'91 HID Projector Conversion
 

I've been meaning to get to this - I've gotta' learn how to imbed pix in the text here.

First, before I get to the housing installation into the car, here's how to convert an incandescent projector housing to HID low beams. For the moment, I'm just going with low beams - since HIDs take 15-20 seconds to get to full brightness, and I live in a fairly populated area.

Anyway - these are some aftermarket projector housings. I take the sealing cap off to uncover the low beam lamp, and remove it.

The HID lamp fits in rotated a bit compared to the incandescent lamp, and I at first I didn't think the snap wire would fit around it, but it does. Then measure the grommet, and cut a 1" hole in the cover cap. Fit the grommet into the hole, and install.

The original lamp is powered by a blue and black pair (visible coming out of the grommet at the lower right in the first pic above) - I cut and removed the blue wire, but one end of the black was attached somewhere inside - I stuck the cut end back in the hole left by the removal of the blue wire to seal up the opening in the grommet -

Forrest

You have to remove the bumper. First, the interior bumper nuts - first two pix. Then, third pic, two screws on either side where the bumper cover wraps into the front wheel arch.

Fourth pic, remove the turn signals with the secret hidden screw, one screw on each light housing. Looking through the opening revealed in the fifth pic, you can see the two bumper bolts on each side.

Also (no pictures), you have to remove the (14) screws that hold on the air dam under the bumper, and drop it down. Actually, you could probably do it removing only the two screws from each end - they (only) engage the body structure. Also, there are two push-pins in the center underneath; holding the bumper cover up to the bellypan plastic - mine were already broken off.

Forrest

The entire bumper pulls forward and out. The second pic shows the three lower headlight-bracket mounting screws (in addition to the two normally visible up top). The grill also needs to come out - five screws in the third pic.

The fourth pic shows the new projector housing installed with the five original screws.

The fifth pic shows the high beams switched on, with the new projector on the right, the stock housing on the left. The projector has not yet been converted to HID low-beams in this pic.

Forrest

The new projector housings protrude forward more than the stock housings, and are also wider toward the center and crowd the sides of the grill. I had to mark and grind off a bit from either side of the grill to clear the headlight housings.

In the third pic, you can see that the new HID wiring grommet actually extends a bit into the stock air intake tube on the passenger side, but it doesn't hit anything.

In the fourth pic, you can see that the HID wiring clears the windshield washer fluid bottle on the driver's side.

Forrest

Now to mount the HID ballasts. In the first pic, you can see how I used a wiring clamp peg to mount the outside ballast mount; I'll add a screw for the inboard mount. The second pic shows both ballasts mounted, and the relay wiring harness connecting them and entering the engine compartment under the passenger high beam.

The third pic shows the wiring harness mounting. I mounted the relay under a radiator shroud screw, the fuse is at the lower left corner of the battery, the ground wire connects to the stock battery chassis ground screw, and the power wire ring terminal mounts to the main battery connection in the fuse box.

Fourth pic is low beams, last is high beams. So many colors! That center parking light is a #5008 lamp; I'm trying to match the 6000°K headlamp color with a replacement - looks like a #G18-Ba15s is the same size.

Forrest

So how does it work? This morning was the first I'd driven in the dark - and I could immediately see that the aiming was very low - probably shipped that way as a safety precaution. The left lane cutoff was dramatically sharp - like a black line on the road.

Plenty of brightness and clarity, a few light striations (bright or dark lines in the distribution), but acceptable.

I'll fool with the aiming this week - it's easy, just some Philips screws on the engine compartment side of the housings - see pic.

Forrest

I'm really digging the future car look here! Props on this too, it looks great.

OK - OP here; five years later - that's how long the HIDs lasted.

Those HID headlights would randomly turn off, usually the driver's side, and would come back on if I cycled the switch on off a couple times. The Accord's such a hassle to get to the headlights (taking the front bumper off; I also had the ballasts under there), that I just took all the HID stuff out and put back the normal 55W incandescents that came in the low beams when I bought the projector headlights.