Write up for 92-98 Zjs Xenon Projector Lights, by Jackk

Write up for 92-98 ZJs Xenon projector lights, by Jackk

Disclaimer: working with the Xenon system is highly dangerous due to the high voltage, so one should be very careful with the Xenon system. This lights are for offroad use only, plus putting these lights on will result the “lose” of highbeam. So I will not take any responsibility if one has encountered ANY damage or injury during the production/installation of these lights.

**I do sell Xenon bulbs, ballasts and I can also get certain European headlights. So drop me a line too if you guys need anything about Xenon.**

For XJ owners, you should get the complete retrofit kit made by Osram Sylvania in order to get that 100% OEM Xenon outlook.

Link to Osram Sylvania Products page: http://www.sylvania.com/xenarc/prodinfo.htm

Hello fellow Jeepers, I know that you guys have been waiting for a long time for this write up. Sorry about the delay folks. I’ll try my best to explain how I got my Xenon Projector headlights done.

This project is expensive, first of all, we need to get a set of OEM Xenon projector headlights to rip apart, here is a picture of a set of BMW E46 Xenon headlights that I have in hand, btw, these lights are for sale at the price of 600USD including shipping, if anyone is interested, just drop me a line.

Here is a picture of the ballast and Xenon bulb I use on my lights:

Tools we need are as follows, I’m listing some essential tools that we have to have to get this project going, some other minor tools are not listed as I guess most of us do have them:

1) Dremel set

2) High temperature E-proxy, or JB weld

3) Sanding papers from 220, 600, 1000 and 2000

4) Novus 1/2/3 for the final sanding stage:

We can find this on ebay easily at the price of 18 USD for a set of 3 bottles

5) Of course, a spare set of headlights to work on are suggested.

6) A set of wire harness is suggested as the stock headlight harness is too cheesy to provide enough power to start-up the ballasts. So here is a sample lay out of wire harness from www.suvlights.com BTW, suvlights.com is a good place to get SUV lights and Xenon stuff, their pricings are reasonable.

Ok here are the procedures to make the lights:

1) Take headlights off the vehicle, this is easy but you have to be careful. How I do it is I use a large flat head screw driver and a piece of cloth, wrap the cloth around the screw driver and use it to yank it out, don’t apply too much force or you’ll break the mounting clips.

2) Take the headlight lenses out, how? Put the lights in the oven at 250 degree (damn I don’t know whether my oven is in Celsius/Fahrenheit) for 5 minutes, the material that holds the lens and the reflector together should get soft. Simply use a flat head screw driver to take the lens apart. If the material is not soft enough, just put the light back in the oven and check to see if the sticky material is soft enough to allow us to take the lens apart. It took me a few tries for the first time doing this. So start will lower temperature first and test.

3) After taking the lenses apart, here comes the hardest, and most time consuming part. We have to smooth the texture on the lenses in order to let the projectors work properly behind the lenses. To smooth the texture:

****CAUTION: The left hand side lens and the right hand side lens are different from each others, so please be careful and make sure that the “squares” on both of the lenses are at the right spots. REMEMBER: DON’T COPY ONE SIDE’S SQUARE POSITION ON THE OTHER SIDE OR YOU WILL END UP WITH ONE SQUARE SITS AT A DIFFERENT SPOT DUE TO THE DIFFERENCES IN TEXTURE PATTERN.******

This is what the lens looks like after the 1st texture removal stage and couple hours of sanding with 220 sanding paper:

· Use the Dremel and select a sander for the 1st stage of texture removal. This is what I use for the first stage:

Use some hockey or whatever type to cover the edges of the square to prevent scratches outside of the square. Don’t apply too much force when you smooth the texture. If you apply too much force, you will end up having some spots being too deep to smooth out in the final smoothing stage, sometimes it’s impossible to remove those spots. So my advice is, it is ok to have some spots being too “high” in relation to other spots, because in this stage, we just want to remove the texture on the lenses.

Don’t forget to put water on the lens for the following sanding process.

· After removing the texture on the lenses, use a wooden block and sand paper 220 to smooth out the rough surface. In this stage, we want to smooth the surface of the lens as “flat” as possible. This normally takes couple hours as we have a lot of “dents” on the lens after using the Dremel on the lens, that’s why I advice you guys not to apply too much force when using the Dremel on the lens, or you will end up having some dents that are impossible to get rid of. Thus affecting the beam pattern.

· After smoothing the lens as flat as possible with 220 sanding paper. We now have to remove the scratches. You have to be patience in this process, start will 600 sanding paper, then 1000 then 2000. This whole process took me about 3 to 4 days to complete, you know, sitting in front of the TV and repeat the same motion of sanding!!!

· After satisfaction result is acquired, we’ll come to this final buffing stage, I use the Novus 1/2/3 for this stage.

So a final product, if done right, should look like this:

4) Now we have got the lenses done, and we have to find a way to mount the projectors inside the housings. I used the Dremel to remove the projectors and their mouting brackets off the BMW headlights, this stage, I can’t give you guys much advice. How you wanna do this is depended on what kind of headlights are being used. The lights I used are off a 99’s 740 BMW. As you guys can see, the projectors I have in my ZJ are different from the new BMW lights:

So mounting methods may vary, but I’ll show you guys how I got mines mounted. Here is a picture of the back of the ZJ housing:

I first have to drill a hole behind the ZJ housing, allowing the end of the Xenon reflector to go through, note the “green” material around the hole is high temperature E-proxy. On top of the housing (the picture below, red circle), notice the silicone on top of the housing?? I used 2 screws to secure the projector bracket in place. I then use silicone to seal the screws to prevent leaking:

So here is a picture of how everything is in place at the back:

Anyway, I hope this write up will help. My final advice is, be patient, and be creative when you try to think of a way to mount the projectors inside the housings. My way is only one out of a million ways doing this, so you guys might come up with some better ways to do this right. Here are a few pictures for comparison:

Left halogen vs Right BMW Xenon Projector:

Beam pattern: I guess you guys can tell which is Xenon:

Oh BTW, don’t waste time trying to put on any HID system directly in your existing ZJ housings (9004 DOT ones), the result is bad and severe glaring will result due to the poor design of our lights, even if I put in a shield to block the lower half of the HID bulb and modification of HID bulb is performed (beam pattern is correct), the result is still bad and glaring is still severe, trust me, I have been there!!!!:

Please feel free to disseminate this copy of write up. If you guys have any questions or need any advices, just drop me a line:

**I do sell Xenon bulbs, ballasts and I can also get certain European headlights. So drop me a line too if you guys need anything about Xenon.**