Well, I called TRS and spoke with Matt about the ballast's as well as a couple questions I had about the blazer fog's. The generic ballast's I received have been shipped back and I am anxiously awaiting my 3Five's. For reimbursement Matt had me take a picture of the shipping receipt to him and he would reimburse me through PayPal.
In regards to the blazer's. I asked Matt two questions. The first was in regards to the chrome bubbling and flaking on the projector bowl which is semi-documented with the blazer's. Heat is always an issue with a projector and since the blazer is sealed it gets hotter than a traditional headlamp projector. Now a high watt halogen bulb will make the chrome bubble. A kit bulb will also cause bubbling. However the Morimoto bulbs run at a lower temp than most kit bulbs do and after talking with Matt he seems to think that the issues stem from a bad batch of blazer's. So I feel pretty confident that between running a Morimoto kit and attaching a heat-sink to the back of the projector I will be protecting my investment as much as possible.
The next question I had was about painting the lens and it's affect on light output and whether the paint would stand up to the heat of the projector. According to Matt the lens of a projector is significantly cooler than the bowl portion and he doesn't see a problem with painting the lens, although he has never done it. However if there is a problem I'll only be painting the exterior of the lens so if it does start flaking it will not flake into the projector.
So with that said, I'll be painting the lens of the blazer's amber when I receive them.
Well, I purchased my new fog housings today, ($36 a side). I remember when they were like $50 a side on eBay. My blazer's should be here tomorrow. And I also ordered the 3000K TRS bulbs and relay harness today to go along with the 3Five ballast's I ordered.
At first I was going to pay someone to do the retro since I was apprehensive about hacking up my housings. But after doing some more reading and thinking about it the DIY in me decided that I at least want to try it. Now when it comes to mounting projectors there's 2 ways. Hard mounting and soft mounting. The MH1 is a soft mount retro as it can be removed very easily. A hard mount involves using JB weld or some other bonding agent to lock the projector into place. Unfortunately this means that if your rotation is off you have no way of fixing it easily.
As is the case, I would prefer a soft mount so I can make final adjustments on the vehicle and in case I ever need to swap out the blazer's for a new pair I can easily do that. I started a thread over on HID Planet asking for mounting techniques, (Mounting Techniques). But I figured I'd ask here too. Any retrofitters wanna chime in, too_slow, The Inspiration?
Reference photo for fog housing.
Blazer fog.
I'm thinking it may be possible to make some sort of bracket to bolt onto the blazer and the bracket of the OE fog, but I'm open to suggestions.
Last edited by StanzaDescendant; 06-19-2012 at 10:34 PM.
Well, my blazer's should be here tomorrow, *fingers crossed*. And TRS shipped out my ballasts, bulbs, and relay harness today. So I should have those Friday. Once again, *fingers crossed*. You may remember earlier in this thread where I said that HID's should be paired with an HID projector and that certain halogen projectors will provide good results. Well the blazer is one of those projectors, and what makes it even better is the price. When I get my blazer's Ill be modding them slightly for better output and to make them suit my purpose.
One of the first things I'll be doing is what's known as the return wire down mod. As most of us know, with HID bulbs you have the arc chamber and a return wire. Well, on a rebased 880 series HID bulb the return wire is on top which will block some of the light output. To "fix" this there is a small notch on the bulb base that needs to be shaved off to allow the bulb to be inserted fully 180 degrees.
Another modification I plan to do is to help the blazer dissipate some of the heat generated by the HID bulb. This is done via a 28mm heatsink attached to the base of the projector. Since HID bulb's generate most of their heat at the base of the bulb this is the best place to add one.
It's a little bit of cheap insurance to hopefully avoid any problems down the line.
The last thing I'll be doing is painting the lens amber to keep my amber fogs. To do this I'll need to open them up and remove the lens unless I feel like taping off the lens cover and dealing with that mess.
Received all my goodies from TRS over the weekend. Tomorrow I'll be painting the lens on the blazer projector's as well as testing the ballasts and bulbs to make sure they work. Since I didn't include any product shots for my headlamp retro I figured I'd throw one in here.
As you can see the TRS harness really is massive compared to what you would get from eBay or DDM. Not only do they use thicker wire they use 1 relay per side instead of 1 relay for both. So if for some reason a relay fails you still have 1 working side. There is also a green LED in each relay to let you know if it has power or not. It's just one more way TRS helps with making it easy to diagnose something.
Well, I tested out the bulbs, ballast's and projectors last night and they all work as they should and the projectors do a nice job with the HID bulb like I expected. Unfortunately due to the weather I wasn't able to start painting the lenses today like I wanted to and there are no local hobby shops that carry an RC motor heatsink like what I was looking for. So I ended up ordering 2 off of Amazon.
I also called Matt at TRS to see if they had any spare brackets for the blazer's since the pair I bought didn't come with any and he's going to get back to me. If they have them this should make mounting them a hell of a lot easier. And according to the tracking on my housings they should be here Wednesday, (27th). I'm off of work Friday and Saturday, so hopefully I'll be able to get the housings at least cut and painted on Friday.
Short vid I found on the TRS Youtube page comparing the new Morimoto ballasts to the old. I'll be running the "new" ones in my headlamps and the "old" for my fogs.
Received my housings today. Unfortunately I received 00-01 Maxima housings instead of Altima housings. So I sent a message to the seller and am waiting to here back.
Finally had a chance to e-mail the eBay vendor back with pics of the wrong housings. Hopefully by Friday I'll have a response.
But I did get the heatsink's I ordered in today. 3 days sooner then they were supposed to be here too.
The heatsinks are slightly longer than the projector base. But I knew that when I bought them. Another member who did this cut the heatsink's to length. I however will just leave them intact since it doesn't interfere with the bulb at all.
Hopefully tonight I'll be able to start painting the lenses like I wanted to last Friday. Then on Thursday I'll be able to pick up some JB Weld and attach those heatsink's. And then it'll be a waiting game for the right housings to get here so I can bake those open and paint them.
I also need to give Matt at TRS a call back and follow up on the brackets for the blazer projectors.
But I did get a response from the eBay vendor as well as a pre-paid shipping label. So on my lunch today I'll be dropping them off at UPS and then contacting them to let them know the wrong housings are on the way. So far this vendor has been quick to respond and very easy to work with. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it by writing this, but, *fingers crossed*
They did say though to let them know when they were shipped and they would process the replacement immediately. I should also be picking up some JB weld today to affix those heatsink's to the projectors. Which I am glad I did since another thread popped up on HIDP yesterday.
I don't plan on mounting mine that far forward in the projector, but better safe than sorry. Mine will be mounted just behind the clip that surrounds the lens.
Got the Blazers painted today, I'll clear them tomorrow. All in all I think it was 12-13 coats of TS-73 paint for these. The lenses themselves don't look that dark but I stuck a halogen bulb in there with a 9V battery and the output was pure dark amber. If you look closely at the Blazer on it's side you can see an orange spot on the carpet. That's what the output looked like.
The game plan for tomorrow is to clear the Blazers and install the rest of the TRS kit so when my correct housings get here I can just hack them up and install them. It'll also allow me to run the wiring for the MH1's a little better too since I did that with the bumper still on in mid February IIRC.
EDIT:
So I got the itch to see what these actually look like at night so I decided to go out just now, pull the fuse on the relay harness and run one of the Blazer's to see how the output and color would be. Both pictures I had the Blazer resting on the rad support mounting tab of my headlamp to keep it relatively straight. Output is even deeper than with the halogen bulb. I officially cannot wait to get these done. Before it was just more or less going through the motions with a reward at the end but now I feel like all of us do after we've installed a mod and want to take it out and show it off.
I present Amber Fogs v 2.0
This first picture is a more accurate representation of what the color output is.
This was just an output/cutoff shot and for some reason the color looks a bit washed out compared to the other shot.
I had this running for a little over a minute and the housing did get warm but nothing overly hot like I was afraid of. I believe the heatsink is doing it's job and as long as I can get them mounted the way I want to they should be fine. Although part of me wants to pick up some small computer fans and run them off of the fog circuit as additional cooling.
EDIT x2:
So I did some looking on RadioShack and WalMart for fans to see how expensive they were if I decided I wanted to go ahead with them. Well for $8.50 shipped I found 4 80mm fans.
Should be some more cheap insurance to hopefully keep them cool enough.
EDIT x3.
I don't think I've ever edited a post this much.
But I figured I'd throw up a comparison shot with my low beam ouput. Picture was taken from relatively the same place with the same camera, but feel free to take it with a grain of salt. Once I get these fogs installed the contrast is going to be gorgeous at night. Well gorgeous to me anyways, some people prefer the "fog" lights to be color matched. I however do not.
Headlamps are 5000k XB35 bulbs from TRS.
Last edited by StanzaDescendant; 07-11-2012 at 04:10 AM.
Well, my new and hopefully correct fog housings should be on their way by now which means I should get them the same time as the fans I ordered. So weather permitting next Tuesday/Wednesday I should be able to get this finished.
But I did start a thread on HIDP asking about the fan idea.
so what are your plans for the surrounding area inside the fog light hole? i was thinking you should fab up a panel to seal it all off, just allowing a hole for the new fog projectors. follow me?
like the bugeye subaru, with its fog light hole cover.
__________________ Stage III"MO POWAH to the wheels" Shout out to NissanClub for the knowledge proud member of "Got balls to rock the right rim size" Club!
so what are your plans for the surrounding area inside the fog light hole? i was thinking you should fab up a panel to seal it all off, just allowing a hole for the new fog projectors. follow me?
like the bugeye subaru, with its fog light hole cover.
I'm gonna open up the housings and take a hole saw to the back of them, mount the projector with just the lens and lens clip inside the actual fog housing leaving the actual body of the projector closed. Then I'm gonna spray the reflectors black to match my headlamps and seal them back up. Then I'll do the final mounting and adjusting of the projector alignment and fans. And then it'll be time to mount them to the car. I'm also debating color matching the lens clips like the shrouds on my MH1's.
It sounds more complicated than it is.
I did get the brackets for the Blazer's in today though. As soon as I get the new fog housings in I'll be making a brace to connect the bracket of both housings which should give me some nice easy mounts for the fans.
EDIT:
Shawn, would you recommend drilling from the back or from the front? At first I thought the back but wanted to be sure before I proceed.
Last edited by StanzaDescendant; 07-12-2012 at 09:00 PM.
I usually drill back to front first, and if i need to clean up anything on the inside, i use a dremel to sand down any excess material that didn't come out with the hole saw
I'm at work right now, so i didn't get to read everything, did you decide how you are going to mount the lights in the housing?
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