Alright so I've had my RL for 3 years now. I've only really done small mods but I have a lot planned for it coming up. It should hopefully be done by spring but I'd like to share some of the stuff and give ideas to others.

Day 1 (112k):


Current (142k):


The photos don't really do it justice but the car had scratches and was missing paint all over the bumpers. The grill had bubbling chrome and the interior was pretty dirty. I've been slowly restoring it and now that winters here I have the chance to do a bunch of small fixes.

Mods:
Aux port
Attachment 108491
HID foglights
vinyl wrapped front chrome
Led interior lights
Clear cornered headlights
Resonator Delete
Carbon fiber wrap:

07 TL rims

Mods in progress:
Custom blue needles / blue blinker indicators:

Window switch leds
Projector retrofit

Planned Mods:
Debadged Grill
LED cluster
Proper Aux port
Independent Fogs
Switchback leds
Plastidip rims in a dark gray
New Exhaust (mine is stock with a hole in it)
04 tail lights (if I can get them cheap enough.)

 

It'll look pretty slick when all done, I'm sure. Keep us posted. I'd like to see how the needles turn out. Are you sure it's safe to hold it up to a 9V battery like that? There may be resistors that drop the voltage down in our instrument clusters, only way to check would be to put a volt meter on the contacts.

Did you ever figure out your turn signal indicators with that green part that got trashed? What do you plan to do?

 

It's safe because thats just a generic T5 led. I need to order some 3mm leds before I can properly light them up. I've removed the orange behind them by wet sanding and plan on repainting the back with blue model paint. Do you think I should use a blue led or a white led to light them up?

Also I found out blue shines through green perfectly so there is no point in making clear ones for blue.

 

If you have the white LEDs behind the cluster, you should do blue needles, it would make for a nice contrast.

This one will definitely need a DIY thread.

 

I removed my front door panels today to measure the leds needed. For some reason my trunk button stopped working. Not to sure why but I tried testing the switch by connecting the pins with a wire. I hope I didn't break a wire somewhere.

EDIT: Nevermind I think it may be due to I had everything but the trunk switch unhooked and it needs other components. I'll post a diagram of all the leds I measure tonight!

 

Like the cf man, keep it up.

 

Thanks hatch! I've decided I'm gonna replace the cloth on the speaker grills since the door panels are off. I just gotta figure out what to use to glue the cloth in place.




And I had some left over CF from the squares I cut out for the radio and nav:



All leds are ordered. I've picked blue for the window switches, and white for the ac unit, mirror control, seat memory control, and window lock. I'll post pictures when they are in. Should be fun figuring out the polarities...

 

What about the radio and navigation?

 

I'm not sure what to do with them yet, the projectors just came in. Here's a photo:



The only thing that worries me is that there could be a gap between the shroud and headlight reflector.

 

There will be a small gap, but trust me, no one will even notice.

Did you buy a relay kit?

 

Relay kit? Do you mean for the hid? 99+ has them stock, the projectors I have are for D2S which I think is the same plug as D2R so I don't need new ballast.

Also I managed to begin to install the projector I had to sand the bulb hole larger to fit but in the end it worked out.

Projector in:

Test fit of shroud:

Future look: (shroud isn't in proper spot yet)

 

Right, I forgot about the 99+ upgrade.

Are those 3'' projectors?

Put some 2.5 in your high beam spot!!!

 

Their only 2.5". On the bright side literally everything OEM fits behind the projector. I didn't have to do any drilling, and the OEM bulb fits right in too! I'm still switching to D2S but it should plug right in.

I did the measurements for the High beam spot and they don't have enough space length wise. Using the smallest size projector from TRS it would only have about 3/4" of clearance from the lens. They would have to be pushed further in the headlight some how.

 

For my shrouds I took the top and bottom to a belt sander on my work bench that allowed me to shape it such that it would fit.

 

I used the belt sander idea for the top and ended up using a saw to cut the bottom. The shroud took very little cutting to fit in overall. Is there a way I can stop the light from leaking through?






Comparison:


Overall I'm pretty happy with it. The gap bugs me a bit but if I can stop the light from bleeding out it will be less noticable. I won't be able to finalize the shroud until my centric rings come in which could be after X-mas, so this is as far as I can go for now.

Is there any tricks to aligning them?

 

Well for alignment, just use your factory alignment gears, but there are also some other things you can do, too.

Check out these threads about someone with a 99+ that did a conversion.

http://forums.acuralegend.org/2002-acura-rl-w-t883.html

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...&highlight=HID

Your shroud may not be trimmed as much as it should be, too. It should click onto the projector, if it doesn't trim them up some more.

 

Those need to be soldered in.


The nav ones are straight forward as the bulbs sit right under the buttons. The radio is a little more difficult since it uses a clear plastic diffuser to carry the light to all the buttons. As we all know leds are ver directional as far as light so some modifying will need to be done.


I'm slacking on this lol. I actually opened all these things up and have mostly everything figured out with parts all over the place, but never finished being there was a lot more I wanted to do as well.




Either way good luck with it Eddie. Keep posting pics to motivate others (ehem lol)

 

Silver 3.5's / your tut were my inspiration to do this. The shrouds aren't properly mounted yet because I need centric rings to click them into place. They are however in their final position. I'm seeing on Silver's are leaking a bit of light but not as much. I think my best choice would be to look into making shroud extensions.

I also kinda like the looks of a potential quad retrofit:

The lenses are the same size but the smaller shroud makes them look bigger. For clearance/look issues a 2" lens would work best.

 

which way is to adjust the headlight to aim up, is it clockwise. My marking on the headlight light is gone.

 

Just plug em into your car and turn them one way to see which is up/down left/right. That's what I did. An extended screwdriver will help with this.

 

A quad retrofit would look pretty cool! It would be BMW-esqe look, without totally copying their style. Maybe wire one set up to be DRLs!

I'm glad my write up provided someone with inspiration! Silver 3.5 did it really right though, it looks like he got all his equipment from The Retrofit Source. I mean, from the pictures, there is massive light output. It makes mine look like they emit darkness!

 

The projectors haven't gotten much further yet but I'm working on replacing my speaker grills in the car.

I did the first one tonight and its a big improvement.

 

Hey Earl do you have a photo of your light beam output against a wall? I'm getting ready to align mine and would like to see a photo for reference of the same car.

I did a test fit of how everything will look. I'm liking how its coming out but I may re install my side blinker defusers as I don't like the look as much due to the projector.





^Current output before alignment.

Is anyone running switch back leds in their blinkers?

 

Haha, you already asked me that! But here you go. By the way, for anyone else who is considering this for their 96-98, I have a write up on this with WAY more pictures then what I just posted here. (I had to advertise my post, of course! )

 

With LHD cars, the left projector is supposed to shine down a little bit of the right one because of incoming traffic, that way it doesn't blind them. But I almost word for word said, "that looks stupid, I'm making them the same heght." Haha.

Eddie, you got the same projectors as me, right? I wonder what makes yours look more crisp then mine. I wonder if I got damaged bulbs, or if I damaged then when I kinda dropped them from not very high. I'll see once these suckers burn out and I have to replace them.

Oh, and PS. You should put your turn signal lens back in! Just my It looks incomplete without it.

 

Haha sorry Earl I totally forgot its been a bit. I've given up on making shroud extensions. I remember you said the gap was normal. Is 3/4 of an inch normal for edges? It's not really that noticable but I really want the lights to be perfect.

EDIT:

I do agree that the headlights look incomplete without the turn signal lens. I'm gonna mod a set to be clear cornered soon. Turns out I bought different projectors. Mine are made for D2S bulbs and the neck of them are much larger. I think it may be because they are different bulbs or something. I'm not really sure haha.

 

Well, I don't know what is "normal" for all the 99+, but I'm confused a bit because mine has a gap between the shroud and the stock headlight reflectors, but I don't get any wash out lighting. I wonder if perhaps the Apollo shrouds you got are perhaps creating this issue for you. Just for giggles, put the other shrouds on and see what the results are.

By the way, I would I have sworn, in fact I'm pretty sure, that the projectors I got are for D2S bulbs. I'll check my write up right after this. Besides, you got the same ones as I did, no? Don't be afraid of color in the lights! Even the very newer cars have it and it looks good!

 

There isn't too much light leaking out. I think a far amount is being reflected in from the chrome edges in front of the headlight. I'll try another shroud but their incredibly tiny compared to the apollos.

What size bulb are you using? That could be causing your problem if you have the wrong bulb in the projector. I thought I bought the same projectors as you, they came with the same shroud but I guess I didn't seeing how I had to cut my headlights to fit them.

I had a photo showing the difference:


An H1 projector fits in the original hole when a D2s took a lot of sanding.

 

I think our reflectors are made differently, because like I said, no sanding for me.

Hey, I was scrolling up through the pictures and it looks like you have no wash out. The last pictures of your projector, what did you do differently? Because I don't see any coming out around the edges at all.

 

I just realized it's because my first photos the shroud was taped in place and not all the way on. I hadn't cut it yet. With the proper cut and it slid into place it reduced all the light bleed to almost nothing.

 

Congrats! You going all the way back together with it now?

 

The result looks very good. Anyway, you guys do realize that you need to align the headlight probably right so you don't blind other drivers. You need to park away from the wall at least 25 feet and measure the height of the headlight then your beam should be 2" below your headlight height.

 

Yup, we had an ice storm today and my driveway is literally a sheet of ice so I can't do an alignment yet.

I found this:



from: http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/show...HID-headlights

So as soon as I can get my car out I'll align them and make the mount permanent.

 

As soon as you get your car out of the ice? I'm so jealous of your weather, except for the one and only fact that moist weather is hard on cars.

 

Lol the cold isn't that bad but I really hate how easy it is for rust to start. My car is safe and sound and our driveway is slightly sloped so if I back out I think I'll end up sliding all the way down and wont be able to come back up. Hopefully the ice doesn't last too long.

 

Haha, so how do you around town if you need to?

 

We have a Subaru impreza that we bought off my Grandma cheap. The 4 wheel drive system is awesome for the snow / ice. Funny thing is this is the same Grandma I bought the RL off of and the impreza has all the same damage on the same spots as my car did.

 

coming along real nice!! retro fit is looks sick.

 

Haven't done many noteworthy things lately. Leds are in the window switches but not in the AC unit yet. Led in the memory seat control was horrible.



Passenger window switch lights are very dim but lit up. Overall not a bad mod.

 

what's the deal with the window lock switch?