Sam95ZNoTop

For all of you that were looking for a way to improve those crappy headlights on our cars, here is something I found and installed on my car. The difference is amazing, you feel like you were driving with your sunglasses on all those years!

I was looking around for some better lights, but wasn't too thrilled about the idea of the PIAA's. First they are kinda small, then they are really driving lights, so how good a low beam can that give you? Then I found these:

Hella Low and High Beams

So far, I have installed the low beams to try out how it fits. I currently have the high beams on order and will be installing those soon! Check out the pics I just took. (They are not so good, but I could take some better ones if people are interested in this upgrade. Maybe also a write-up??)

photos

The low beam lights are projector type headlights. They use H9 bulbs producing about 2300 lumen at 14 V (compared to 1000 with the standard bulb). So it's more than twice the amount of light with MUCH better optics, you do the math! One of the pics shows the beam pattern: very sharp cutoff characteristic of the projector head lights. The difference is pretty spectacular, you can actually see the road now! (without blinding anybody and they are perfectly legal, DOT approved etc...) Some people were also able to fit a D2S HID bulb in these lights with just a little filing of the base plate that is detachable. So if you want real HID, this is the best way to go in my opinion. I stuck with the halogen bulbs since they already provide that much more light. Plus, the HID ballasts etc. are pretty expensive. I also wanted to see if I could fit them on the car first, who knows what i'll do later, but this is already a 1000% better than what I had.

Costwise, it's not so bad. The lights are $54 a piece with bulb and the connectors that you will need are 6 bucks each or so. You may want to invest in a spare bulb ($15) since you can't really get these H9's at your autozone around the corner. All in all, all 4 will be close to $250 or so, a TON cheaper that the PIAA's!

Installation is not bad at all, once I figured out how to do it (4 hrs), I did the second one in about an hours worth of work. If I would write up what I did, anybody could do it in a couple of hours. I wanted to keep the option open to revert back to the original lights (now I wonder why... but .... maybe these will be collector cars and then you's want it all original... who knows?)

Sooo.... let me know what you think! If you want more info just email or post a msg!

Sam

95Zdroptop

Looks pretty good. Can you get a picture of how it lights up the road, and it would be great if you had another camaro with regular lights for a side to side comparison. Also are those hyperwhite bulbs or can you get them in that size.

Sam95ZNoTop

I'll see if I can make a pic of the road, but I have noticed (while looking at other people's pics) that those kinds of pics don't really do it justice. As for a comparison, I don't know anybody around here with a Z, so that will be difficult. The bulbs are relatively new, so they only have one kind as of now (regular halogen), but that will probably change soon. They are very white though (for regular bulbs) pretty close to the Philips BlueVisions I had before.


Sam

Wraith

The Piaa's are WAy more than enough...so much so i have run countless times a very dark stretch of road(in the sticks), before I moved, at 100mph with only the lows on. i could easily see farther than my counterpart running their factory highs

As far as your idea with the Hella's. They will work great, as someone already beat you to the punch. Another member tried them and i belive has since been duplicated by a few others in the time since.

Your post will atleast help those who have yet to see this mentioned before.

Sam95ZNoTop

I have been hanging around here for a year or two now and have never seen these lights mentioned. As a matter fo fact, I believe they have not been sold for very long over here. There is also a 120mm version that may be older... Dunno... Anyways, just wanted to let everybody know about this option.

As far as seeing further with the PIAA's, of course! They are driving lights! I just think the Hella's are more of a proper low beam light.

Sam

superal

You make it sound like Hella makes a connecter that plugs into the f-body harness? Am I reading this right? Thats sweet if they do because that's a great price for HID. Where'd you buy them?

Sam95ZNoTop

No, the connector needs to be fitted to the wires, so you need to remove the old connector.

The lights are not HID for that price, that price is for the light with H9 bulbs (halogen). I meant to say that some people actually modified these lights to fit HID bulbs with relative ease. But you would need to buy the bulbs and ballasts separately from Hella (several hundred dollars most likely). But it would certainly give you great lighting compared to fitting HID's in the standard lights.

Sam

pu12en12g

1. I don't like the idea that you can't get the H9 bulbs at a regular Autozone etc.. even my H7 bulbs, I can pick up a regular H7 bulb if i HAD to... (even though I don't run "regular" H7's)

2. The price is too close to the cost of real HID.

3. The look would be much improved with some sort of kit molded to fit the headlights.

4. Adjustments and alignment looks difficult.

5. Hella does = good however, so good job man.

Sam95ZNoTop

1. Yes, that's a disadvantage, H9's cannot be bought at Autozone right now, but I suspect that that will change soon, as these are meant to be used more and more in new cars as the H9, H10 and H11 series lights. Got this info from the OSRAM and PHILIPS website. Besides these bulbs have a nominal life that is MUCH longer than those sealed beam pieces of crap! For the time being, I have a spare, just in case. www.rallylights.com carries them in stock too, so you shoudl be able to get them relatively quickly.

2. At $125 for a set of low beams, that's not too bad. Another option is the PIAA's which cost about $250 for a set of 2, so twice as much. It would surprise me if you could get a HID set including fixtures for less than $500. But that was not my intention in this case. I just wanted to see the road at night, I did not intend to make them look like HID's, I was just mentioning the possibility (plenty of links out there).

3. I am planning to put some kind of plastic cover around the lights at some point to kind of fill in the empty part. But I do think they fill up the gap better than the PIAA's, which are smaller. Another thing I want to mention is that those pics were taken with flash and make it look worse than it really is. They highlight the screws and stuff that you normally don't notice unless you crouch down in front of the car and shine a light in there. But I definitely see your point, the look of a round headlight was actually the only thing I wasn't really sure about. That was actually the reason I did not like the PIAA's. Now that they are in there, the rectangular high beam looks weird, I'll be replacing those soon.

4. The alignment and alignment is actually VERY easy! The light mounts with three adjustment screws in three holes that I drilled in the old bracket. Then you just turn the three screws until it sits right. Believe me or not, but that was the easiest part. Probably easier than adjsuting the stock lighting.

5. I think you were the one recommending the Hella FF75 in thread a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking around for ideas. That brought me to browse Hella's products! These light are really good quality and pretty cheap at $54 for what you get. JMHO.

Anybody else wanna know something?

Sam

White30th

Paul 94 Z M6 has already done this. AFAIK, he is the only one besides you that have done this. I like the concept, but aiming/adjusting looks difficult and the bracket behind the light looks kinda tacky. I like the light pattern though. Bet they would kick **** with real hid's, but thats like a 700 dollar complete upgrade, not worth it IMO. I didnt even know h9's existed...

95Zdroptop

I like the hellas but some people are particular so I found a cheap set of Piaas off ebay for $170.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=1875518311

Sam95ZNoTop

Yeah... the only thing I am not completely satisfied with is the fact that you can see behind it, but then again, you don't really notice it until you crouch down and really look in there. When you're just standing looking at it, it's really not that noticeable. But then again, I can see how that would be a problem. I plan on putting some kind of cover over it, maybe clear headlight covers?

About the alignment and adjustment, it really is easier than the stock stuff, you can easily get a screwdriver on there and adjust it. The three adjustment/mounting screws just have a little "plug" that snaps in a hole that you can drill in the old bracket, and that's it! The bulk of the time I spent on mounting them went to figuring out how to get it in there, it's a pretty tight fit, but I wanted to fill up as much of that void as possible.

I can't wait to try out the high beams now, if they are as much of an improvement over stock as the low beams....

The H9 is pretty much brand new. I have only been able to find some literature directly from the bulb manufacturers (OSRAM and PHILIPS) and they are trying to get OEMs to start using them for high beam applications. I suspect once that takes off, then you'll be finding them at your local autozone....

If you want to see what they look like with a D2S (HID) bulb fitted, check this out (there are some ricers that did this, just warning you )

Hella 90mm custom fits

Sam

pu12en12g

now THIS
setup

looks ****ing SHARP !

And look how nicely they are integrated on this RX7 2
3
4

My94RedZ28A4

How hot do the hellas get? I once spay painted plexiglas gloss black, and mounted a round Tachometer into a square A/C guage. It actually looked very nice, and if you flip the plexiglas backwards, it's scratch proof since the paint is on the back side.

Just a thought...

Sam95ZNoTop

Yep, if you want to spend a couple of weeks and $700 then you can make some custom carbon fiber brackets/cover plates that will look pretty good and have HID light. The RX7 people sell this as a kit for a pretty hefty price tag. There's also a kit for Miata's based on these lights.

I was thinking that after I fit the lights, I could always make some covers to hide things a bit. It will probably replace the flat horizontal part with something to fit the lights. Then you could put some clear covers over to finish the look.

Sam