The prius already had HIDs with the crappy non-projector housings. Although, after the left side ballast went out twice, I decided to do the retrofit and have something more reliable and get better lighting. I have done a retrofit on my other car so this was simpler and faster on the prius. I bought this set up off of Headlights Quick on e Bay Installed: Morimoto D2S Bixenon Stage III kit w/ MCR Shrouds (Mini Cooper look-a-likes) Morimoto 5000k bulbs and ballasts Leftover Morimoto 100mm CCFL halo rings The shrouds needed to be trimmed 1/2" off the depth and a 2" circle off the bottom to flatten it out. D2S screw in and need to be aimed before hot gluing them. Wiring needed a few connections to be changed. I painted the outer bezel satin black. Here's the finished product. How did I do? Halo on only with a dirty headlight cover: Halo and D2S on: Look with the black bezel: Before After
One of the ballasts was dying and replaced once. The replaced one was dying after an hour and I was fed up with it. That is why I did the retrofit. I will take some pics of it soon.
How long and how hard was this? Any videos of how you did it? Nice I am going to have to replace my HID lamps as I am having the moisture problem with them and thought an upgrade would be nice...yours looks good!
How long is always a question of the person's technical expertise. It's a 3/5 on the technical level. With the setup I did and had on the car, it took roughly 8hrs total. I completed it in 2 days since I took my time and needed to figure out how I was going to wire it to the existing HID setup. It does take time to get everything together. After removing the headlights, then you need to remove all the little bits attached to the housings. On the HIDS housings, it is a little bit different. 3 screws at 3 corners, 3 vent tubes, and the cover for the ballast. I don't have a video. Just a few pics in the process. After you remove those pieces, heat the oven to 265deg. When the preheat is done, stick in one headlight with the lens up and set the timer to 7mins. You will do this same procedure when putting the lens back on. Have some gloves handy. I used one baking mitt and a work glove on the other hand. After it was done baking, I used a flat head screwdriver and a metal panel remover. I painted the bezel. You can remove the fake led piece and the side reflector. The D2S screw in to this and the opening is bigger on HID housings. Tip: mount the projectors and aim them before putting the lens cover back on. Epoxy the shroud ring and then snap the shroud on. After you have aimed them, then bake the lens cover back on. When you get it back together, hopefully it looks like this. Next was wiring and aiming them. I soldered wires for the connector to high beam connector. I made a hole in the bulb cover for the ballast wire. The kit has a grommet attached on the wire to seal it. Then the ballast connected to the existing wiring. Now for aiming, it was dark and just aimed at the garaged door. I measured the height against other cars' HID lights for reference, and leveed them out. Once, I had the aim pretty good, I hot glued a couple of spots. Then I removed the housing from the car and epoxied the mounting. Here was one of the initial shots of the aim. I will post the final tonight. It's not as bright as my FXR 3.0 on my turbo but better than the stock HID. After I was done aiming, then I polished the lenses and will seal them soon. Hope that this helps you out.