abui01

iTrader: (68)

Base Headlight: (H7 bulb, 6 prong plug) VS HID Headlight: (D2R bulb, 8 prong plug)

Clearly, this is NOT a direct swap as the wiring plugs are totally different! However, you can swap over the wiring harness and merge it with your existing base harness to make this work with slight modifications

Equipment:

- a very tiny flathead screwdriver, it has to be the size of a toothpick
- a solder gun
- electrical tape
- solder
- wire cutters
- pliers
- OEM HID Ballasts, wires, and bulbs

side note: OEM HID bulbs are 4300k and has a slight yellow tint to it. This is a great time to upgrade to 5000k (the highest I'd recommend) for pure white light.

1. After you get your headlights out, take a look at the underside. It's going to have a black circular area. Take your solder gun and melt out this area. Now I have to warn you... do NOT use a drill! You will get plastic bits and shavings everywhere inside your headlight!




This hole will be used to run the OEM Ballast wires through into the headlight to plug into your H7 socket.

2. Test fit the D2R bulbs into your H7 socket... and yes they will fit (with modification) You will need to bend the metal clamp wire in order for it to wrap around the D2R bulb.



3. Remove the plug wires from the Ballast of the original HID 8 prong socket. You will need to use the mini-screwdriver to first take out the rubber surrounding inside the socket. Then you will see a orange plastic piece that aligns all the pins together... pop that out and there is a small clip holding each pin in. Lift the clips up and you can simply pull the wires right out of the plug! After you have pulled them, it will look like this:



(be sure to remove the ground wire as well so you can transfer this over to your base headlights... it's that little silver wire on the bottom right that the screwdriver is pointing toward)

Here is a closer picture of what the wires look like once they're pulled out of the socket:


4. Now we need to do the exact same thing to the Base 6 prong plug in order to retrofit the HID plugs in. Start by removing the red plug and then the black plug right below it.





5. Plug the 2 HID ballast plugs into the Base sockets that you just pulled out.

You are now going to have 2 dangling wires. The Base (RED) Power wire is no longer needed but you will have to ground that black wire otherwise your high-beams won't work. Remove all the OEM electrical tape and solder the black ground with the other existing wires... you can ground this wire anywhere, it doesn't really matter but I chose to ground it with the parking light wires so it'd look cleaner.


6. Once you soldered it in, plug the HID wire into the back of the headlight and it should fit like a glove.


7. Reinstall your headlights.

8. Test and enjoy OEM HIDs!

sektor 11

iTrader: (4)

great write up with good pictures!

mestisoZ

iTrader: (5)

so wait.. by doing this. you could actually direct swap out for some 06 bi xeons?

zownz

iTrader: (28)

Or get those blacked out headlights from ebay and do it that way?

JamMasta B-Rand

This thread is perfect. I was just wondering yesterday if there was a thread on how to do this. Well done on the DIY, and thank you!

abui01

iTrader: (68)

I believe the ballasts are different for the 06's, correct me if I'm wrong.

I highly suggest straying away from ebay headlights as they are not 100% the same as our OEM ones. The fitment is absolutely abysmal, one side is higher than the other when you close the hood, one light pattern points up one light pattern points down, along with many other issues.

ZKansasZ

iTrader: (10)

are you saying that the "fake projector" from Non-HID oem headlight is the same as the "fake projector" from an HID oem headlight?

I thought that they are different, no?

abui01

iTrader: (68)

The projector portion/lense itself I can't find a physical difference between them. However, the rears have different clips.

fastgrl

iTrader: (7)

so i have my stock hid headlight one has broken tab on top the other is broken.
fender bender but yea so i can replace my lights with the ebay ones? just making sure since i have all my wires they should be able to plug right in right after switching the wires?

abui01

iTrader: (68)

e-bay lights aren't the same as OEM. They are complete junk. The lense inside falls out after awhile, and the lights themselves don't line up to the body lines of the car. You'll have 1/4 inch gaps here and there. A friend of mine has them and he doesn't like it at all. However, you can try swapping over the wires. I don't see why it wouldn't work.

SoldzMyZ

iTrader: (11)

I'm somewhat confuse. Does that mean the rear area where you melt the h.i.d wires through is exposed to the elements? Any issues regarding what the aftereffects are then?

abui01

iTrader: (68)

The only purpose of melting that area is to mount the OEM HID ballasts, thus covering it from the elements. The base headlights already have the screw points to simply screw the OEM ballast in there.

SoldzMyZ

iTrader: (11)

Oh nice. Do you have any pictures of the oem ballast mounted on the back? Just seeing how it looks. Thinking about dong this since I have after market hid. Did u have aftermarket hid and if so how was the transition to the oem? You think it's worth doing this and going oem hid? The positive thing I can see is that you will be able to purchase oem bulbs at local sellers as opposed to buying online.

abui01

iTrader: (68)

it's 100% recommended to do this swap, except get the 5000k bulbs to get a perfect white light. The OEM 350z bulbs are 4300k (slight yellow hue, mostly white.)

As far as a picture in the rear of the headlight, it's 100% self explanatory of where the ballasts goes. The OEM ballasts bolts up directly to the bottom of your headlight. I have no doubt in my mind that even a 5 year old can figure out where the location to mount them is. Very easy to find. Look at the first pic and you'll notice the 2 factory "holes" next where I'm drilling. There's actually 3 (blocked by my hand) that you can mount the ballast to.

AmnCruzie

iTrader: (3)

I was thinking of retrofitting some 06+ bi-xenon HIDs onto my 03. I was just curious if anybody knew how major the difference in the ballasts was and how feasable/difficult the retrofit would be. Thanx

Zquicksilver

iTrader: (5)

Great write up I just finished doing all sorts of crazy stuff to my lighting system, but stopped short of installing a HID kit into my base model headlights. I got a little nervous cutting into my only set in fear of moisture intrusion, plus I'm just burned out with the whole project. It turned out really nice, but now my low beam color temp does not match the rest of my lights, grrrrrr.
So now I'm searching for a quick solution, lol! I thought I had it when I came across a set of royal blue halogen lamps at Pepboys, claiming HID look-a-like, by Pilot Automotive. Warning: they are no brighter or "cooler" than Sylvania Ultra's (4100k).
So FAIL... imho.

If anyone is interested in a clean looking set of OEM ballasts, I came across these today while searching around...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/03-04...item2ea9ffe6cd


Zquicksilver

Zquicksilver

iTrader: (5)

OP, or someone else!?

"2. Test fit the D2R bulbs into your H7 socket... and yes they will fit (with modification) You will need to bend the metal clamp wire in order for it to wrap around the D2R bulb."

What other modifications are necessary besides bending the lamp's wire clip? I've had a few people tell me it's not possible to mount a D2R lamp in a H7 socket.

I don't want to order a HID conversion kit with H7 styled xenon lamps. The kits and the lamps that come with them seem to be missing the ceramic band that is found on D2R lamps. You did a great job here, but I don't want to go with OEM parts.

My goal is to find and install a 55w conversion kit with 8k D2R lamps. Similar to what you did here...


Zquicksilver

abui01

iTrader: (68)

No other modifications are necessary. The D2R bulb's base socket is LARGER than your stock H7 bulb, therefore you simply need to bend one side of the clip to accomodate the larger diameter. Think of it like a clothing hanger, if you want to fit your head through it you simply need to tug on one end to make the metal hoop bigger - same concept applies here. People who never tried this will tell you that its not possible - they're simply uninformed and/or haven't done enough research on the topic.

Keep in mind any bulb temp rating higher than 5k loses visibility. It does look brighter, and cooler - though its not something I would personally recommend. At 8k the lights may look blue'ish.

4,300k (stock 03-05 HID bulbs) emit a white light with a hint of yellow
5,000k (stock 06+ HID bulbs) emit a pure white light

What I would recommend is to purchase a 5k bulb and use the OEM ballast. This is what we did here in this write-up.

ppat1989

iTrader: (5)

I did this last night actually before finding this lol. I had one light that was messed up and I accidentally bought the halogen headlamp assembly so I modified it. My bulb still seems like it's moving cuz the light on the road is bouncing up and down when I'm driving and it's already pissing me off. I just don't wanna spend $500-$700 dollars on a damn headlight. I'm just gonna go buy a used one in good condition for like $200. I found some nice after market headlights but they all say they won't work with the factory hid wiring unless you buy an aftermarket hid upgrade kit and I dint really know enough about those kits to invest another $400-$500 dollars into this.

ZKansasZ

iTrader: (10)

I got the ebay black out headlight on my touring z.
I took the whole oem d2r hid out and put into the ebay housing.
It took me a whole morning but everything is working so far

We'll see how it works out for the next couple months then