then some I didn't encounter for my retro. I'll PM you my number and if you can, give me a ring and let's see if I can talk you through some of this!!!

:rockon:

 

[Dirtrider216]

Welp, gonna have to put this on hold. I sealed everything up and the alignment is wayyy off. I even opened the passenger side back up to try and fix it but it’s wayyy too low now, even cranked all the way up to max vertical on the adjuster. Both sides aim weird now, drivers side seems to not want to move at all? Something with the alignment/adjusters is off, sigh. I’m really not sure what’s going on but I do know they’ll probably have to be cracked open again to fix. It’s strange because the pictures above during testing had a pretty usable alignment, not sure what happened when I sealed ‘em back up?

In the mean time I salvaged a projector bowl from one of the TYCs, and, you guessed it, baked the passenger side lamp again and swapped it in for now. It’s weird having light on that side - it’s actually brighter since a H9 bulbis plugged into that side lol. I was able to make adjustments with the OEM lights no problem - I’m really curious wtf is going on with the TYCs...

I’m contemplating swapping everything over to the OEM backs and plopping the TYC lenses over and seeing if that works...I’m exhausted though. If I do that I also won’t have a backup set I know works in case anything goes wrong. I spent 2 days on this and still don’t have it right...

In the meantime everything is back to stock. Womp womp.

I ran into a very similar problem that stemmed from a few place for me.
First since I was using the stock covers for the projector and not an aftermarket shroud, the D2s 4.0 i used to my install was longer and the glass on the projector was contacting the rear of thew oem shroud preventing good aiming so I just dremmeled out the back of the plastic faceplate/shroud to make more room for the lens.
Second. these are heavier than oem setup so if you dont have your lower headlight bolt- the PITA one inside the bumper- installed and tightened down you'll likely need to do that. In all honesty its easiest to just remove the bumper fascia for the process than it is to fight weird angles.
Third, use the 3-4 mounting bolts into the frame for your inital aiming and use the aiming screws for fine tuning . You get much more adjustability by tightening the bolts that hold the housing in order to physically hold the housing in a certain position because you can move the aim point inches at a time rather than millimeters.
As far as the crooked aim on the projector- its more than likely poor QC from lightwerkz, i used their brackets as well and one of mine is slightly rotated as well, but for me it was livable.
ALSO if there is any chance you didnt get all the sealant off of the TYC housings, buy some bolt on breathers from the retrofit source as well as some goretex patches and use them. I unfortunately didnt get all my sealant off and I also didnt use the bolt on breathers and now my drivers side fogs up in rain unless i drive around with the low beam rear boot off of the housing for breathablity

 

[Drift Monkey]

I ran into a very similar problem that stemmed from a few place for me.
First since I was using the stock covers for the projector and not an aftermarket shroud, the D2s 4.0 i used to my install was longer and the glass on the projector was contacting the rear of thew oem shroud preventing good aiming so I just dremmeled out the back of the plastic faceplate/shroud to make more room for the lens.
Second. these are heavier than oem setup so if you dont have your lower headlight bolt- the PITA one inside the bumper- installed and tightened down you'll likely need to do that. In all honesty its easiest to just remove the bumper fascia for the process than it is to fight weird angles.
Third, use the 3-4 mounting bolts into the frame for your inital aiming and use the aiming screws for fine tuning . You get much more adjustability by tightening the bolts that hold the housing in order to physically hold the housing in a certain position because you can move the aim point inches at a time rather than millimeters.
As far as the crooked aim on the projector- its more than likely poor QC from lightwerkz, i used their brackets as well and one of mine is slightly rotated as well, but for me it was livable.
ALSO if there is any chance you didnt get all the sealant off of the TYC housings, buy some bolt on breathers from the retrofit source as well as some goretex patches and use them. I unfortunately didnt get all my sealant off and I also didnt use the bolt on breathers and now my drivers side fogs up in rain unless i drive around with the low beam rear boot off of the housing for breathablity

Thanks for the reply! Good tips here!

1. Good to know - if I run into any more aiming issues I'll definitely try to dremel some of the rear part of the stock shroud/cover where the projector meets. I did have to dremel the backing part to get the projector to slide into place, but that was with the TYC backings.

2. I did take those out and assumed I wouldn't need them again....welp time to try to dig and try and see where I put em...

3. I did more of less do that, but getting everything secure always threw the aiming wildly off - which is why I'm thinking the backings themselves are one of the causes of the weird aiming - I stuck my OEMs back in and they aim fine.

Both brackets are identical and fit fine as far as I can see. I'mr eally thinking it's the OEM vs TYC backings, but I'll be able to confirm this coming weekend for sure. I did notice the projectors are much heavier and seem to weigh down the entire mounting plate area inside the housing, so maybe that adds to some of the complexity. Part of the rotation could be solved by slotting the brackets a bit as well.

They sealed up fine afaik. I got 98%+ off the lenses and my fingers let me know it. :whipping2 I'll see what I can do now that I've had a helluvalot of practice opening these things up lol.

 

[Drift Monkey]

I got a chance to mess with them a little tonight and snapped some pics:

Passenger's side with the adjustment cranked up to the vertical max:

From the outside:

Passenger side with the adjustment cranked down to the vertical min:

Driver's side with the adjustment cranked up to the vertical max:

From the outside:

Driver's side with the adjustment cranked down to the vertical min:

Not sure if this is helpful, but this is what I've been able to deduce: the downward adjustability far outweighs the upward one. Makes sense as to why can't get 'em aimed high enough.

 

[bkim7]

I had a similar issue while retrofitting projectors into my 2003. I did a Mini H1 7.0 retro. I kept turning the vertical adjustment screw on the driver side and it wouldn't seem to go up. Turns out, the mount the adjustment screw inserts into was stripped out. I swapped one out from my old headlights and it seemed to work. I'm not sure if the 2006+ headlights have a similar system for vertical adjustments though. Since you're already planning to open them up, I'd look at the adjuster mount. TRS sells spares too: Headlight Adjuster Mounts - Headlight Repair Accessories from The Retrofit Source

Hopefully this is helpful

 

[Drift Monkey]

I had a similar issue while retrofitting projectors into my 2003. I did a Mini H1 7.0 retro. I kept turning the vertical adjustment screw on the driver side and it wouldn't seem to go up. Turns out, the mount the adjustment screw inserts into was stripped out. I swapped one out from my old headlights and it seemed to work. I'm not sure if the 2006+ headlights have a similar system for vertical adjustments though. Since you're already planning to open them up, I'd look at the adjuster mount. TRS sells spares too: Headlight Adjuster Mounts - Headlight Repair Accessories from The Retrofit Source

Hopefully this is helpful

Thanks for that! So while off the car I messed with the TYCs earlier this week and as you can see, they both actually do adjust correctly (I think drivers side just got a little stuck and needed some persuasion), just down a whole lot and not really up. Not sure if that’s due to the washer spacing I did, but we’re about to find out!

 

[bkim7]

Thanks for that! So while off the car I messed with the TYCs earlier this week and as you can see, they both actually do adjust correctly (I think drivers side just got a little stuck and needed some persuasion), just down a whole lot and not really up. Not sure if that’s due to the washer spacing I did, but we’re about to find out!

Ah I see. I didn't look closely enough at the pictures you posted. Keep us posted, I'm curious to find out what's causing you these issues. Best of luck!

 

[Drift Monkey]

Ah I see. I didn't look closely enough at the pictures you posted. Keep us posted, I'm curious to find out what's causing you these issues. Best of luck!

Long update:

I took both sets apart yesterday and found out the TYC housing adjusters were indeed stripped afterall - and on both sides. I solved this by swapping over both stock OEM projector mounts/high beam bowls into the TYC housings and they were able to be aimed fine. I moved the washers back to the original seating (flat), and everything seems fine except when I mount the shroud/lens back to the passenger side. I can't get enough vertical adjustment still - driver's side is fine and at a decent height.

I tried the bolting up the blind bolt during the test fit/aiming - took FOREVER and made zero improvements on aim-ability/stability.

Another curious development - somehow with the OEM mount/hb bowl - the hb bulb is unable to be mounted in a usable way - it's way too far in.

One problem after another - sigh.

At this point I'm guessing I'm getting a significant amount of interference from the stock shroud...gonna probably have to re-split and shave away at the shroud for clearance.

 

[Drift Monkey]

I dremeled away some of the shroud but it’s still kinda low so I just evened ‘em out. A little low still I think but maybe it’ll fix itself after the lift? Haha

 

[riceandpho]

i would cut up the adapter bracket a little bit, only use the top portion, but have it in front of the projector instead of the back, same with the bottom part, i wouldnt use the washer to space the projector back up to match the high beams, try it with no washer, it might not good matching the hi beams of stock at the wall, but its another story when driving.

 

[Ed_C]

You think it's low but it might actually be ok, how far are you from the garage and how tall is the cutoff? It's usually a 2-3" drop from the height of the projector centerline at 25 feet away. Also do those BRTs have a slightly bowed cutoff to the right or is the rotation off a little on the passenger side?

 

[Drift Monkey]

i would cut up the adapter bracket a little bit, only use the top portion, but have it in front of the projector instead of the back, same with the bottom part, i wouldnt use the washer to space the projector back up to match the high beams, try it with no washer, it might not good matching the hi beams of stock at the wall, but its another story when driving.

Interesting idea of using it in front of the projector instead of behind, not sure how that'd work but if it does it could give additional clearance. No washer was installed to the same general effect.

You think it's low but it might actually be ok, how far are you from the garage and how tall is the cutoff? It's usually a 2-3" drop from the height of the projector centerline at 25 feet away. Also do those BRTs have a slightly bowed cutoff to the right or is the rotation off a little on the passenger side?

It was for sure not ok. Cranked up to the max, I drove to get some gas and I could see my cutoff in front of me...the reflections in the cars in front of me indicated my fogs were pointed higher than my low beams. They are bowed, but the passenger side is still slightly clocked still.

But...I did find an unconventional solution which I'll post soon.

 

[Drift Monkey]

So...in my infinite frustration - I did it guys. I finally went off the deep end. :crazy:

The passenger side had way too much interference and I actually ended up stripping out another vertical adjuster tab. I literally said **** it, swapped out the adjuster tab and am running no shroud. Everything is now fully aimable and fully functional...but maybe it's not so fully fashionable. :wacko:

Looks like a god damned Transformer now. ound: But at least my beam pattern is nice...

Quick lineup on the garage and...

a little more adjustment at a nearby wall.

It's probably slightly high now and I need to get the horizontal aiming situated...but at this point I'm just happy to be able to SEE at night. The output is honestly amazing and I really love the color of these bulbs. I have some ideas on how to make them look more aesthetically pleasing down the road, but this will have to do for now...:art:

Another curious tidbit - when I was restricted to a downward aim, my halogen high beam bulb was able to be actually plugged in because the clearance changed. Now that I have them properly adjusted - that clearance is gone. Something is wonky with this - I was considering just using led bulbs in this spot but I may be forced to use a threaded option like Profile HI-Lens LED or Morimoto Mini HB LED. Lightwerkz is running a sale...hmmm...

Thoughts? Comments? Bashing? :lmao: