Keith1997

Just wanted to write a quick post to thanks Sam95ZNoTop for doing the amazing work of installing the Hella 90mm projectors into his car!

I first read about his Hella 90mm install from his website back on Sept. 2003 when I was searching the web for info & idea on how to improve the low beam lighting on my 1990 300ZX (I hope you guys don't mind if I don't have a Z28 & post on your forum...at least it is a "Z" )

After looking at Sam's pictures about the light output & beam pattern of the Hella, I figured I should consider installing Hella into my car.......after purchasing an extra set of 300zx headlight assemblies off Ebay, I opened up the headlight assemblies and did couple measurements, those Hella 90mm projectors are just too big to fit into the stock headlight assemblies. Felt defeated, I managed to cleanup the stock projector lens, which made the stock light output from 9006 bulbs good enough for use at night.

http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/headlight001.jpg
http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/headlight005.jpg
http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/headlight010.jpg
http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/headlight011.jpg

For the below pic, you can see I cleaned the top part of the projector len, the bottom part are all cloudy of 13 years of dust accumulated on the len

http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/headlight012.jpg

Below are some pics of cleaned stock low beam projector lens at light:

http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/nightpic01.jpg
http://www.streetneeds.com/ttnet/up/nightpic02.jpg

The lighting was a much improvement over the "cloudy" projector lens, drove it like that for several more months, but inside my mind, I know & I wanted Hella 90mm projectors, so somehow I managed to fit those Hella into the 300zx headlight assemblies....and oh boy was it a great light output improvement over the stock projectors setup. I will post some pictures of the new Hella setup as soon as I have time to snap some night pictures of the light output.

I hope you guy don't mind a foreign car owner making a post on your car forum, I figure we are all sport car owners

Once again big thanks to Sam for the inspiration!

Keith
1990 Nissan 300ZX twinturbo with Hella 90mm low beam projectors

Sam95ZNoTop

Just a quick update:

My winter project is going to be to upgrade the projector low beams to HID. Got all the parts, and will begin customizing the housings somewhere in the fall.

I will be sure to post results here!

Sam

pu12en12g

Violat0rX

I actually finished the HID conversion about a month an a half ago. I don't know how Sam95ZNoTop had his hella's installed...but when I did mine his tutorial wasn't around yet. I had trouble getting the lights to fit in the area because the bottom of the housing pushed up hard against the black part that's around the housing...so I could only aim them down so far. But I've been driving around with the HIDs and no one has flashed me yet. Here are a few quick pics that I took right after the install...by no means is my car's appearance even close to a 100%, I'm just sharing pics of the HIDs. They are H7's btw.

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jonchan/HIDs/DSC00249.JPG
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jonchan/HIDs/DSC00247.JPG
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jonchan/HIDs/DSC00248.JPG
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jonchan/HIDs/DSC00250.JPG
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jonchan/HIDs/DSC00253.JPG

pu12en12g

That looks sweet. What color temp and what kind of H7 kit is it ?

Violat0rX

I used the H7 kit from MeccaTune. The only kit availible at the time was a 8300K kit...and the description said that it was like the BMW headlight color. I knew going into it that the higher the color temp the lower the lumens...but i figured it would be ok. The kit was pretty good...it uses Hella Ballasts and i think it was Phillips or Hella approved bulbs w/ a wiring harness and stuff included. Also, the bulbs are NOT tinted blue...so i knew they couldn't have been too ghetto. However, I am thinking about buying a set of 6300K or 7000K bulbs because although the lights look really bright and really really blue but the black pavement tends to absorb a lot of the blue light, making it kind of hard to see at times. But overall...i'm happy with the conversion. I even use the high beams sometimes (the PIAA driving lights)...i never thought I would need them. I just kept them installed and working for inspection reasons...lol

Sam95ZNoTop

That does look cool! I am wondering how your beam pattern is with the rebased HID bulbs... Do you have some pics of the beam pattern on a wall or soemthing?

Other question: Where did you mount the ballasts, did you weatherproof the ballast and the connection to the ballast? If possible, can you send some pics to clarify your response...

Thanks in advance!

Sam

Violat0rX

I'll see if I can get some more pictures for you this weekend. I do have some from the install process. I had some help from another camaro owner, this is his site: http://firehawk.jonbroomfield.com/hidinfo/.

As for the beam pattern, there is no difference between the H7 hids and the H9s, because I didn't modify the cut-off shield. In that hella 90mm tutorial from that tripod site, I think it says that you will only have to modify the cutoff shield if you're modifying the H7 versions of the 90mm headlights. I did run into one problem...the passenger side's cut off seems to have rotated. I don't know how it happened as I didn't remover the cutoff shield at all, and the lights only install back in one way. I haven't had the time to look.

I only weatherproofed the blubs to the back of the 90mm housing with a little bit of black high temp RTV sealant. The wiring harness that came with the kit had plugs on the ends of all the wires so they all snapped together pretty tightly...kinda like the factory plugs, so I don't think i'll have to worry about them.

Sam95ZNoTop

When did you do yours? I did the high beams on my car last and that was in Jan 03. I think I did the install page a few months after that....

About the aiming down... I had the same problem, but then I saw that the black flat part of the bumper that is right below the lights is held up by a little tab in the middle, and I just cut that off. SO now the lights are actually pushing the black part down a little bit...

I have another question: Where did you mount your ballasts?

Thanks!

Sam

Violat0rX

Sam95ZNoTop:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you...but i was in the middle of a move...and as usual waiting for parts to show up in the mail.

I first did the install sometime during the summer of 02. The ballast on the passenger side is mounted next to the battery and the driverside is mounted where the air box used to be. I had space there because I have the SS style air box. I used twist ties just as an extra precaution because I didn't trust the sticky pads that came with it. Here are some pics of where I had them tucked away. It's kinda hard to tell, the battery hides the passenger side ballast.

http://community.webshots.com/user/violat0rx

Sam95ZNoTop

I did my low beams in November/December 2002, so that was a few months after you...

Thanks for those pics!! I guess I was a little worried about the weatherproofing of the ballasts, but it seems that I don't need to be! I have plenty of room on the driver side, I have an SLP Cold Air Intake, so no problem there. I was wondering about the passenger side though, but it's good to know there is enough space behind the battery.

Thanks!

Sam

Violat0rX

no problem...it's tight back there...but it fits. BTW...about those tabs that you cut to allow the black part to flex...where exactly is that? Like, where did you cut it? It's that tab that the screw is screwed in from the bottom right? Thanx

Sam95ZNoTop

There's a pic on my install page that shows it, the first two pics in the High Beam section. Yes, it has a screw that comes in from the bottom. I cut it flush with the horizontal part so that it is just as if the tab was never there.

HTH

Sam

Pandamonkey

Cool!

Bookmarked for future reference...........I have to get myself some of those.

Sam95ZNoTop

Just a quick note to keep this thread alive...