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Finished My Bixenon Projector Retrofit

Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
I recently finished my longer-than-anticipated HID projector retrofit project on my mk7 GSW and I’m thrilled with the results. I figured I’d share some of the specifics, potentially leaving some good info for the next guy.

I’ve always been enamored with the Uu uU DRL setup of the mk7 R headlights, and I like them marginally more than the dual-projector setup in the mk7.5 units. So I opted to find a set of replicas that would hopefully open up easily (e.g. sealed with butyl and NOT permaseal like the OEM headlights). I decided to take a chance on a no-name brand on Amazon and, much to my surprise, they sent me a set of Spyder headlights! Specifically, I received part number PRO-YD-VG15-BLK-DRL-BK, Spyder sku#5080578.

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These are halogen units with H1 high beams, incandescent turn signals, and LED drl's in which both 'U's light up (like the OEM Golf R setup). Pretty high quality from what I can tell. Seems reasonably on par with OEM, aside from a few minor annoyances (e.g. dangling external wires in lieu of having them fully inside the housing). That I can definitely live with.

I went into this project having done retrofits before and having a decent understanding of all of the drawbacks of swapping incorrect bulbs into projectors designed for a different light source. So I wanted something a bit more higher-performing (and responsible to other drivers) than a set of drop-in LED or HID bulbs incorrectly matched with these halogen projectors. Having retrofitted FX35 projectors in the past to the tune of fantastic results, I wanted to go with another good bixenon HID setup. I thought about taking the cutting edge route and getting the Morimoto Bi-LED projectors, but I opted to stick with HIDs for a few reasons. I have always been a bit sensitive to color temperature, and LED headlights are just a bit too much on the cool side of the spectrum for me. The 4200k temperature of the high-quality Philips 85122C1 bulbs is more desirable to me than the 6300k LEDs fitting the Morimoto M LED 2.0. I also like that HID technology has mostly peaked at the time of this writing, being the more mature technology. The distance associated with the strong hotspot of well-designed HID projectors is a definite plus. It also helps that this was a more inexpensive route to take. I went with Morimoto Micro D2S projectors.

Also wanted to give a shout out to @Gray_Panther . His retrofit from many years ago inspired my own here, as he used mostly identical headlights (but opted to go with Morimoto Mini H1 projectors instead). Though I took a slightly different path with regards to projectors, mounting strategy, and ballasts, he was super helpful sharing what he learned from opening up his headlights (thanks for spotting that hidden shroud screw at the bottom!).

On to the project: This was far more time-consuming than I originally planned. First and foremost, I was wrong when I assumed that an aftermarket set like the Spyders would be sealed with rubber butyl. My first unpleasant surprise was encountering permaseal (e.g. "cold glue").

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It is for this reason that I do not recommend that anyone follow in my footsteps, as this adds significant time to the project. On more than one occasion I had wished I just paid the extra money for the Osrams and got used to the high color temp of LEDs, but I was in it for the long haul the second I put one of the Spyders in the oven. Mercifully, as far as types of permaseal go, this is a type of glue that's marginally easier than some of the types used in OEM setups. Still, it took countless cycles at higher temperatures (275F in the oven) to get this to separate. The best tools for this were a tiny smooth flathead screwdriver, the morimoto pry tool, and the morimoto seal splitter. I had to focus on the inner corner (close to where the grill and bumper meet on the car), as this was the strongest part of the housing and it avoided my initial error of prying too deeply on a non-reinforced lip and tearing the plastic.

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Oops. One more thing to fix later down the road. Many hours later and limits of patience reached, I was able to separate the lens, making sure to disconnect the side marker wire before separating fully. Happily, none of the permaseal stuck to the inside of the channel.

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The inner shroud was trivial to remove, having removed the hidden inner screw at the bottom of the back of the housing. The two wires for the uU shroud need to be disconnected. There is also a screw that connects the housing to the lens that should be removed before starting all of this, which I re-threaded before taking this pic (it's at the bottom near the turn signal bulb):

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The frustrating part of this project is that you're only halfway done with the lens separation at this part. A full layer of permaseal still sticks to the polycarbonate lens. I took two different approaches with each lens. On one lens, I patiently used a heat gun and peeled the permaseal off slowly with a long needle nose and my smooth flathead screwdriver. This took a very, very long time. The other approach I took was to use a scraper with a metal razor blade to cut off as much as the permaseal as I could. This was marginally easier, but still time-consuming. You can see here where I was able to cut down to the polycarbonate, and how thick some parts of the permaseal layer gets:

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Go back to hell where you came from, permaseal.
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On to error-correction: I have a decent plastic welder with some welding rods and mesh, so I pretty quickly repaired the torn lip. Not the prettiest, but this is why you always start prying the bottom of the headlight, which is completely invisible when installed. I'm satisfied with the fix.

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Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
Removing the halogen projector was trivial. Three simple screws (one on top, two on the bottom). Here’s a direct comparison of the halogen projector against the Morimoto Micro D2S.

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Just for the heck of it, I wanted to see what the output looked like with a D2S bulb in the halogen projector. As expected, not good when equipped with a bulb for which it was not designed:

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While it’s difficult for a phone camera to accurately convey what the human eyes see (and I was a bit too close to the wall here), the light was poorly distributed, the hot spot was way too bright in comparison to the rest of the pattern, and way too much light leaked above the cutoff shield. In comparison, here’s the output of the morimoto projector:

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Much, much better. Light is evenly distributed, with an appropriate hot spot, and a much wider beam pattern. This is much more evident when viewed from 25 feet away. I also like how there’s an up-step all the way to the left after the down-step - this will nicely illuminate street signs and other hazards on the left side of the road without blinding oncoming traffic. The cutoff is also a bit fuzzy in this pic (in comparison to the other projector, which was perfect), and fiddling with the shield did nothing to sharpen it. A shoutout to theretrofitsource here, as they sent me a replacement without me even asking for one. Every retrofit I’ve done has been with their equipment and they are, as always, top notch in the business.

The halogen projector has a 3” lens, and the Morimoto has a 2.5" lens. I wondered whether I could have gone with a larger projector, but length wise it’s VERY tight to fit the igniter inside the housing (more on that to come), so the Micro D2S is the longest projector I could have used. The morimoto Mini H1 would work too, but not much else would fit.

As for mounting, I opted to align the morimoto projector’s upper corner hole with the threaded post where the halogen projector mounted. This has the effect of slightly off-centering the projector compared to where the halogen unit was, but visually you wouldn’t know it unless you saw them side by side. This also informed my overall mounting strategy, as I opted to pick up a retrofit mounting hardware set on aliexpress, which includes m4 screws, washers, nuts, and various-length offset washers. Since the bottom mounts would require longer screws to reach the threaded posts and I couldn’t source the same time of plastic screws used by the halogen projector, I opted to drill out the threaded holes to fit m4 screws and go with a bolt/nut combo. Here are the three posts before drilling:

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I forget what size drill bit I used, but I just stepped it up one at a time until the m4 bolts fit like a glove. I picked up various lengths of m4 bolts, as I needed ones longer than the 25mm length ones included in the aliexpress kit. I ended up using some combination of 35, 40, or 45mm, but 45mm would work all throughout. I also sourced properly-sized metal spacers - 10mm/3/8” and 5mm/3/16” I believe. I swapped out the regular nuts with m4 nylock nuts, as I don’t want these vibrating loose over time. Mounting turned out rock solid. What’s pictured here was not final, as I still had to make sure they were level before fully tightening, but this gives you an idea of how my mounting solution works:

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Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
On to the hardest part of the project that also required the most creativity: ballast mounting. Going into this, I knew I wanted to use late generation Matsush ita ballasts, not only because I already had a set on hand from another retrofit, but also because they are high quality, compact, and potted (and thus waterproof as long as the bottom half is sealed into the headlight. Not wanting to drill into the headlight housing, I wanted to mount them on the back of the headlight behind the cover. In retrospect, this was a mistake, as my mounting solution required millimeters of precision. If I had to do it again, I probably would have tried setting up the OEM ballasts in the OEM location on the bottom of the headlight housing; the Spyder headlights have the molds for this and could be cut and threaded to accept the OEM Denso ballasts. Nevertheless, I was all in on the Matsush itas, and I couldn’t figure out a good way to use the back cover of the Spyder headlight and get the igniter through a large enough grommet and still adequately seal the metal-covered igniter wire well enough to keep out moisture. So here’s what I opted to do: I fired up TinkerCAD and designed my own cover on which a Gen III through V Matsushi ta can mount. My first step was to copy the footprint of the stock cover and ensure the o-ring can fit in the channel. I printed out a few prototypes and I was in business once I settled on a design that could replace the cover itself:

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Then I studied some examples of how the matsushita ballasts mount in OEM Nissan/Subaru applications. Looks like there are ridges that prevent the o-ring from fusing to the housing.

Matsushita.png


I was able to incorporate that into my model. After quite a few prototypes, extending the limits of my 3d printer and making supports that are easy to remove, I was able to design a pair of covers that can accept the ballasts.

coverCAD.png


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I printed them in PETG for temperature resilience, and when allowing for igniter space, there is JUST enough room when the headlights are mounted in place. The driver’s side is particularly fussy, but I was able to get the right spacing and the juuust the right angle for everything to fit while still allowing access to the lower headlight mounting bolt. This solves two problems: where to mount the ballasts, and how to get the igniter through. I’m thrilled with the result, as it definitely looks OEM.

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Though as I learned the hard way, designing an automotive part that doesn’t exist is quite a lengthy process.
 

Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
I installed the headlights on the car without the lens on and leveled each projector before tightening the nylock nuts down, making sure that they’re reasonably horizontal and on the same slope as their partner, knowing that when I do the final mounting I might have to make some adjustments. After this, though, I ran into another unexpected problem when I reassembled the uU shroud on the headlight assembly. Hard to tell from this photo, but with the projectors rotated to their final position, the top of the chrome shroud hit the projector lens. This was easy to fit with a Dremel though; I just did a gentle swoop to give plenty of clearance and you’d never know it unless you were looking at the headlight from the ground.

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I also ran into a frustrating problem when mounting the headlight housing with the stock bolts. The Spyder headlights have a critical design oversight with the spacing of the captive nut and the shape of the mounting point. They use a hollow square, unlike the OEM VW headlight and other replicas (like Helix). Hard to describe in words, but you might see what I mean in this picture if you imagine the mounting bolt going too far down and bottoming out, cracking the bottom of the hollow post:

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I dremeled a bottom hole and plastic welded the crack. In practice, it was still rock solid on the top part of the hollow square, but for peace of mind I welded the bottom back together.

Happy with my projector mounting location, I laid down a fresh bead of morimoto retro rubber, took my time with the oven, and sealed it up very nicely, using a few morimoto compression clips on the corner opposite the screw that connects the lens to the housing. Ready to go:

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And with my custom 3D-printed Matsush ita covers:

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Got them mounted on the car and after giving the lenses a ceramic coating, I reinstalled the bumper:

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Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
It’s worth noting that, while I had the bumper off, I also took the opportunity to retrofit foglights. I won’t go into great detail here since there are so many threads on this, but I was able to pin them via the usual aliexpress harness to the BCM and source a hard-to-find non-auto NAR headlight switch with fog function.

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I also programmed the BCM via VCDS to have them function as corning lamps, as the replicas do not have the built in cornering lamps like the LP units do. I think that’s a fair tradeoff, because in my opinion the Morimoto projectors are far superior to the Valeo projectors in the LP headlights. I haven’t had the opportunity to take a glam shot on a dark country road, but here’s a quick one I snapped recently to get a sense of the sharpness and crisp, even output:

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You’ll note that I still have some alignment to do. Even though I had the cutoffs aligned perfectly before I put the lenses back on, removing and reinstalling the headlights on the car itself likely led to this slight rotational mismatch. From the naked eye, it looks like the right projector has to rotate counterclockwise very slightly. For those who have experience with our headlights, is there enough rotational leeway to rotate the whole housing to get these cutoffs to match up again? I’d rather not have to remove the lens and adjust the projector again (though that would be MUCH easier now that they’re sealed with butyl and not that awful permaseal). I'd trade flushness against the fender for the optics of parallel shield cutoffs.

As for wiring, following the advice of predecessors, I picked up a pair of morimoto standalone canbus H7 on the understanding that they are necessary to avoid the startup flicker. Much to my disappointment, I couldn’t get the lights to stop flickering on a cold firing of the ballasts (it’s been 15-35F here during this project). I did a little research and it seems like this is related to the BCM’s cold start test of halogen bulbs. I couldn’t find any definitive fix to this, so I made the following change via VCDS in module 09-cent elect:

Left Low beam:
Leuchte6ABL LC5-Lasttyp 6 --> 3 - Xenon Abblendlicht

Right Low beam:
Leuchte7ABL RB1-Lasttyp 7 --> 3 - Xenon Abblendlicht

This adaptation informs the BCM that these are xenon lowbeams and not halogen. I didn’t change anything else commonly associated with this modification, like high beam shutter, since the high beams are still halogen as far as the BCM is concerned and I am using a splitter to tap the H1 circuit to flip the projector shield solenoid (effectively giving me quad highs that function only as halogen flashers when the low beams aren’t on). Further, my understanding is that the DRLs now being LED is handled by the built in canbus on the Spyder units, tricking a BCM that's expecting halogen DRLs to see no errors. I see no reason to do any adaptations here. Details aside, changing low beam type to Xenon as described above got rid of the cold start flicker. Further, the cold start flicker does not occur even if I don’t have the standalone canbus hooked up, so it would appear that they are unnecessary for this type of retrofit.

I also read a lot about changing brightness (Dimmervert) from 100 to 127 when making the above adaptations. I did not do this, but I am wondering under what conditions should this be done. I am hoping one of our adaptation gurus like @DV52 could chime in here about whether this setting is reserved for LED low beams, or if it makes no difference when low beam wires power a 35w ballast.

All in all I am thrilled with the outcome of this project. Glam shots to come when I find a level spot to properly aim them and find a nice dark area.
 

Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
I envy your masterpiece, my 7gti headlights feel very dim, I once had a similar idea, but the tedious work made me give up.

Thanks for the compliment. Do you have halogens, or do you have the lighting package? While the morimotos are leagues ahead of the halogens, they still seem quite a bit better than the OEM projectors in the factory HID setup (which I may have incorrectly indicated are manufactured by Valeo. Perhaps Hella?).

I'm in a similar situation with my Focus. As an ST3, it has factory HIDs and sometimes you'd be hard pressed to tell. I'm okay with a blurrier cutoff and no blue flare, but I wish the beam pattern would be as wide as some other OEM setups and as far as intensity goes, it's nowhere near what the morimotos produce.
 

Gray_Panther

Autocross Champion
Location
NY
Car(s)
GTi
Thanks for the shoutout and glad my thread from 9 years ago helped you to go this route. This was done far better and more professionally, I salute you!

I looked closely at your last cutoff pic, and it seems the passenger headlight, looking from the driver seat, is rotated slightly clockwise. You will need to take off the front bumper again and loosen all the bolts from the headlight mounting tabs, pay close attention to the side one that hides behind the edge of the bumper (passenger wheel side). Turn the headlights on and start messing around with trying to rotate it counter-clockwise. You may need to add some spacers on the outside mounting tab (inside engine bay) and that outer one I mentioned earlier. and slightly bend down the mounting point on the inside closest to radiator to slightly rotate the housing, At that cutoff angle, the flushness is negligent because like 1-2mm rotation of the housing will go a long way with the cutoff.
 

golfbest

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
San Bernardino
Car(s)
2017 GTI
Thanks for the compliment. Do you have halogens, or do you have the lighting package? While the morimotos are leagues ahead of the halogens, they still seem quite a bit better than the OEM projectors in the factory HID setup (which I may have incorrectly indicated are manufactured by Valeo. Perhaps Hella?).

I'm in a similar situation with my Focus. As an ST3, it has factory HIDs and sometimes you'd be hard pressed to tell. I'm okay with a blurrier cutoff and no blue flare, but I wish the beam pattern would be as wide as some other OEM setups and as far as intensity goes, it's nowhere near what the morimotos produce.
I'm not sure my car has lighting package, but i can sure it has HID lamps and cornering assist, aftermarker mod always brighter than factury
 

Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
Thanks for the shoutout and glad my thread from 9 years ago helped you to go this route. This was done far better and more professionally, I salute you!

I looked closely at your last cutoff pic, and it seems the passenger headlight, looking from the driver seat, is rotated slightly clockwise. You will need to take off the front bumper again and loosen all the bolts from the headlight mounting tabs, pay close attention to the side one that hides behind the edge of the bumper (passenger wheel side). Turn the headlights on and start messing around with trying to rotate it counter-clockwise. You may need to add some spacers on the outside mounting tab (inside engine bay) and that outer one I mentioned earlier. and slightly bend down the mounting point on the inside closest to radiator to slightly rotate the housing, At that cutoff angle, the flushness is negligent because like 1-2mm rotation of the housing will go a long way with the cutoff.

Very interesting. What do you mean by spacers? As in washers below the bolt heads? I figured that the side bolt (behind the side of the bumper) has some leeway to lift up and down (perpendicular to its axis), and there's also an adjustment on the complete opposite side near the grill to lower or raise the mount. The two captive mounting screws on the back of the housing (as depicted in the third pic in post #4) look like they should be adjustable, but I couldn't seem to move the hex nut without feeling like I'd break it. The stock version of these captive nuts are easily adjusted by hand.

Either way, it's good to know that a 1-2mm rotation of the housing can make all the difference with the cutoff. When it's warm out and I finally locate a proper aiming spot with level ground and 25ft of distance away from a wall, I'll try to make these adjustments.

What do you think of not needing the morimoto standalone canbus? I know you used them, but did you still have cold start flicker? Did you do any adaptations in VCDS or obdeleven?
 

Gray_Panther

Autocross Champion
Location
NY
Car(s)
GTi
Very interesting. What do you mean by spacers? As in washers below the bolt heads? I figured that the side bolt (behind the side of the bumper) has some leeway to lift up and down (perpendicular to its axis), and there's also an adjustment on the complete opposite side near the grill to lower or raise the mount. The two captive mounting screws on the back of the housing (as depicted in the third pic in post #4) look like they should be adjustable, but I couldn't seem to move the hex nut without feeling like I'd break it. The stock version of these captive nuts are easily adjusted by hand.

Either way, it's good to know that a 1-2mm rotation of the housing can make all the difference with the cutoff. When it's warm out and I finally locate a proper aiming spot with level ground and 25ft of distance away from a wall, I'll try to make these adjustments.

What do you think of not needing the morimoto standalone canbus? I know you used them, but did you still have cold start flicker? Did you do any adaptations in VCDS or obdeleven?
cm* not mm! mm is way too thin and pretty much negligible.
Sorry!
I never had any flicker issues when using the morimoto canbus canceler and therefore never needed to do any coding. I am not sure of the long term effects, but I don’t see any negative issues or future gremlins by your addition of a delay. Let’s be real, the worst that could happen is you would need a ballast replaced earlier than later. If you ever get paranoid you can always introduce a canbus canceler. But I think your setup is just fine!
 

swcrow

Autocross Champion
Location
Virginia
Car(s)
7.5 frankenstein
many props for all that work.......retro fitting headlights is definitely not for the faint of heart.
 

Belthasar

Go Kart Newbie
Location
PA (USA)
Car(s)
Mk7 GSW 4Mo 6MT
cm* not mm! mm is way too thin and pretty much negligible.
Sorry!
I never had any flicker issues when using the morimoto canbus canceler and therefore never needed to do any coding. I am not sure of the long term effects, but I don’t see any negative issues or future gremlins by your addition of a delay. Let’s be real, the worst that could happen is you would need a ballast replaced earlier than later. If you ever get paranoid you can always introduce a canbus canceler. But I think your setup is just fine!

Ha! I was just thinking that mm sounds a bit negligible.

As for the canbus canceler, I think I'm going to keep them removed. It solves the problem of finding a good place to mount them, and with the OEM look of my custom ballast/covers, come inspection time you'd be hard pressed to see anything that suggests this is a non-OEM setup. The cancelers haphazardly zip tied in the engine bay, on the other hand...

I'm still interested to know why it sometimes comes up that Dimmervert is changed from from 100 to 127 when making the low beam type adaptation, and whether that's not necessary in this application because the Spyder headlight's canbus is downstream of the H7 plug that connects to my ballasts, so as far as the car is concerned that's destined for a halogen bulb. I'd still love to have one of our VCDS gurus chime in about this.

many props for all that work.......retro fitting headlights is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Thanks!
 
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