9th Gen OEM UAE Projector Retrofit Project.

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Just to bring people who aren't too familiar with the 9th gen civic up to speed, every other market with the same body style Civic got projector style headlights. Some of them got HIDs. Sourcing the headlights isn't easy, sourcing the HID units is almost impossible. Sourcing the exact projector to convert these is useless because better ones are easier to find, and probably cheaper.



Here's a picture of the underside, you'll notice there's a location to mount factory ballasts. I think the car had an HID option, kind of like 350Zs had when they came out. The headlight exterior looked similar, the housings probably had spots for ballasts to keep down production costs, and the ones without HIDs just have a different projector to fit the halogen bulbs and nothing in the spot for the ballast



So I bought some of the OEM projectors and Im gonna see what it takes to get some razor sharp, sparkly, colorful cut off. I started this weekend by separating the plastic lens from the housing. I noticed the glass lens on the projector was lightly frosted, or dimpled, and isn't optically clear.



The projector itself is screwed in there pretty good, so I paid a visit to The Retrofit Source this morning with the separated headlights in hand to get an expert opinion on how to separate the projector from the housing.

I left with a box of goodies to get the ball rolling.

- 4G TL Projectors
- Morimoto Ballasts and relay harness
- Morimoto 4300k bulbs
- TSX-R clear lenses (They just released Mercedes Black series lenses with some pretty nice results, so I may get those instead, if they fit)
- Lens tuning spacers



My goal is to get razor sharp cut off at a minimal price, so I'm gonna start with simply replacing the frosted stock glass lens with the clear TSX-R lens. The guys at TRS suggested I add the 4G TL projectors, so that will be the next step, should the lens swap not produce. At the end of this, this should be as close to a factory fresh plug n' play swap as possible.

So for all you Nancy's out there complaining about my 4300k HIDs in my reflector housings like half the other factory cars on the road, this is as thorough a projector retrofit as it gets (Except for you non-HID 350Z owners that can just buy the matching HID setup in the US. Y'all can kiss my ass).

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Got the projector out

Here's a picture of the OEM projector beside the 4G TL projector. They're almost identical, but the reflector bowls are a tad different.



These shrouds are also a tad different. They're not interchangeable. The TL one is specific for HID.



Here's a couple pics of the cutoff. They're crappy pics, all I have is my iPhone.

TL Projectors



OEM Projectors



It's hard to see, but theres hot spots all over the place in the OEM ones. Both have a 4300k HID in it. Both have their respective standard glass lenses. Looking at the bowl, I don't think a simple lens swap will get good results. The glass lens in both the TL and the OEM projectors also look identical.

I'll write up the way I took them out with some more pics tomorrow.

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Mmf. Gettin there...