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"HOW TO" Ebay Halo Projector led replacement (56K WARNING)

72K views 191 replies 46 participants last post by  tampa_trick 
#1 ·
Are you ready to perform surgery?
Here you will learn how to replace the white leds that came with your halo housings. You may be changing light output or even color. Hopefully this read will give you a bit of an idea of what you are getting yourself into. Never soldered before myself, I found it a bit hard at first, but I was getting pretty good midway. I do suggest you practice on something else before attempting to do this mod. Don’t want you messing up $150+ headlights![thumb]

Tools needed:
Needle-nose Pliers
Solder Iron (stick style, no gun)
Solder

Products needed:
3mm leds (your choice of color and brightness)
5mm leds can be used but not recommended. This will require trimming and modification to interior housing. This is a bit tricky to perform.
  • Remove rubber grommets from housing.

  • Unless you have small fingers, use the needle-nose pliers and gently remove the leds from the socket from within the housing. Be patient!


  • Remove wires from led board (You may need the pliers for this)

  • Remove rubber grommet from leds

  • With solder iron, heat up the solder that is holding the oem leds. Quickly, you will need to remove the leds from the hot solder. This may take a few tries. Take your time and be careful not to melt the plastic on the led board. Do not remove the resistors that are attached! Take notice how close the leds are before you remove them from the board. Also, the board should have a positive and negative side. This may be noted with a + and – on each side.
NOTE: When soldering it may be easier to have the iron held in a stationary position so you may have both your hands handling your project. Also, you may want to use needle-nose pliers when handling these item. Solder is hot and so is the iron. Most irons go up to 700degrees F.

  • You will see that the leds DO have a positive and negative sides. The Positive the long lead. Also, if you look at the led itself, the positive is usually the tiny side of the bulb.

  • Cut the led leads down to about 8mm. now bend them into a half-box shape. This will help you when you go to solder.

  • Now with both hands, you may hold the board and led to solder the lead to the resistor. You may wish to melt some solder onto the tip of the iron, and then dap or drag the point of connection across the hot solder.
NOTE: Be sure to have your new leds as close as possible to the board. This will insure proper fitment.

  • Repeat this procedure for both leds on each board. Be positive that all 4 boards look just the way they did when you removed them. Again, this will promise best fitment.

  • Now, replace the rubber grommet onto led board. Be patient as you will need to feed the terminal leads through the holes in the grommet.

  • Attach wires to terminal leads.

  • Feed wires back through the housing grommet.

  • Design and build the wiring harness for your Ebay Projectors.

  • The final result should look something like this. I appoligize for not having a before and after pic to show how dramatic the difference is in light output.


GOOD LUCK![thumb]
 
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15
#90 ·
um, really? are you kidding me? LED flashlights, LEDs last pretty long compared to other lights


LED's in general should last thousands or tens of thousands of hours.

my LED's are still lit, have had them on the car for over 3 years, and I like to run my fogs and my parkign lights (with the halos on) in the dawn/dusk hours....

no burnout LED's

those must be some cheap headlights....
 
#9 ·
I guess I didn't realize What the halos LEDs looked like.
I guess I just assumed they looked like the eyebrow LEDs.
Thanks for the write up scrammer.
I like your wiring harness too, but It confuses me.
 
#11 ·
i got them from a chinaman!
search for them on ebay.

3mm led white (or whatever color you want.)

how does my harness confuse you? you only need 1 ground. there is no reason to ground so many wires independantly. there are only 6 functions on this housing.
1. Low
2. High
3. Turn
4. City
5. Eyebrow Led
6. Halo
7. Ground

so there should only be 7 wires to connect to your ca, not 20.
 
#16 ·
When I did my lights, I wired up all the grounds to one lead and soldered them into a ring terminal. Then I wired my turns and my led's together, and my halo's and my parking lights together and connected them to a male terminal spade (basically a plug). This was all in my house before I took them out to the garage.

When I wired them to my car I only had three wires to connect per headlight(plus the headlight harness): The wires were turns (LED's and turn signal lamp), parking lights (halo's and one of the parking lamp) and ground. I grounded my lights to bolts in my frame, then used male and female spade terminals on my connections to my car. Now I can take the headlights out if I ever needed to (like if the LED's burn out) without cutting wires and having to redo everything.

But that being said, I love the harness. Did you just use the harness that came with and supply your own terminals to it? That's a fantastic idea. Much cleaner than what I did.
 
#12 ·
I've just really never done anything like this before.
Actually as far as cars go, I've never really wired anything before.
Infact I just put in my indiglo gauges.
I just plugged the headlight socket straight into the car socket.
As far as I know there only a few pins in each socket...5 actually I think.
 
#15 ·
Yeah, I'm trying to get a friend from the car club to help. His time is sparse though.
I mean, I'm perfectly capable of doing it. The trashy way...
lol Your harness just looks really clean.

The carlisle show?
 
#18 ·
haha, yeah. I'll be right up!

I understand you wiring method. Sounds good. I was planning on doing something similar.

I think the socket is a great idea, I just don't really understand how it works.
...If that's the right wording I guess.
 
#19 ·
or replace the LED's (inclding the ring) with CCFL's and you will own any LED halo's. but thats a tad more or less involved.
 
#22 ·
ah alright. Now that makes a bit more sense. I thought that those were the stock sockets.
Chances are I'm going to end up doing something like Black&Tan said.
only instead of using spade terminals, can't you buy single wire mini-sockets?
So that just in case you could snap them apart.
I think may even look a bit more clean.

I ordered the LEDs too. Hopefully they'll be here within the week.
Thanks again for this How-to scrammer. They should add this to the archive.
 
#25 ·
oh yeah, I guess I filled in with what I thought it said not what I read.
I just wonder if there is a socket for this type of thing.

I plan on deleting my grill markers, so I'll use these as much as possible for the lights i want constant and blinking and such...just haven't figured out the specifics yet.....

sounds like a decent idea right?
 
#27 ·
I think I've got the socket figured out pretty well. Might hack up those grill sockets a bit, but I think it may work.
I just want good mobility. Who knows. Hope these LEDs come in soon. lol
 
#28 ·
i hope more people start changing the color of thier halos. that way this thread will get full of great pics of everyone's great ideas. also, if anyone has anything to add to possibly make this How-To go a bit smoother, please chime in. EVERY suggestion can be taken into consideration from anyone who reads this.
 
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