This weekend was my oncall weekend and decided to tear into a spare pair of headlights while I was stuck at home.

Started by heating the oven to 260 for 15 mins. Glue was still stubborn so another 5 mins in the oven.





Got them apart and was scraping old glue for about 2 hours! Took the time to paint the inside shroud metallic grey similar to the SE headlights.





I should have stopped here. Note the glue scrapings all over the floor. Ugh.





Got this bright idea while grabbing a oil and a filter to change the oil in my beater car. It sounded like a good idea at the time. All downhill from here.





Chrome on the left shadow chrome on the right. It doesn't look bad in pics but it has a weird greenish tinge. Was a little worried since I still wanted the reflector to have some reflection... At least I hoped it would.





After letting them dry a bit I've put them together to see what the finish product and it ended up a little too dark for me. I really boogered the lenses on the edges. Probably going to order the mini h1 projectors and mess around with them. For anyone on the fence if you have the patience go for it. It was time consuming and I have much respect for the shops that build custom headlights. I had several hours wrapped up into these and I can see why they charge what they do.

Another 6 hours to go on-call. woo hoo! Enjoy!

 

I might be interested in that shadow chrome spray to use on my stock fogs and swap those back out with the morimotos since they have MUCH better light output.

 

Looks good, but unless you plan to put projectors in there you just killed your entire headlight purpose... the chrome is in there for a reason, to reflect the light from your bulbs. Without projectors, your lights won't do much now...

 

Its $20 at advance auto. Order online and use one of the coupon codes for 20% if you are in the Jacksonville area you can have the rest of the can.

Yep... That was my fear. I hoped it would keep some of the reflection but it did not. I'll have to throw a few bucks for some mini H1 projectors to mock up. It really is very time consuming... Then again I could have spent those hours here on the forums instead!

 

I'd say LED headlights might help you get more light (which they will over halogen bulbs) but even stil with LED lights the light output is dimished... projects would be the way to go.

Whenever you get ready for LEDs or projectors, let me know. Naturally you know I have all the LED components but we can also order you the projectors (we're a Morimoto Reseller, we just don't list all the components on our site since we're mainly focused on LED)

Either way they came out good so far.

 

Looks good I need to do something about my shiny chrome lights.

 

With the time it took to rip thsee headlights open. I would just buy the SE headlights for $350 or just buy the Anzos if you like that style.

 

Well at least you tried on a spare set and gave some people a heads up on what they may possibly run into.

We've all done stuff where the cost of the project was more than the benefit. I've done too many to even recall.

 

Thanks. It did help pass the time between calls at home. I should've baked cookies since I had the oven on for several hours to heat/reheat the headlights.

 

Wish I had the time to rip apart my spare set (i actually have 1 left and 2 right headlights and then one side of a 2014 headlight set) and test some things out... just no time.