Audi/BMW Style Custom Headlight Assembly for 2010 Prius

You are right, conceptually it is quite easy to do the re-wiring ... my problem was that I didn't know these frigging LED lights were hooked up in series! Arggh!

Although taking the housing apart was a lot harder than I thought, especially since they have been rubber-sealed. I practically had to pry the casing open brute force. Re-sealing the casing was a pain too.

Posted some pictures of the mod-process.

 

These are purchased from Japan, so I suppose they are intended for RHD. However, the left/right housing seems very much symmetrical, and the light leveling can be manually adjusted despite the leveling motor, so I don't suppose it matters whether its LHD or RHD.

However, if you are intending to install it on a model V and utilize all the fancy features, I suspect you might have to swap the left and right ECU sub-assembly. The slot and connectors are the same, so that should be an easy swap.

 

So. More progress.

The Prius II/II/IV light system has the following connectors:
1) 9005 female connector for high-beam
2) H11 female connector for low-beam
3) top marker light with 81125-47230 female connector
4) side marker light bulb connector (don't remember what these connectors are called).

The Prius V LED headlight assembly has the following connectors:
1) 3-pin male leveling motor connector
2) 5-pin male toyota connector:
a) 3 pins for ECU control: two for LED power and one for control
b) 2 pins for parking lights
3) bulb slot for 9005 high-beam bulb
4) top marker light

The 9005 high-beam bulb slot need not be moded. So's the top marker light. I can readily use the model II/III/IV wiring/connectors.

What I did was for all the decorative LED power, I bought 81125-47230 connector from toyotaparts.com, and soldered the male connector to the decorative lights so they can now connect with the parking light connector. This connector was a bit expensive (around $30). I then bought H11 male connectors to route the ECU-bypassed LED low-beam power so that I can connect to the stock H11 female connector for low-beam.

I then bought 120 SMD LED 9005/H11 bulbs for the high-beam and fog-light respectively:

2x Car 120 LED SMD Xenon-White Bulbs 9005 Fog/Day Light: eBay Motors (item 280544213867 end time Dec-02-10 04:57:20 PST)=

So, my lighting system will be 100% LED =D

Now the last task is to seal the housing with water-resistent seal, and cut plastic to seal the ECU assembly slot. I'll probably custom cut out shapes from some DVD cover.

Can't believe I had to do so much work after paying 1.2K for this custom headlight. Regardless, I should be happy that this might actually work.






male connector for
3)

 

Thanks for your tip.

I'm not disputing what you are saying, but for the sake of argument, if this were the case, then shouldn't the LED low-beam that comes with the LED headlight assembly for Prius V be inadequately bright as well? Just wondering ...

I understand that typically the LEDs are of much lower lumen intensity than halogen, but I was just thinking that if it is barely bright enough, why would people even use it, wouldn't that constitute as safety issues?

 

Just got the H11 SMD LEDs. You are right, they are not bright at all; they are purely decorative. What a disappointment. I'll probably return them...

There are lots of threads on HID kits/bulbs. Just wondering, has anyone on the forum tried HOD halogens like these?
H11 HOD HID 6000K 12V 100W Halogen Bulb Headlight - eBay (item 160507689666 end time Dec-17-10 01:25:27 PST)


This is what I've gathered from the web, the HOD also contains a little xenon in the halogen bulb, but it does not require ballast; the brightness is 3 times as much compared to halogen bulb, but less bright than HID. Price is around the same as regular halogen.

Halogen HOD
Luminous Flux 1600 2300
Brightness 3100 3350
Life 250hrs 350hrs

If anyone here has any experience with HOD, whether positive or negative, I'd love to hear it, thanks!

 

I've completed the headlight assembly installation for a while now, but didn't have time to update this posting. Sorry it took a while, but better late then never. All in all, this took me a few weekends, probably collectively around 16 hours of work. Personal thanks to many people on the forum for their excellent suggestions and advice.

Below are some of the process steps I took to illustrate the process:

first step is to consolide and short all the individual halo lights, the under-liner LED, the electroluminescent liner, as well as the parking LED and short them into the same parking-light power/ground source to the ECU wiring harness.

The last picture shows what the resulting parking light would look like.

 

The next step is to disassemle the entire housing assembly. The problem here is that the model V headlight assembly's low beam (i.e. LED lights) were powered by the ECU. The ECU up-converts the 12V power source to a 24V power source which then powers the LED lights connected in series.

So what needs to be done is to rewire these LED's in parallel so that the 12V power source from the ECU harness can power them. I took the power source going out of the ECU inside the assembly, bypasse the ECU unit and tie them directly to the power/ground source of the ECU input harness.

I purchased the ECU wiring harness from toyota parts, cut off the harness, and install an H11 harness connector at the other end of the ECU wiring harness for compatibility with exising model II connector so that both the parking lights as well as the low beam are now powered by standard model II 12V power supply.

The last 3 pictures show the completed results during testing (used a standard 12V power adaptor rigged with aligator clamps and such to power the headlights at home).

Oh yeah, noticed that I changed the parking light from a halogen bulb to a blue LED bought from JDM parts. It gives it a completely new look!

 

The next step is to build a custom cover to shield the hole where the ECU unit resides.

I did this by taking the rubber gasket to cut out a plastic contour out of normal DVD casings.

I then glued the gasket to the cover using epoxy and further seal it with caulk to seal the assembly from moisture.

I then glued the cover over the ECU assembly slot, seal it further with caulk. Resulting picture shows the underside of the headlight assembly in its completed form.

 

I then installed the fog lamps (nothing special here, there are many postings on this process, so I'll skip this part).

Then I installed the HID ballasks and bulbs (5000K), and then the headlight assembly.

 

Finally. Here's the result:

Picture outline:
1) lights off.
2) parking light.
3) parking light with fog light.
4) HID low-beam + parking light + fog light
5) HID low-beam + parking light + fog light + HID high beam.

The jury is still out on whether this is worth the money/time ... but oh well, what's done is done. I personally thought they were awesome. Everytime I turn the lights on, it brings out a smile on my face =) So ... yeah, I guess it's worth it =)