So both big shipments came early, so I decided to see how they are going to go together!









The holes are a bit tight for 14AWG wire. I will go a size up now that I see how much extra room there is in the cases.

Also, I’ll need to jig up the wire pass-through so that it is tighter-this one will leak epoxy like a sieve!

Also, once I get going with the new PCB layout I will drill and rivet the diodes to the heatsink.


Remember this was the original design:
Drumroll please…..

Woohoo!
Need to touch up the PCBs and I will get the main batch ordered. Back to work!!!
Great job so far Shadow, i really want to do this but the part that to be honest that scares me silly is the fitting of the
projector lens and digging into that housing and messing it up. Any input to this semi new 2007 S40 Owner? I have the stock halogen lamps and thought about doing the H11 to 9005 route but always wanted to do HIDs. wife’s wheels have them and they are great. Any and all help is welcome and thank you for thank the plunge in doing what you are doing.
Hi Bob,
You don’t need to replace the projector lens, or dig into anything, to retrofit HIDs! The process is the same as changing the halogen bulb.
The only modification required to the housing is drilling a hole in the back of the cover (the part that comes off to change the bulbs) to feed the 12V and HV wires through. The hole is sealed to the wires with a grommet (that comes with the HID kit, pre-molded around the wires, you can’t mess it up!). You can reinforce the weather seal around this hole with some RTV silicon from any auto supply store. The whole process takes under 10 minutes!
When you read about lens and projector swaps, this is only to get a better looking setup. The only advantage to swapping in a clear lens is a sharper cutoff line. The advantage of going with a bi-xenon projector swap is that you get additional light when flashing your high-beams. But like I said, neither are necessary – I have the factory lens and factory projectors and think that they are just fine!
I would however recommend going with 50W (rather than 35W) in the all-stock setup, since some light is dispersed by the lens. The additional 25% brightness from the extra wattage more than makes up for the small loss.
Hope this helps!