Good evening,

I've just laid my hands on an 8000K CCFL halo kit, sold by a Swedish company, for less than half the price of the AAC ones. I'm just testing the halos to see if they are as bad as I expected, but I must say I'm positively suprised by them. I would also like to hear the opinions of those of you who have got the AAC Oracle brand halos.


This is how they look when fully lit.
All the pics are taken with the same shutter speed and settings. The sun was actually shining directly through the windows, on the table where my halos laid. That gives you an idea of how bright they are.


However, in sligthly below normal room temperature (~18°C) it took them about five minutes to get there. I suspected it has to do with the temperature of the ballast so I put it in the freezer for half an hour, just to confirm my theory. This is how they look when the ballast is really cold. You can see the sun shining on the left side of the paper.


This is a comparison between the fully lit halos and the other ones which were just taken out of the box and connected.


A few minutes later


I'm just curious if the AAC halos act the same way. Some of you should know.

Cheers!

Today I went to the breakers to pick up a busted headlight. I needed something to practice on before I open up my own ones.


Since this headlight had two broken pins it was considered "destroyed", so I got it for £20


It fitted nicely in my oven


15 minutes later the glue had melted and I was able to open the thing up


I squeezed in my halos


Somewhat assembled again. I just snapped everything together, without bothering about the glue


Connected to the sidelight wires




Tomorrow I will speak to AAC and find out if their halos light up instantly. Not sure I will keep these ones.

looks good mate, good work.

Stav

Nice pictures, didn't seem a hassle for you at all.

Well done,
Jamie

i like them mate they look really good...nice work aswell,i wouldnt have the balls to do that myself incase i fooked it up.!

You make all this kind of thing look so easy - like dismantling half a car is childs play lol! I've always been unsure on halos, but I think they actually look pretty good.

I'd be interested to know what you conclude. I've been thinking about these for a while. Still like the brows thou, but not gonna get into that argument again...

Im impressed wish i could do that but im like Dazz32 lol

How sad 2 c that Lexus in the wreckers

top job mate,you made that look easy they also need a good seal to stop condesation
are you going to paint the insides?

Thanks everyone I didn't really get the reactions I was looking for. I just wanted to know if the AAC halos act the same way as mine. You say I make it look easy. Well, this isn't hard. I can imagine it to be rather difficult to seal it properly, but some silicone should solve that easily.


I'm not sure I like angel eyes either. This is more of an experiment. I like to see for myself how things work. I actually ordered a set of white eyebrows a while ago, before I even thought of angel eyes. They should arrive soon. Lets see how they look together with halos, shall we?


If you can get hold of extra headlights that would be something to practise on.

That one was actually closely related to mine. Both their license plate numbers are JCP7**.


Yep, I will paint the insides black. I've came across two sets of extra clusters for my headligts. I will practise my painting skills one them and if I succeed I'll just replace my original ones.

I got a reply from AAC. This is what I asked:


And the reply from Justin:

A minute after a money request arrived. That certainly helped me decide not to go for their halos

Wylie mate , dismantling half a car is childsplay , its putting it back together mate and not having a hand full of nuts and bolts over , thats the hard bit .

Thats some nice ***** out there mate! Oh and which company? I'd like to buy from them too! Half price is way good and I don't mind the 5 minute wait at all! I usually heat up the car for 5 mins before driving of anyway! =)

Hi Patrik, these are the ones i bought, not fitted, i havent found the time to yet, will probably do them in the next few months before the summer comes!

But, not sure as to what make they are because as i sed before i bought them off ebay last year and they were from hong kong, but they certainly do look like the AAC oracle brand halo kit in the vid, and to answer your question they light up straight away also. They were about £50









O yea and they r quite bright aswel

Just a quick question with regards to getting your lights apart, how hot did you have your oven? I don't want to have melted (or smoked) plastic lights, not a mod i'd be interested in.

If you do a search on youtube mate theres a full video on there of taking the light apart.

Stav

Finished!!

I might fit the LED eyebrows again today, but that would probably be temporary. More pictures later

That does look the part, well done

Thought about getting a Sport Grille fitted?

Nice job

looks great

Looks great fella.

Stav

Thanks mates!

I ordered the sports grille quite a while ago. It arrived in Sweden yesterday, so hopefully I will be able to fit it tomorrow

Yes mate, looking good. Been meaning to do this for some time (as you may know!).

Still be very interested to see the brows and eyes together!

Sport grill will look lovely on there, sorry again for not sorting that out for ya, my local dealers are a bunch of thieves!

No worries, mate

I just realized I didn't upload the rest of the pictures, so here they come:



















And with the new grille


I test fitted the eybrows on my headlights again but it looks really bad. Fortunately the eybrows are so flexible I can put them somewhere else on the car. Of course I will also let you see how it looks as soon as I've found the pics I took.

Thanks again for all the nice comments

Good job - I like them! Did you manage to find out whether the other make have the same problem as yours in the cold weather?

I like your car!

Thanks

Apparently they had the same problem with their first generation of ballasts, but I heard they have sorted it. However, my halos seem to have improved as they've been used more and more. I'm totally pleased with them.


Thank you very much

This is my latest picture of it:

Did you reuse the factory glue when re-sealing? Was it not possible to remove the orange indicator and just fit silver bulbs instead? I'm going to be fitting some to my lenses as soon as they arrive!

ok, so i have decided to do the halo's..

any adice on which ones? as u can guess there are hundreds on ebay but theses look like a good buy and are from the uk..

ebay

item: 260241048226

or slightly cheaper from china
ebay2

item: 290231845876

Yes, I used the factory glue as AAC recommended. It worked great and I haven't had any condensation problems.

If you look at the pics from the conversion you can see that the orange lenses were removed when I resealed the headlights. However, in the last picture the indicators were flashing. I use orange bulbs as I acutally like the vague orange color inside the housings when the indicators are switched off.

This is how they look:



It's hard to say if they are the same as mine, as there are no detailed pictures of the rings. I would however guess that most of them are from the same manufacturer. I quick ebay search brought up rings that look exacly like mine (item number: 190223674517). I would recommend these, but I'm not sure about the color temperature. Mine are supposed to be 8000K and these say 12.000K but the pictures suggest they are the same.

Good luck mate. Please let me know if you get stuck in the process. Cheers

Superb modification! This is the kind of thing that I like.

i like your headunits did u paint it black ? or where did u get those

Did you miss the first page and top of this thread or something?

lol @ Purvesh

well done bro, looks spot on.

sorry my internet was being weird

i just saw the pictures etc

If you wanna know how it's done, this guide is pretty good.

GUIDE

what is the factory glue??

is there a specail type??

Factory glue as in the black rubbery sticky stuff the lenses are held on with from the Lexus factory. If you heat it correctly it can be perfectly re-sealed without any hassle, no need to buy silicone sealer or glues or anything.

Have you watched the guide? (above) It explains the process quite well.

ok..

so i started this earlier this evening..

bit of advice.. be very careful in the oven!! only just about saved mine after about 5 mns.. was strating to melt..
no damage to the lense or main parts of the housing although the mounting bracket at the top did droop.. hopefuly when re heating i can undroop it!!

Thanks for the heads up, I have to wait until my car comes back from the bodyshop so I can test the rings etc before I open them up.

So the video is wrong in that 15mins is way too long? Let us know how you get on....

ps How do you remove the headlight from the car? You don't need to take off the bumper or anything crazy like that I hope...

I used a heat gun when I did mine rather than the oven. Just felt I had a bit more control. I did actually put them in the oven for a couple of minutes first for an overall heat.

Purvesh - nope, you don't need to take the bumper off. A bit awkward the first time you do it but its a doddle once you know. There's an article Fidgits wrote ages ago HERE

Thanks for the link Geoff, what temp did you use mate?

Damn, just realised I've got the TTE front bumper, so the grill isn't removable separately. So does that mean it's a bumper off jobby?

ATTENTION! Note that AAC in the video are americans, hence 250 degrees fahrenheit. I had my oven set to 125 degrees celsius and left my headlights in it for 15-20 minutes. Also, don't put your headlights into the oven before it has reached the desired temperature and has stabilized. Good luck

yep.. made that mistake!!

thin i saved it before it was too late... i hope!

As an oven newb, how do you know when it's upto temp, or do you just wait five or so minutes...

Just leave the oven on with the door closed for 10 minutes and it will be up to temp.

I just did it at gas mark 2 for about 2 minutes then used the heat gun to finish off.

from experience would suggest this way!!

is there anything that Geoffers cant do??

He can't put a Rowntrees Fruit Pastile in his mouth without chewing it

or maybe eat a sugar coated jam dougnut without licking his lips?