AdiS
Well-known member
My 2004 E46 330i did not come with xenons fitted from the factory, and being the headlight snob that I am, I retrofitted factory xenons in the same week I got the car.
Then Serg_za purchased an HID + Projector conversion kit from Vsomai for his E46 330ci, and when we compared the output of his headlights to mine, I was kind of embarrassed.
Mine are on the left, Sergio's on the right (the projector alignment is a little off).
I had always thought about doing a projector upgrade, and this gave me the push I needed. So I ordered the Morimoto D2S 4.0 projectors which at the time were the best available.
I put off fitment for quite a while because I knew it was a finicky job and I wanted it done right. So when it came down to it, I knew there was only one person for the job and that was Vsomai.
So a few weeks ago, I boxed up my headlights and shipped them off to Vishal to have the new projectors fitted into my OEM xenon headlights.
The fitment of these specific projectors were not necessarily straight forward, and Vishal was really excellent at adapting on the fly and even interacting with the original seller of the projectors. He got the install done inside of 12 hours, and my headlights were on their way home back to me inside of 36 hours. Really impressive turnaround time!
The results are simply spectacular. Below is a controlled comparison between my old projectors and the new ones. These were photographed in the exact same location, same distance from the wall, same exposure settings on my camera.
Before:
After:
Comparison:
Some more pics of the new light output:
As you can see, not only is the cutoff now razor sharp, but the spread of light is so much better - the light is much more evenly distributed with a huge hotspot in the centre.
I feel that these pictures don't really do the real-world difference justice. Having driven around now for 2 weeks, I notice the headlights shining on objects much further away than before. When driving home in the afternoon on a cloudy day, it is still light outside but with my headlights on i see the light and cutoff on buildings and cars when I saw nothing before.
Now its worth pointing out that my headlights were from a scrapyard and I think that contributed to some of the poor projector output, but I compared to my Z4 M factory xenons and these projectors are still way better.
If I had to do it all again, I wouldn't have bothered importing the 4.0s, I would have just gone with the FX-R's that Vsomai has in stock. Honestly, if this is something you want to do, just go with the stuff that Vishal has in stock, it will work out cheaper and easier. You also don't have to go the D2S route like I did, there are other projector kits like Serg used which will work on halogens and provide a very similar result.
Then Serg_za purchased an HID + Projector conversion kit from Vsomai for his E46 330ci, and when we compared the output of his headlights to mine, I was kind of embarrassed.
Mine are on the left, Sergio's on the right (the projector alignment is a little off).
I had always thought about doing a projector upgrade, and this gave me the push I needed. So I ordered the Morimoto D2S 4.0 projectors which at the time were the best available.
I put off fitment for quite a while because I knew it was a finicky job and I wanted it done right. So when it came down to it, I knew there was only one person for the job and that was Vsomai.
So a few weeks ago, I boxed up my headlights and shipped them off to Vishal to have the new projectors fitted into my OEM xenon headlights.
The fitment of these specific projectors were not necessarily straight forward, and Vishal was really excellent at adapting on the fly and even interacting with the original seller of the projectors. He got the install done inside of 12 hours, and my headlights were on their way home back to me inside of 36 hours. Really impressive turnaround time!
The results are simply spectacular. Below is a controlled comparison between my old projectors and the new ones. These were photographed in the exact same location, same distance from the wall, same exposure settings on my camera.
Before:
After:
Comparison:
Some more pics of the new light output:
As you can see, not only is the cutoff now razor sharp, but the spread of light is so much better - the light is much more evenly distributed with a huge hotspot in the centre.
I feel that these pictures don't really do the real-world difference justice. Having driven around now for 2 weeks, I notice the headlights shining on objects much further away than before. When driving home in the afternoon on a cloudy day, it is still light outside but with my headlights on i see the light and cutoff on buildings and cars when I saw nothing before.
Now its worth pointing out that my headlights were from a scrapyard and I think that contributed to some of the poor projector output, but I compared to my Z4 M factory xenons and these projectors are still way better.
If I had to do it all again, I wouldn't have bothered importing the 4.0s, I would have just gone with the FX-R's that Vsomai has in stock. Honestly, if this is something you want to do, just go with the stuff that Vishal has in stock, it will work out cheaper and easier. You also don't have to go the D2S route like I did, there are other projector kits like Serg used which will work on halogens and provide a very similar result.
raise:
