My Prius C HID and LED installation adventure thread!! (lots of Pics!)

Yes you can swap out both the high and low beams with HID's

 

I decided to replace the parking lamps...


How did you do to make them stay so in??? I bought those same ones and they stick out too much forward.

 

So they do not hit oncoming drivers in the eye. This is a very defined cut-off. I this car were coming towards me at night, as bright as the lights are for him, they won't hit me in the eye! I would have liked to see the High beam pattern.

OP
How about a side by side shot of Lo / Hi cutoffs??
Thanks & nice write up!

 

This is the led light I get for my C

 

It's been a while since I've posted... I'm now the owner of a new Prius C2 after my poor old 2001 NWH11 became undriveable due to the front cross member rusting out (it could have been replaced, but the cost would have been more than the vehicle was worth: 14 years old and 303600 kms on it).. The old vehicle went to the automotive program of the local college where they'll be using it to teach hybrid technology..

Anyways, I did an HID conversion on the old Gen1 and it was one of the most worthwhile mods: improved the headlight 1000%, so after the simple stuff like side moldings and mudguards, HID was top of the list..

In hindsight, I wish I had ordered from Xenonsupply as the lighting shot after your conversion is absolutely spectacular, but let me tell my story:

We have a decent aftermarket mods shop in town that stocked HID kits, and that's where I bought my 9002 Hi/Lo kit for the Gen 1 from, so for the Prius C, I went back to them and got their H11 kit.. This kit like, the Xenonsupply kit, has the insulator on the bottom, so I thought everything would be fine..

In fact, the installation was dead simple, and the ballasts were perfectly sized to stick with 3M tape on that flat spot on the headlight assembly right next the the 9005 DRL/High beam. Unfortunately, the light output I got was absolute cr*p.. Except close up, it was like driving with no lights at all: the pattern was not sharp except close to a wall- it would get dimmer and diffuse as soon as you got a short distance out vs. the original halogens, which maintained a sharp cutoff pattern..

After reading a few threads here and on other forums, I figured out why: the H11 HID bulbs supplied in the kit did not have the same focal point in the reflector as the H11 halogens: the HID bulbs had their capsule about 5-6mm further forward, which means the light is diffused vs. focused in a nice beam.. The prognosis was not great as the consensus was that virtually all of these cheap kits used the same or very similar bulb with the same focus issue, so even buying new bulbs would not solve the problem, and I really did not want to go back to halogens..

The solution? Well, I was *this* far from getting out the CAD program and designing a new base to print on my 3D printer, but as it turned out, it was easier to disassemble the HID bulbs and rework the existing plastic socket so that the HID capsule could sit further down inside it, in line with where the filament would be on a halogen bulb..

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos, but it was actually extremely easy: the HID capsule is simply glued in place with high temp silicone, and there were two holes in the base filled with silicone where the supply wires were attached to the HID capsule leads. A large sewing needle was all that was needed to pry and peel away the old silicone, hit the wires with a soldering iron and the input leads come free and the HID capsule slides out.. Inside the plastic base (I believe mine were made of glass-filled nylon), there is plenty of room for the capsule to sit lower, it's just that they decided to mold a little ridge inside to hold the bulb at its current height.. A sharp drill bit held by hand was all that was needed to cut that ridge out and allow the HID to sit lower in the base. I also had to carefully crunch off the end of the ceramic insulator tube with a pair of pliers to shorten it as well, and this was pretty much the hairiest part of the mod as I was afraid of shattering that tube into a million pieces, but it turned out to be a non-event.. After fitting everything back together and confirming that it would line up the same as the original halogen bulb, a bit of high temp silicone gasket goop to glue the capsule back in the base at the same height as the halogen filament and to fill up the holes for the wires and I was back in business..

Total time for the mod was about 15 minutes on the first bulb carefully poking and prying with the needle in the silicone, trying to figure out how it was all put together, but once it was found to be straightforward, the second bulb took all of 5 minutes; the longest part of the mod was waiting the hour it took for the silicone to set firmly enough to handle, but modifying the bulbs made all the difference: your photo below could have been mine- in fact, I think mine is *better* than yours With the refocused bulbs, I have the same distinct rising stairstep pattern of the original halogens, but so much brighter and clearer, and the illumination field is almost perfectly even with no shadows and dim spots..

Now I have to think of something for the DRL/High beams.. I don't think I can put in another HID as that would mean my DRLs are high beams, but maybe I can put in a similar circuit as I used for my Gen1 to differentiate DRLs from headlight and light an LED strip or something for DRL and fire a second set of HIDs for the high beams.. Or I could just go the cheap route and put in a set of blue-tinted 9005s to match the HID low beams.. What has everyone else done for the high beams?

 

This is the same type LEDs that I put in my "C". I got them from a truck stop. The auto parts stores don't have them. They are and look great. They flood the interior with white light.

( pic from OPs first posting)

 

Thanks for this. I saw my friend's Scion with interior LEDs and they look so bright and nice... ordered LEDs for my interior. Great thread!

 

OP with the hids... Can you have the hids and turn on the high beams at the same time? Or when you turn on the high beams do the hids go off automatically. On my old car whenever I installed hids and turned on the high beams the hids would go off, then I would turn the hids back on and it eventually blew the bulbs in the hids b/c it was so repetitive.

 

the low beams stay on when the high beams go on.

 

Ok cool! Thanks for the info!

 

Just for the 2013 C owners, the lamp in the cargo entry is different than the one at the start of the thread. I will post pictures when I get them. I broke a tab on my assembly trying to get it out so please be careful. It was $36 for the new assembly. Not sure how to get it out safely since I can't see where the tabs were. When the new unit comes in ill update to help everyone out.

 

op,

those bulbs didn't melt any plastic or anything like that, did they?

 

MANAGERMAN; I can get the cargo area light cover off, I heard a crack like sound and stopped. But it does not look like your in the photo, mine is a 2013 Prius C 3.

Also how easy or hard are the license plate light change outs? I look at page 420 also, and I am worried about cracking or breaking the cheap plastic cover with a METAL screw driver.

I wish Toyota would use real screws instead of cheap plastic covers and clips that break when you touch them. I got as far as the cargo area light and stopped.

Any advise or tricks would be great! Thanks!

 

i'm not too familiar with light bulb types - are CREE bulbs different than LEDs? What would be considered "not too strong" for a LED? I would like to switch over my parking lights over to LED so the colors match but don't want the risk of heating/melting the plastic off... thanks

 

For me I use a small flat head screwdriver to wedge under the two small tabs on the either side of the cover. There is nothing you can do but try to get the tab to pop out. Try turning the screwdriver from side to side slowly once the head is wedged under the tab to get it to pop out. Once one tab is out then the other one will come out easily.

 

I have always been nervous about prying on stuff with a screwdriver because the plastic panels are so easy to mar & scar.
I saw a guy using these nylon tools in the rear camera install youtube video.


It's just a few bucks for the set and you can freely pry on stuff without screwing anything up. Nearly everything in my gen 3 is held in with snaps and clips. These things are awesome.

Search for "Wilmar W80648 Composite Trim Removal Tool Set" on Amazon.

 

I changed my headlights to HID on the C, also all the interior lights and license plate lights to LED, the LED's starting flickering on the plate after about 3 months, starting to look like a rave from the rear of the car, then the interior bulbs started doing the same thing…. so I have to swap all those out… HID's seem to be holding up okay.

 

I have these same bulbs… interiors are fine, had them in the license plate area, they were fine for a couple months now they are starting to flicker…. I changed them and flicker again on the GenIII, they flicker on the interior of the C but not the GenIII.. think I got a bad batch????

I will try to order another set… just very annoying… seems like a rave in the Prii at night…

 

Probably a loose connection. Try flipping it around and see if that helps.

 

LEDs are polarity specific, flipping them around will reverse the polarity and they won't light.

Delta Flyer, try dielectric grease. The contacts may be forming some corrosion, the dielectric grease will protect the contacts from oxidation.

SCH-I535