My Poor Man's Retrofit

As many of my other projects and current ones, I like to share what I am doing as well as make a thread to serve as documentation.

This project I am calling "The Poor Man's Retro"

To sum it up, pretty much taking a projector from another vehicles headlight and fitting it into the Neon SRT-4 headlight. Sounds easy right? Wrong!

Alright so the reason for it being the poor man's retro is because it is using a projector BUT its not the common HID projector that is used by many retrofitters, instead its just a halogen projector. Which cuts the cost big time on this project. The projectors are out of a Saturn L300 and were giving to me by a friend. He said, "Here you can probably do something with these". So since my plans were to do some sort of retrofit this year I'm going to work with what I got. Hopefully even though they are halogen they will provide better lighting then stock. Plans are to use "super white" xenon bulbs.

In this picture you see the following... the projectors (one I took apart), a black housing headlight still not taken apart, another headlight I took apart, a custom mounting bracket for the projector I made and still have the drilled holes for the mounting (which I already marked).


Here is a picture in which I just sat everything in the housing so you can get an idea of what it would look like. The thing is though that I will be using the stock reflector (which is not in the picture and still need to hack up) and I am actually using Porsche Cayenne (also known as Apollo) replica projector shrouds.


Currently I am waiting for the shrouds to get here. Also waiting for my 9007 pigtails and H11 pigtails to arrive so I can make my custom harness for this to be plug-n-play.

As I continue I will post and add more pics to this thread.

 

Will do! :salut:

Scariest part was taking the lens off. PITA part was trying to removing the reflector bowl. Its no easy task, a lot of patience is needed.

Hopefully when this project is done, I am happy with them and all the work/effort was worth it.

As soon as I get some drill bits, I will drill the holes on the bracket I made. Get the bolts/nuts I need and mount the projector. This won't be till tomorrow more then likely.

Then its a waiting game for the shrouds to come in so I can cut more of the reflector bowl and start getting everything in place. The key here is to keep the stock adjustment (adjustability). I made the bracket so I didn't mount the projector to the reflector bowl as it can crack. Everything I am doing is based off other threads I read on other forums.

Here's a picture of a Porsche Cayenne headlight, the shroud around the projector is what the shrouds (replicas) I am waiting on look like.

 

Well my dremel decided to take a crap on me today. So I went to Lowe's to pick up machine screws and drill bits, while I was there I also picked up another dremel.

Today, I drilled the holes, mounted the projector unto the bracket and bracket unto the housing. I tested the stock adjustment on it and it works great! Here are some pics:





Unfortunately the way the mounting bracket is on these projectors I won't be able to use the stock reflector bowl. So that leaves me with two options... the replica shrouds I'm waiting on cover the mounting bracket and fits well OR the plastic trash can method which is cutting and molding a cover to cover the rest of the projector and mounting bracket. I'm hoping I can use the shrouds I ordered but we will see when they get here.

 

Well only progress I have is the driver side headlight is now taken apart. I was going to cut the bracket, drill the holes and mount the other projector but the current weather here in FL where I'm at is 43 degrees :cold:. A bit cold to be outside dremeling away and then drilling (since both takes time). But this is the next step I have to do and hopefully will sometime this week if it happens to warm up!

 

Thanks everyone!

Here's an update. I got the plug pigtails I needed today in the mail. More then likely I will be putting them together tomorrow. When I have them together I'll post a pic.

 

Alright some great updates with some pics YAY!

Well I got the PNP harness's done:


The shrouds got here in the mail today:


A shroud placed on the projector. Looks like it will work... just need to figure out how to cover up the projector mounting bracket (since I couldn't use the stock reflector bowl.


Ordered placed yesterday for the bulbs (last thing I'm waiting on). Then like I mentioned above its just trying to figure out how I will cover the projector mounting bracket (thought of just painting it black but eh I don't know yet).

 

Thanks Ryan!

Also thanks for the idea! Since my job deals with aviation plastics, I'm going to grab some scrap material and try to work with it. I'll keep you posted!

 

Took your advice Ryan and I have to say its was an excellent idea! I got the plastic material from my job. Here's a picture of the plastic cut-out and placed behind the shroud. I need to get some sort of glue/adhesive to secure it to the shroud. But its hides the projector bracket quite well .

 

The time I have between this cold weather is what is pushing me to move at a greater speed (or is it because I'm getting closer to finishing these lol). I think its more because its supposed to rain tomorrow and Saturday we have an artic freeze headed this way with the highs of only 40 degrees... YIKES!!! Anyways I did quite a lot today after work.

Got the mounting bracket cut for the driver side headlight, mounted the projector.


Mounted in the headlight housing.


Cut the plastic layer piece for the driver side headlight to sit behind the shroud. Here are both headlights with everything in place (just still need to glue the plastic layer piece to the shrouds).


Here I cut (modded by the turn signal) the black surround to fit with the shroud and just test fitting.


Here I'm test fitting the modded black surround with the lens. Everything looks good... may need to trim some more on the black surround.