please, if you are going to spend the time and money on a projector retrofit, do it right! you are wasting your time w/ crap $50 projectors from amazon. minimum use FX-Rs...TLs or the LS460s if you want the best output possible with the most amount of fab work.
purchase OEM stuff on hidplanet.com, or at minimum, theretrofitsource.com (TRS).
shopping list:
New OEM phillips bulbs (eGay $64)
used OEM matsushita or denso ballasts ($80-100 on hidplanet forums)
New/used OEM or TRS projectors ($120-500+)
wire harness ($30ish TRS)
trust me, i've done over a dozen retros.
After doing the fx-rs last week Its a huge improvement, literally 5 times brighter than halogens, I found that my stock reflectors were actually worn out and oxidized. However trs just released the d2s 3.0 which has a 3 " lens and nearly as good of light output as the fx-r 3.0, plus its a lot easier to get it installed since you dont have to guess where to drill the hole, you just remove the center reflector and screw it in.
If your going to do it get this kit
Bi-xenon Morimoto Mini Stage III Kit (D2S) - Complete Retrofit Kits from The Retrofit Source Inc
I has all of the parts you need to get the job done. The light output on these things are amazing, the difference is literally night and day haha.
Now to be honest I did actually get a PNP HID kit at first to just put in my reflectors, it was 48 bucks on amazon shipped. they were 50 watts and supposed to be 5000k, in reality because of the increased wattage they were more like 3900k. So once I saved up I found that trs had a kit for people who already had done a pnp hid kit that just came with new bulbs a projector(mini h1s mini d2s or fx-r 3.0) with the fxr it was 220 for the kit, with 50watt bulbs, So because I used the harness and ballasts from the pnp kit I actually saved about 50 bucks, so all in all it cost be about 270 for the whole thing with 50 watt bulbs and ballasts, and the bulbs actually were 5000k this time.
Why exactly are the projectors from the retrofit source better? there are a few things that make them superior to ebay or amazon projectors.
trs hand picks each projector and match them together in pairs, this means the cutoffs and reflectors bulbs are always going to be in excellent condition, no scratches or oxidation, and they will be properly focused. trs actually rejects quite a few projectors for these things, and then these rejects are sold on ebay or amazon.
Secondly is that trs exclusively uses clear lenses in the projectors they sell, what I mean by clear lenses is that the lenses dont have a texture, I believe the texture was added to reduce an optical phenomenon called aberration. aberration is what causes the color effect on the cutoff line, more specifically it happens because the material of the lens can have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light. I think the color effect is cool and it lets people know you are there without blinding them as you travel down the road. anyways the texture basically blurs the colors back together to get rid of the color effect, the trade off though is less light output and a crappy cutoff and more glare, as in you will be blinding people as you are driving down the road. The reason some manufacturers decided to put this texture is because people complained about being blinded by hid lights, for some reason this made the manufacturers think that this was caused by the color effect, when In reality it was caused by improperly aimed headlights, and inadequately stepped cut offs.
Also you can find some sweet deals in their closeout section, I picked up a pair of 600 dollar bmw x5 led fog lights for 60 bucks.
The picture below shows on the left a 50 watt hid pnp in my stock reflector, hids typically put out about 4 and half times more light than the equivalent wattage halogen. on the left is a 50 watt hid bulb inside an fx-r projector, the difference is huge. The optics of the projectors are hugely more efficient than that of a standard multireflector headlight, even considering the fact that the projectors actually cut out the light on the top and bottom to produce a sharp cuttoff and also to eliminate the foreground.
Sorry for my semi off topic rant but I figure after all of the research ive done someone searching the intertubes will probably find this information useful, also If any of my information is wrong please feel free to correct it.
