Well this is not quite a full how to but more of little tips and tricks I found out while doing my HID projector swap that I got in the Group Buy. The aiming part is closer to a how to. Next time I'll have a second pair of hands to take pictures.
Tools Needed - 1 Phillips screw driver for clips and removing parts of the head lights
- 1 flat head screw driver, you do not want too small of one. You will be using it to split apart the headlight housing and the lens
- 1 10mm socket
- 1 8mm socket, I had both a deep and a normal one.
- 1 8mm wrench, needed to remove the 3rd reflector mount and to adjust the vertical aim of the head lights.
- 1 extension for your socket, needed to reach the adjustment screws
- 1 pair of work gloves, for taking lights out of the oven and splitting it apart.
- Something to clean the light bulbs, I lost the prep pads that TRS shipped with the lights so i just went to Sobeys and got some rubbing alcohol it said it was 95% alcohol. Yes i did touch the light bulbs
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- Something to block the headlight while adjusting. I used a old coat that I had in the car
- soft cloth to wipe down the lens
General info- Don't be lazy like me, wash your car first and get that gunk off. If not and your lazy i just did a quick once over in my bath tub with the shower ( i have one of those hand held ones).
-Clips, clips and more clips...Be prepared to replace the clips that mount the bumper to the fender liner that are located along the wheel well. Those 2 or 3 clips like to break on you. The ones under the car and under the hood are very easy to deal with unlike the ones along the fender liner.
- Now is a good time to do polish up your head light lens and remove any haze that has formed.
- Reflector removal. When you are taking out the internal reflector I recommend that you only undo the 2 adjuster screws part of the way and not all the way to start. In the TRS instructions they say to totally unscrew it first but I found that if I did that it made it a lot tighter to get to the third mount with my 8mm wrench.
- Glue, well since I didn't want to deal with condensation I bought new glue with the kit. If you are doing this with your friends with multiple cars you only need to order 1 thing of glue. You do not need to use a lot along with the stuff already there. Start by ripping off about a 10 cm length of the glue. In doing this you would have stretched one end of the glue so that it is thinner. Push that into the seam of the housing and slow work your way round the headlight stretching the glue.
- Before resealing your headlights, take the lens and remove the trim inside. Using a soft cloth clean the inside of the lens. If there is a haze it is also a good time to remove it.
- Harness routing. To get the wiring from the driver side to the passenger side I slipped the sheathed wire under the driver side headlight, and ran it along the frame infront of the rad. There is some nice holes you can use to zip tie it down. Then when you get to the passenger side you can easily plug it into the ballast under the passenger side headlight. For me this was easy, and it is hidden enough for my tastes.
Aiming the headlightsWhile in your garage just aim the lights so that it does not point way up and blind people as you drive where you are aiming your headlights.
I used a giant storage facility where there is a lot of loading docks. The ground is level here and it makes it very easy for you to line up straight and centered from a point on the wall. Also another benefit of this location is that there were two little metal things on the receiving dock that was just about perfect distance wise for the horizontal adjustment.
So center your car along your center mark and then drive backwards 10 feet.
To access your adjustment screws you need to remove some stuff.
Drivers side: To make life easy undo the clip holding the windshield washer fluid fill neck and bend it out of the way. Next remove the battery tie down and shift the battery closer to the engine giving you more space for accessing the adjustment screws.
Passenger side: Remove the intake thing above the headlights, and the intake box. This gives you more then enough room to access the adjusters.
(info on adjustment was taken from
HID Planet)
This is where i went to do my adjustments
http://g.co/maps/9a3em good spot for those living in Harvest Hills/Country Hills area
Vertical Adjustment
@ 10 feet the bottom part of the cut off on the drivers side should be 3cm lower then the center line height of the headlights. Easy way of calculating this is to put your measuring tape infront of the head light and see where the light shines. Then I walked up to the wall and using a piece of tape marked it 3cm below the original height. The height adjustment screw is the lower one, which is closer to the center of the car. Block one headlight and adjust it till the lower portion of the cut off so ____/ matches with the tape mark. Move the object that you use to block the first head light and then adjust the second one till it hits the same mark. Remove the blocking object and match the two headlights.
Horizontal Adjustment
So now that you have the vertical adjustment set you need to adjust the horizontal aiming. So what I did was use the distance between the headlights as my guide. Since I used a loading dock there was a hole in the middle of the loading dock that I used as my center point. From there I measured out the distance to either side and marked it, this distance should be 1160mm total or 580mm from the center line .Now in my case the loading dock had two pieces of metal spaced just about the same distance as my measurement. I used this as my aim points as it was close enough for me (within half a inch of the distance i needed). The mark that you set here should line up to base of the cutoff slant ___/. Just like the vertical adjustment block off one headlight and adjust one at a time. Using the horizontal adjustment screw move the beam till it hits that spot. Rinse and repeat for the other headlight. Once this is done go back and tweek the vertical alignment, it may have moved a little bit.
Now you are getting close to finishing. I would recommend moving the car further back to recheck the vertical alignment between the two headlights so they match up exactly, and nice and close as well. If someone knows which Subaru manual has the STi alignment specs ill put that info in here instead of the more generic info.
Image from 2011 service manual
Edit:
Added correct measurements based on the user manual
