[Freak4Dell]

First of all, please do not be shocked by the length of this DIY. It is not really a hard project. If I can figure it out, anyone can. The only reason it is so long is because I tried to provide as much detail as possible.

Second of all, let me make it known that I did NOT order the angel eyes from RPM, and as such, this DIY is NOT geared toward the RPM set. You may see slight differences between my kit and the RPM kit. However, most steps should be the same or very similar.

The first thing you need to do is test the halos that you get. It's going to make you really mad if you take your car apart and open up the headlights and all that, and then you find your halos don't work.

Materials
Complete Set of Angel Eyes (4 Rings)
High-Temp Silicone Sealant
Flat Head Screwdriver
Phillips Head Screwdriver
Torx 20 Screwdriver
Socket Wrench with Extension Bar and 10mm Socket
Masking Tape
Test Light
16-18 Guage Wire (preferably in two colors, red and black)
Scissors
Crimp Tool
Ring Terminals
Splice Terminals
Closed Terminals
Electrical Tape
Cookie Tray
Oven Mitts
Work Gloves













Now that you've tested the halos, and are assured they work, you need to remove your bumper. This DIY will not cover this topic because our very own M@|ice has already done that for us:

HOW TO REMOVE THE FRONT BUMPER

After you have removed the bumper, you need to remove the headlights. This is also covered as part of another DIY, so I will not be discussing it here. Again, the DIY that covers the removal of the headlights was contributed by M@|ice:

HOW TO REMOVE THE HEADLIGHTS

Alright, now that you have removed the bumper and the headlights, you are ready to get to the actual install of the angel eyes.

Remove all the bulbs from the headlight, and also remove the HID ballasts if you have them attached to the unit. Make sure to place the bulbs on a soft cloth, especially HID bulbs.

Note: Several of the following steps only involve one headlight. Feel free to repeat the steps with the other headlight whenever you feel ready to do so.

Put down the car stuff for a few minutes, and go into your kitchen. Without your wife, girlfriend, or mom noticing, take out a flat metal tray (usually used to bake cookies) and a pair of oven mitts. Go over to your oven and make sure it's large enough to fit at least one of the headlights in it. After confirming the size is sufficient, preheat your oven to 200°F. While it's preheating, go back outside and grab one of the headlights. Bring it back inside, and set it on the cookie tray, stabilizing it. The goal is to make sure none of the headlight itself touches any part of the oven.



After the oven is heated to the proper temperature, take your tray, with the headlight on top of it, and stick it in the oven. Set the oven timer to 10 minutes. Other people have suggested different temperatures and amounts of time for baking the headlights, but I will only recommend the values that I used. You can choose to use other values if you wish, but you do so at your own risk. While the unit is baking, lay out some place mats or something so you don't burn your counter. When the timer runs down, put on the oven mitts and grab your tray and headlight out of the oven. Set it down wherever you laid out something to protect your counter.

As Tofu reminded me, you can also use a heat gun to heat the silicone and open the headlights. However, I did not do it this way, so I will not provide instructions or recommendations regarding this method.

Take off the oven mitts and put on your work gloves. Grab your flat head screwdriver, and start prying at the top corner of headlight closest to the high beam area. I actually broke off a bit of the trim here, but it really doesn't matter if you do. Nobody will be able to see it. Work your way down the length of the headlight, and pull the two sides of the unit apart. You should be able to just pull it after prying for about 2 inches or so. The silicone is pretty flexible when heated, so all it requires is some muscle.

After you have separated the two halves, set the back half aside. You won't need it for most of the rest of this guide. Take the front half, and flip so that you are looking from the inside out. You will see four Torx 20 screws lining the top (maybe the bottom, depending on how you're holding it), and 2 Phillips screws at the bottom (maybe the top, depending on how you're holding it). Remove these screws. Remove the plastic signal light housing. The last thing holding the black (or chrome) bezel in is a stretched hexagonal shaped piece of metal. Take a strong, but thin knife and pry the tabs holding the metal piece on. You really only need to pry one of the tabs on each side, and it will just come right off. You can try this with the flat head screwdriver, but it wasn't thin enough for me. Also, don't use a weak knife, because the tabs are stronger than you think. You'll just end up needing a new knife. After the metal piece is out, pull the bezel out. Set the clear plastic aside.

Flip the bezel so that you are looking at the chrome rings. If you wish to paint the bezel and/or rings, now is the time to do so. See the link above that says HOW TO REMOVE THE HEADLIGHTS to find directions on how to paint your bezels.

Take one set of halos (one small ring and one large ring) and test the fitment. Find out how you want them to sit. People usually put the small ring on either the low beam chrome ring or the turn signal chrome ring. For the large ring, it will only fit over the high beam chrome ring. However, you can place it either behind the chrome ring or in front of it. After you have confirmed fitment and location, take the high beam halo and apply silicone where you need it so that it will attach to the chrome ring. I wanted to place mine in front of the chrome ring, so I applied silicone to the edges of the halo. If you do it like I did mine, it will actually sit INSIDE the ring, rather than directly in front if it, so the edges is where the silicone needs to be. The large halos in my kit could be easily fit into this location just by friction, so I didn't use tape to keep it in place while the silicone dried. However, if you feel that your ring may fall out of place, use some masking tape to hold it in place until the silicone dries. Now, move on to the small ring. This ring will only fit in front of the chrome ring in either location you choose. Apply silicone to the back of the halo, and push it onto the chrome ring. You will have a short amount of time to turn it and adjust the way it sits as you wish. After you have it adjusted the way you want, use some masking tape to secure it in place. The small ring is a lot more susceptible to falling out of place than the large one is.



Now, sit and wait for at least an hour, preferably more. Go watch some TV, read a book, pay your bills, take a nap, etc. It is best to have both headlights in the drying step at the same time so that you don't have to wait twice.

After a couple of hours has passed, go check your halos. Push and poke them to make sure they're going to stay in place. Remove any masking tape that you used. Put the bezel (complete with secured halos) back into the clear front piece of the headlight. Put all the screws back in. I left the metal piece out because it seemed to do nothing but annoy me when it was on there. You can put that back if you wish.

Remember the back portion of the headlight we sat aside? Grab that, and if you have HIDs, but haven't done the anti-glare mod yet, take 30 seconds and do that. It's ridiculously simple to do when the headlight is open:

HOW TO DO THE ANTI-GLARE MOD

When you put the back and the front of the headlight back together, be careful how you route the wires from the halos. You don't want them running down in front of your projector or high beam bulb. Make sure everything is tucked neatly away. Check from the front immediately after you put the light back together to see if you have any loose wires or anything. If you do, pull the headlight back apart as soon as you can. It should be easy to do it still as long as you don't wait too long. Route the wires out of the headlight however you see fit. Some people route both sets of wires through the square dust cap. I chose to route one set of wires through dust cap.

You can drill a new hole in the dust caps for the wires, or you can use the existing hole if there is one. You can also just close the dust cap and let the wire stick out from the side of it. I doubt that water would be an issue, because it's still a pretty tight fit. Set the headlights down for a bit.

You probably noticed I didn't write the standard "disconnect the negative side of your battery" disclaimer earlier. This was done on purpose. My goal with the halos was to make them light up whenever the ignition is on. With the help of awacasdavid and markyb, I figured out how to accomplish this goal. In order to do this, we have to find a location that only receives power when the ignition is on. You can do this with a test light. Remove the fuse box cover, and flip it over to see the map. The first thing we are going to try is the fan relay, the reason being that I tried a bunch of other stuff that didn't work.



Remove the fan relay by pulling it up with your fingers (you may have to wiggle it a bit to loosen it). Ground your test light to a bolt or screw or something metal on the chasis of the car. Touch the probe to each socket where the fan relay used to sit. Three of them should not light up the test light, but one of them should. Note which one this is, because we will not be using this terminal. Now, go turn your ignition on. Test the terminals again. Now, two of them should light up. Note which one lit up this time that did not when the ignition was off. Just to be absolutely sure, turn the engine on and test again. The same two should light up. For me, if we were looking at the relay with the two bronze prongs on the left, the silver prong closest to me (furthest when upside down like in the picture) was the terminal that receives power whenever the ignition is on. As an alternative to the fan relay, if you have a Bose system, you can use the Bose relay. After you have figured out which terminal you will be using, turn off the ignition and disconnect the negative end of the battery.



Take your inverters for the halos. There should be a red wire and a black wire running out of each of them. You're going to run some wire between each, like you're linking them. I used splice connectors and a crimp tool. You can also solder your connections. Run one wire between the red wire on one inverter and the red wire on the other inverter. Run another wire between the black wire on one inverter and the black wire on the other inverter. Please do not be an idiot and run one wire from black to red or something stupid like that. Now, you should have two inverters with 2 wires connecting them.



At a location closer to the inverter on the right (but before you hit the wire that came from the inverter), cut your wire that's linking the two. Do this for both wires. Take a third piece of wire and connect all three ends at the same location on the red wire. Take a fourth piece of wire and do the same for the black wire. Use a closed end crimp terminal to secure the connection, or solder the wires. On the end of the extended branch of black wire, crimp on a ring terminal. Make sure your ring terminal is big enough to fit around whatever bolt you decide to use as your ground. On the branch of the red wire, just strip the rubber insulation off.



Take the wire with the ring terminal, and secure it to a screw or bolt that is touching the metal chasis. Take the wire with the stripped end and wrap it around the pre-determined prong on the relay. Make sure your wire is tightly wrapped and doesn't touch any of the other prongs. Reinsert the relay into the socket. It will be a tight fit, so you have to try and cram it down as much as you can. Reconnect the battery, and turn on your ignition. Hopefully, at this point, you can admire your install, as the halos should be glowing.



Turn off the ignition and put your car back together. You can mount the inverters on the bottom of the headlight unit, or wherever else you want. Just mount them with some 3M double sided tape. If your kit provides for it, make sure you also cover the connection between the inverter and the ring with the heatshrink tubing. In my kit, a section of it just big enough to cover the connection area was already provided for me. Trust me when I say you don't want to get water leaking under the hood right on top of the connection. Congratulations, you just completed the halo install!

Following are some pictures that show how the halos look when installed. Unfortunately, I could not get a good nighttime picture, but I'm going to try again sometime later this week. The third picture shows the light that the halos give off, and the fourth one shows the light that my one HID gives off. (only one because I forgot to plug in the headlight when I put it back...yeah, yeah...stupid me). As you can see, these things are pretty bright for something that's not supposed to really give off any light other than in it's immediate vicinity.

[Yamba6]

just a picture for you guys to see how they can look when they are done, this is jdmazda6's car

[GeneralPatton]

nice +1

[Tofu]

alternative to baking is to use a heat gun.

i personally don't trust putting any part of my car into the oven.











__________________________

[GeneralPatton]

Originally Posted by Tofu

alternative to baking is to use a heat gun.

i personally don't trust putting any part of my car into the oven.
__________________________

i have a heatgun...

[matchingsilver]

Absolutely OUTSTANDING write-up F4D...

they eyes look good too......

[BugzeeM6s]

Very good write up freak!! If I had the balls to do this to my headlights, I would, but I don't. Very good!!

[fgpalmer71]

Originally Posted by BugzeeM6s

Very good write up freak!! If I had the balls to do this to my headlights, I would, but I don't. Very good!!

+1.....I think the halo's with some eyelids are the sickest headlight mod possible. If only my mangina would allow me to bake my damn headlights!

[JDmazda6]

heat gun for the win

[fgpalmer71]

Originally Posted by JDmazda6

heat gun for the win

I have one of those! How long must I heat them up though?

[MikeVish]

Originally Posted by fgpalmer71

I have one of those! How long must I heat them up though?

Put some heat on there and pull apart. If you can't pull it apart it's not warm enough so just let it sit a couple seconds longer.

[zoom_zoom6]

not bad but I wouldn't dare to do it my self

[fgpalmer71]

If I can just use my heat gun then I think I just figured out what my next mod will be at our next Indy mod meet! Time to do some e-shopping for halos!

[MikeVish]

Originally Posted by fgpalmer71

If I can just use my heat gun then I think I just figured out what my next mod will be at our next Indy mod meet! Time to do some e-shopping for halos!

If you wait a couple weeks, if that, Freak4Dell will be setting up a GB for halos. Or so he says...

[fgpalmer71]

Originally Posted by MikeVish

If you wait a couple weeks, if that, Freak4Dell will be setting up a GB for halos. Or so he says...

I can wait a couple of weeks to save some $.

Has anyone tried installing them on all 8 lights in the 2 housings? I love the look on the bimmers, but mostly because they are so close to eachother. I like the look on our cars even though they are much farther apart. Have not seen them in person yet though. That will change next weekend! Oooh, sorry.