Gorgeous!

Anker

Haha true. But at least I know that the paintwork is immaculate now, so that if I wash it with the 3 bucket method and keep it waxed, I shouldn't have to do this for many years to come :)

Cheers!

Here's a mate of mine checking it out lol
http://i.imgur.com/1OiL1i5h.jpg

Appreciate it matey :)

Put my detailing business as a decal under the vents :)

http://i.imgur.com/z6nJKAwh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Igw0LKkh.jpg

That decal looks awesome Ger, very nicely done.

A nightmare to google though! hehe

Finally bought some bi-xenon lenses for the headlight conversion:

http://g02.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB16Om5L...nt-b-Xenon.jpg

The headlights are getting there, I haven't worked on them in ages.

For those who don't remember, I bought a set of old pre-facelift orange headlights to do a projector retrofit on. Reason why I bought the pre-facelift ones is because I can dremel the orange away so that they look like facelifts, then split them, install projectors, spray the inserts black and replace my current ones. I bought the pre-facelift ones because they were VERY cheap at £60 each, as opposed to £300 each for facelifts. The other benefit to buying the older ones is that, when it comes to opening them, the glue is older and they open easier. Plus, if I make a mistake, they were cheap.

I was going to give up on them as after dremeling the orange indicator away, it didn't really polish up to the smooth, clear look of the facelift lights, and it looked a bit crud. But as soon as I put a test coat of lacquer on it they looked perfect and shiny. So knowing they can look perfect, I just need to carry on filing the indicators flat to remove the dremeling marks, then do the other headlight, then I can open them up to install the projectors.

When it's all finished, it would have cost me £220. That's a bargain.

- £120 for second hand headlights
- £20 for projector lenses
- £40 for decent 5000k HID kit
- £12 for dremel
- £8 for matt black spray

...and they'll look something like this (someone else's car):

http://rennlist.com/forums/attachmen...329_184543.jpg

Going to be good :) I can then sell my current headlights to make a profit.

Nice, but why did you buy those cheap plastic ones instead of a set from board member Nine8Six (Fred) like on the car in your image?

https://www.gtcollection.com/products/porsche-headlight-conversion-kits.html
http://986forum.com/forums/diy-project-guides/48169-porsche-headlight-retrofit-%5B-cad-prototyping-finish.html

From what I've read you're going to have to be doing quite a bit of dremel work to get those generic ones to fit properly. Also you might want to use gloss instead of matt black spray, if you read through the thread above there's mention of matt getting too hot in summer... though you may be ok in the UK :)

Also, what kind of lacquer did you use to get them looking nice? I have a set of clears that I just can't get the fine buff marks out of after I restored them, was going to try some clear coat, apparently this stuff works ok and has UV protection...

https://2ecffd01e1ab3e9383f0-07db7b9...984b362bc5.jpg


Good luck with opening them up, the ovens in the UK and Aus aren't as big as the US ones obviously, no way the light would fit in my oven. I ended up using a heat gun and it worked in the end but took ages!

Psssst! Got a link to some pics of yours OldSkool?

@TrumpyAl : you mean the lights? Nah, only ordered mine from Fred a few days ago, my lights currently look like this...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/xM...w1922-h1082-no

..hoping Fred reappears soon and ships them before my GF flips out about the mess and kills me :)

Reason why is that I want to see how good they'll turn out. If I put them back together and I'm happy with the result, I'll invest in the more expensive ones, but for now it's a good way of seeing how it'll look. The Matt paint will be fine, I've used the same in engine bays without a problem, and the lacquer was just ordinary lacquer from a car shop :)

I've got a heat gun to do the lights, but like I said they're the older lights so they won't need much heating up.

Amazing, where do I sign up

The "cheap" projectors are just fine. I have about a dozen sets out there with the oldest being 3.5 years. No complaints.

In addition to widening the bulb socket slightly to accommodate the projectors mount post, you will need to remove some material on the shelf between the high/low sections of the OEM reflector.

Ger: test them before install to ensure the cutoff is nice and straight. If it is arced or curved, this is easy to fix before installing them. The cutoff shield is curved to follow the curve of the light and if it's curved too much or too little, the cutoff will appear arced upward or downward.

The Rustoleum is ok, but not great. It's difficult to get an even finish without crazing and it is quite soft when cured (chips and scratches very easily).
It will also be ruined if you need to heat and open your headlights again. Any temp above 175f will cause the clear to fog up and craze.

There's no substitute for professional clear coat.

Projector Headlights

Update on the headlights. They're finished!

I dremelled both of the pre-facelift indicators to clear, but they just didn't get to a standard that I was happy with. Build quality is a major part of this car, and I didn't want any part of it to look 'bodged'. Unfortunately I've had to just keep them for parts and have thrown the fronts out as they're no good now. So I just bit the bullet and opened my actual facelift headlights.

They opened brilliantly!

So I've done the following:

- Opened the headlights with a heat gun, kept the edges at 90 degrees C for about 5 minutes.
- Took the orange indicator interior cover and replaced it with the clear version out of the spare pre-facelift lights
- Dremelled the H7 attachment area completely flat, and widened the bulb hole a little
- Sprayed the inner reflectors and inner trim matt black
- Installed the projector lens
- Installed the HID bulb
- Sealed the headlight

Opened up, ad doing a test fit of the projector before they're sprayed
http://i.imgur.com/EOgQlDIh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nfbtWRuh.jpg

Sprayed matt black
http://i.imgur.com/b2zZyQ9h.jpg

Testing and levelling
http://i.imgur.com/WmKG4bfh.jpg

Sealed
http://i.imgur.com/G1C490yh.jpg

Finished
http://i.imgur.com/vKWK10Zh.jpg

Before
http://i.imgur.com/I77VMDOh.jpg

After
http://i.imgur.com/Wg2yUfAh.jpg

Muchos better :) I can't comment on the light output until tomorrow as I'm using a H7 bulb that's fitted badly (they're supposed to fit H1's), so the light isn't great due to the loose bulbs. The H1's are coming tomorrow, so I'll report back then.

The bi-xenon projectors work great when activating the high beam too, as the shields flick down to throw the light upwards. Trouble is, they use the dipped beams, so when they're not on and you flash someone, no light comes out as they need to be on. I'm currently trying to work out how to wire it up to enable the dipped beams when the high beams are engaged. Failing that, I'll just use the original high beam bulb.

But yeah, they're fantastic :) very happy with then.

Nicely done, they look fantastic :cheers:

Thanks very much :)

They look fantastic Ger, and buying the pre-facelift headlights has worked out brilliantly I think as it's a huuuuuge gain to get rid of that orange internal lens....

True that.

They did actually come in handy in the end. My right facelift headlight had a snapped adjuster, and the left prefacelift had a snapped adjuster too. Once the fronts are off, I mixed and matched them so that I have two perfect headlight bases, then I put the facelift fronts on them. So they technically helped repair my headlights as well as made good practice on opening them.

Just a small update, I've fitted the new H1 bulbs today and they are FANTASTIC!! They're about 1000x brighter, now that they're installed properly.

Can't wait to drive home from work later at 6pm and find what they're really like.

So I drove home with the new bulbs in. WOW these headlights are amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yl_fGrzfaE

The beam cut off is perfect too, and so is bi-xenon full beam functionality as shown in the video.

The only thing I need to do is level the headlights as they're not as high as they should be, and straighten the lenses a little as they're ever so slightly on an angle. I can do it from the inside thankfully as I used silicon washers, so even though they're very tight, they can be rotated with some force.

Extremely happy though :) they've really transformed night driving, and the look of the car.

Just pulled open the headlights again as I didn't remove all of the old glue from before, and I wasn't very happy with the fit. After scraping out the old glue, it's now sat perfectly and exactly how it was before. Opening them also allowed me to straighten the lenses too.

Tomorrow I'm off to a garage to get the headlights levelled against an MOT testing board, so that they're perfect - shouldn't ever have to touch them then.

Then I'll order the parts to make the relay for the full beam bulbs, and will buy some LED full beams when I'm at it. Should be fun :)

I was going to pop to the garage to get the lights done, but they weren't open. Instead I did it myself, and they've turned out great :)

Used a box with lines on, to get the initial rotation right and height comparison with the two
http://i.imgur.com/jrs5WnDh.jpg

Here's the beam pattern. If you're wondering if £18 ebay projectors are any good, here's your proof:
http://i.imgur.com/Rly2fMOh.jpg

The cut off is stunning. Lovely small blue fringe to the tips, no curve (although that's fixable by bending the shield as ParticleWave mentioned), the bi-xenon part of it where it flicks the light upwards works fantastic too. The only thing I have to worry about now is if they last. If they do, they'd be bargain of the century.

Performance and visual upgrade in one :)
http://i.imgur.com/kbP9uDdh.jpg

Ger's 2003 Porsche Boxster S
 

The advantages of spending the extra £££ on something like the Morimoto 7.0 are: a proven durable reflector coating, proven reliable solenoid mechanisms, a confirmed very-wide beam pattern and a higher concentration of light at the cut-off (rather than on the ground in front of the car where the glare will contract your pupils and reduce your ability to take see into the distance).

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...1dda301546.png

The thing is, it's hard to know what you have so you can't be sure what benefits you would get from upgrading.

Besides...you are soooooo much better with cheap projectors than you are with a halogen setup that it's all a bit of a moot point. Enjoy!!!

Gotcha! It does seem tempting, but like you said Projectors are better than halogens, even cheap ones. I may even upgrade in the future now that the headlight build has gone brilliantly.

I've bought H7 Cree LED bulbs to replace the main beams. ParticleWave has kindly drawn up a wiring diagram that requires a 5-pin relay, but enables the main beams bulbs when the dipped beams aren't on, and switches to the bi-xenon feature when the dipped beams are on. Basically, the mainbeams bulbs will be used just to flash people as I can't flash the HID's, then when the HID's are being used, it'll flick the bi-xenons instead.

Reason for Cree LED's is because I've painted the reflectors black, and a Cree LED bulb has a projector on top of it to project light directly forward, so it'll be brighter to on coming traffic.

The only thing I need to think about are the parking lights. Now that the projectors are in, they're covering the side light bulbs. You can see them in the dark as they illuminate the black surround, but you can't in the day. Wondering what I can do there...

White demon eyes?

Nah not a fan. Thinking something that will allow me to not open the headlights again!

I've just ordered DRL's:

http://www.hq-auto-lighting.co.uk/images/DRLHQV10-1.jpg

So that should solve the problem of the parking lights being obscured by the projectors :) They're Cree LED too, so should be very white and very bright.

Good thinking. They don't happen to have a secondary low brightness mode do they?

Don't think so. I'd probably leave them as sidelights so I have the option of not running them, but depending on how much I like them, I may wire them to act as actual DRL's to turn on with the ignition and off with the headlights.

Those would be good to tie into the courtesy lights (like you wanted to do with headlights).
Wire them up with the ignition or parking lights or however you decide, then tie in the courtesy lead with some diodes and and they'll behave like you wanted. ;)

I was going to ask you actually. With these DRL's, would it be a case of wiring the live/ground of the parking lights into these instead, and all will be well? Just want to make sure!

Depends on how you're going to use them normally. If you just want them to come on with the parking/side lights, then yes.

If you also wanted to tie them in to the courtesy lights, it would be a tiny bit more work.
For example: if you powered them to come on with the parking/side lights, you would feed them a constant 12V+ from the parking light circuit and both the switched ground for the side lights and switched/dimming ground for the courtesy lights. You'd need to add diodes to make sure you don't get wonky behavior. I'll see if I can draw you up a diagram and link some diodes later tonight if you want to do this.

Thank you, I appreciate it :)

As a totally unrelated question, I'm getting a 996 TT spoiler switch for the dash to re-wire the footwell switch to, which I'm fine in doing. I was just wondering if there was a feed that was live when the spoiler is up, and dead when the spoiler is down, that I could put an LED light onto? The idea is to put a very small LED in the footwell as an indicator to what the spoiler is doing.

To recap, my main beams don't come on when I flash people with the dipped beams off in the day time, as the main beams are linked to the bi-xenon Projectors, so when I pull on the stick to flash people, there's no light to flick up due to the dipped beams being off. So for a work around, I needed a relay to switch circuits when needed.

Created the main beam changeover relay today.

Ready to make it:

http://i.imgur.com/K0VLyoth.jpg

Done:

http://i.imgur.com/VBX14uqh.jpg

Installed:

http://i.imgur.com/jEqQrVXh.jpg

Works perfectly! If the xenons aren't on, pulling on the main beam will flash the old separate main beam bulb (perfect for day time flashing). The bulb is now a Cree LED a bulb with a forward facing projector on it, so that it's bright. When the xenons are on though, it'll use the bi-xenon solenoid to flick the projector light upwards and the main beam bulb won't be used.

Perfect.

Nice! :cool:

I'll get to your diagram ASAP...been a madhouse over here and my clutch died today. :(

Thanks again for the help with this, appreciate it very much!

That's no worries, no rush :) hope the clutch change goes alright!

So I've had my DRL's, and they've actually come with a DRL box that gives three wires. White, red and black. The white attaches to the headlights, red attaches to a switched 12v, and black to a ground. When the car's turned on, the DRL's turn on, then when the headlights are on the DRL's turn off.

I do like that feature, so I'm wondering if I could just wire that red wire onto the courtesy light feed too? So if the switched 12v OR courtesy light is on, the DRL's come on, and if the headlights are on they turn off.

From the instructions, they're meant to be this:

http://i.imgur.com/XTxfn7Pl.jpg

But would this work:

http://i.imgur.com/wenZaQTl.jpg

Thanks for the help bud :) I owe you a PayPal Pint!

Wouldn't you have no need for the extra Earth? Only the 12v feed from the Courtesy circuit.

And wouldn't a Diode be required to stop your courtesy circuit feeding power to whatever supplies the Switched 12v? Otherwise something like your ignition would stay on until the courtesy light goes out. Which may, in turn, stop the courtesy lights going out!?!?!

http://i.imgur.com/UUUisnn.jpg

The parking lights have a switched positive and the courtesy lights have a switched ground, so its a bit more complex.

Perfect, thank you :)

The 4 pin relay, what's that called officially? A make-and-break relay? Just so I can search for one and order one!