R32 Black Housing Headlight + Fog Light How To:

[tastyratz]

ok I'm from the usa and I drive a us 240sx that I am in the middle of putting an r32 gts nose on. I had all my parts arrive but I wanted to do as much different custom things as possible:

Materials:

small skinny flathead screwdriver

medium sized flathead

small head philips screwdriver.

cup to hold all the screws

oven

oven mitts

aluminum foil

Krylon bbq and stove black satin paint (or other HIGH HEAT ONLY paint)

balls of steel

First: prep the lights. There should be a few metal clips holding the front on. Pry those off with a screw driver FROM THE SIDE WHERE THE PLASTIC IS. I managed to chip my glass on one prying from the center. Also remove the bulbs and any extra rubber pieces, vent hoses, etc that may be damaged.

Turn your oven to about 400 degrees and let it preheat. Depending on the oven and how close the middle tray will be to the heat source (use your discretion) You may want to shut the oven off before inserting the lights. I did the fog lights and the headlights in my case. Put a few sheets of aluminum foil down over a tray as centered as possible.

(note if your doing fog lights the glue is different and takes about 10-11 min to soften, nothing special after that really)

Place the lights 1 at a time in the center of the oven and shut the door. The glue in the headlights requires about 6 minutes to become free, maybe 7.

Pry them apart slowly from the corners with a screw driver. It will be a good amount of pressure to seperate but it wont be something to strongarm. You have only a few min before it cools off and you have to put it back in the oven.

After seperation you will see the chrome bezel is held on by only 2 screws and 2 ball joints. Un screw the 2 screws and pop it out of the ball joints. Make sure to tape off the inside of the drl reflector because you need that to remain chrome, dont touch the reflectors beyond the bezel... those will be needed obviously for light but the bezel is just that, a bezel. This shouldnt affect light output as far as I can gather.

Now you have it apart and masked the way you want, hit the pieces with a piece of scotch bright to scuff the surface real quick, then make sure to wipe it completely clean of dust with a towel and solvent. Afterwards you paint it nice and even hitting it from all different angles and inspecting it as you go, its real easy to miss or light spray a spot on these.

I used the krylon bbq paint here and it dried in a fairly cold environment in under 10 min.

Re-assembly is very simple and work backwards. Make sure the lights appear sealed and if they dont then try going over them with a bead of silicone afterwards so no water gets in.

heres a few pics:

After

I dont have any pics of it fully re-assembled because its not yet, this is the tip of my project. I plan on taking that small drl reflector in the picture and turning it into my front blinker. I picked up on ebay last night an amber power tower 3156 superflux 20 led bulb that I am going to stuff into there and modify the housing to make it fit having a hella bright blinker. also picked up a 5 led wedge bulb to go in the corners as my side blinker. On top of that I am going to either swap the shields with a DOT spec shield in the projector or modify these to be LHD not RHD. While this is apart you will notice the shield placement can be adjusted. If you slide them closer to the bulb you may get an HID blue cutoff line effect without having HID.

Any questions? feel free to post them

[Ronin 09]

seems to look alot like what we're doing here:

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/in...showtopic=93963

[tastyratz]

damn man I didnt even see your thread, I wouldnt have done that whole writeup if I did, does looks like were aiming for very similar things.

I went premade led for my drl spot (which will be what I will use for my blinkers in front) Id love to see what your row of leds will look like when installed, I worry that may not be bright enough or bright enough in a large enough area when the headlights are on and you may need to go back and put more.

I guess atleast this is another viewpoint on it and shows what it would look like with gold or black :-P

I didnt use a different projector, just used stock. it looks to me like nissan really parts binned these using the same projector on everything. This projector looks extremely similar to the silvia projector, as well as the kouki s14 projector.... So much so in fact I found a local who is selling me his kouki left hand drive cutoff shields to install on my lights and not blind oncoming traffic here. I plan on modifying it a bit though and moving it closer to the bulb to give some nice thick color. Heres a link to the guys thread showing what you can get from a reg nissan halogen projector just by moving the shields

http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/viewtopic....b62d24ce1388548

I have some sylvania 100 watt h3s I will be using instead of HID's in this setup

Both looking for something different, and taking different paths to get there but in the end we do have alot of similarities. I guess people can use both our writeups to conclude what they want to do with their own cars.

[Ronin 09]

yep you're right... dont think the LEDs will be bright enough as park lights so I've just ordered some white superflux LEDs

keep us posted to how you go

[tastyratz]

I wish I could edit the name of this thread because I have some interesting Concepts and ideas on modifying the lights to do some more things. Im going to do an experiment on the projectors that will hopefully yield some hid level colorful cutoff cheap and easy.

[Medium Dave]

Aaaaaagh! I melted my indicator, nooooooo- ah its not that bad. I did the seccond one in the oven for 7 minutes at 160 degrees c (not 180 - 10 min) and pulled them apart by hand to remove the orange cover, damn they look good. Now has anyone finished thier headlights? pics please Great thread guys

[tastyratz]

actually im almost done with my lights. probabbly get them finished up this weekend if its gonna snow like they say it will.... they came out flawless and I love it. Ive got a bunch of pics from along the way, I just dont have any up

The plastic WILL get soft and bend a little cooking these so you might have to push on other spots for a second but it shouldnt do any real damage really

[R32FOURDOOR]

hey can i do this to my lights cos mine are the other type. Urs have the halogen round light on the side and mine have two square lights only. Does anybody knw about this?

[tastyratz]

You can do it to any lights really, go for it. I have had a damper on the project lately because i followed some advice from people I will clear up now.

my given advice: after paint and glue and such put it in the oven @ 300deg or so for 30 min to get the stuff that will evaporate out and not fog the lights up.

fact: 12 minutes in the stove @ 310 degrees causes all the chrome to crack and flake off. Since this is what half the paint bonds to, that means a horrible deep cracked looking surface and a prettymuch RUINED piece. I am trying filler primer then sanding it to see if it doesnt look too bad (hopefully)

Other whise I doubt I would be able to get my hands on that one chrome piece in the usa for a passenger r32 light.... and I doubt I wanna pay 43094583095834904308945$ for one shipped overseas. Wish me luck repairing!

[tastyratz]

took me damn long enough to get these puppies back together

note that I took some bad advice you should all avoid from some thread I think I read on here.

After putting them together I tried baking the bezels alone at 350deg F to let the silicone steam out and not fill the headlights with condensation. well after about 10 minutes of that on one of them all the chrome plating began to crack and flake. Not a big deal since im painting it black right? WRONG... I had some serious earthquake cracks all around the surface that were extremely visible through the paint, and caused painted sections to come off since the chrome came off. It took many hours of sanding, filler primer, and more sanding to get them to look right

blinker leds have been installed and are DAMN bright on this car. Looks GREAT

if anyone cares ive also created custom shields to make it lhd instead of rhd (again a usa thing) and I converted them from h3c to h3... all in all its been great and they look 100x better. the shields from a kouki s14 actually did NOT work on this projector so I had to scrap them.

Edited July 4, 2006 by tastyratz

[4DoorWhore]

can i see a whole front end pic of these? did you do the corner lights also..?