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Hey guys, my name’s Justin, and today I’m going to show you how I made these 4x6 projector
headlight housings for my ’97 Mazda Miata. I started with a set of these fake projector
headlights that are all over eBay and Amazon. They are about 30 bucks and look decent.
They have these blue lights in the side of them which I don’t really like, so I’ll
take them out and save them for later. I started disassembling them and I took off
the boot, and the headlight bulb, the hardware and all the necessary screws. I won’t be
needing any of this as I’ll be cutting this apart anyway.
I’m using a Morimoto Mini projector for these lights as they are small, compact and
relatively cheap. You can see how they compare in size to these small 4x6 headlights. At
this point I realized I wasn’t going to be able to use that shroud that comes with
the projector as it was just a little too big, but I ended up using something different
that I found at the hardware store for a shroud. So next I started working on removing that
fake projector lens that’s inside the housing. Most people bake the assemblies in the oven
for 10 to 15 minutes to loosen the glue and then take the front lens off, and then you
can do all the work on the projector headlight from the front. I wanted to try a different
approach, and since I knew I was going to chop the back end off anyway, I left the lens
on. I was able to bend those mounting tabs for that fake projector down and then I just
used some tape to hold the lens to the front of the headlight lens. That way it was out
of the way for when I went to cut off the back of the headlight housing.
If I did this again I would probably just go for the oven and take the front end of
the lens off. There were times when I wished I had access through the front. But at least
I don’t have to worry about sealing them back up.
Here you can see I picked out this conduit from the hardware store, and that ended up
being a nice fit for the projector, and it will act as my shroud. I used it as a template
to mark where to cut. And I just did a test fit to make sure everything was lined up.
I made this wooden jig to hold the light while I did the cutting on my chop saw. This made
sure the cut was nice and straight and I could use this to make sure the cut on both headlights
was exactly the same. Throughout the build I taped up the front
of the lens to protect it from getting scratched. I did this often. Removing and re-taping as
I needed. Next it was on to a lot of sanding, and filing
and more sanding in order to get the shroud to fit. The opening on the headlight was just
a little too small and the conduit didn’t quite fit, so I had to sand some flat spots
on it to get it to fit inside the housing. Here’s where I wish I had a belt sander
as that would have made this job a piece of cake. But eventually after sanding and sanding
and filing of both the conduit and the headlight housing to get some flat spots on it I was
able to make everything fit and get it to slide inside.
After I got it to fit, I slid the projector in there and just did a test fit to see how
everything was lining up. I then needed to make some notches to cut
out for the screws that mount the projector housing to the projector lens. So I made some
marks on the conduit to know where to notch it out that way the projector could fit as
far in on that conduit shroud as possible. I just used a dremel and nibbled away at the
little notches and nibbled a little bit at a time. I wanted to make sure it was a perfect
fit, so I’d cut some out, mark it, cut a little bit more out until I had a perfect
fit. And that’ll help later for gluing, making sure there was not many gaps.
Once I had nice fitment, I made another jig to chop the shroud down to size. In hindsight,
I probably would have left this bit on there until after notching the projector just because
it would have made it easier to hold on to if I would have had the whole piece of pipe
there. So it was at this point where I started to
attach the projector to the shroud and I just used a small drill bit to make some marks
and then drilled straight down into the sidewalls of the conduit to make some pilot holes and
then used some small screws I had laying around to tap the holes. And then just used those
screws to attach the headlight housing to the conduit and that made a really strong
connection. It was about this point I decided that it
would look better if the shroud had a rounded over edge on the front to match the curve
of the projector, so I used my router and a round over just made a nice little round
over on the leading edge of the projector and I think that made it a lot slicker.
I was just test fitting it into the housing and it looks pretty good.
So after I was done making one shroud I made a second one with the same process.
Now I wanted these to pop inside the headlights so I decided to paint them red to match the
color of the car. I used high temp primer and high temp paint because I was planning
on using HID projector lights in here and those can get pretty hot, and I didn’t want
anything to fail on me or paint peeling on me later down the road after I had everything
sealed up. So I used 3 coats of primer and three coats of top coat all high temp rated
for over 500 degrees. I also tapped off the lower 1/2inch of the
shrouds so that the paint wouldn’t get on there, and that would be where the glue would
stick to. I didn’t want the glue sticking over the paint.
I scuffed up the housing and the ends of the shrouds with some sandpaper, just to make
sure there was something for the glue to bite onto. Shiny surfaces aren’t good for glue
adhesion. I used a hot glue gun here to tack the projectors
in place. I got them all lined up to where they were in the housing nice and straight
and level, and then just tacked them in place with a little bit of hot glue.
I then chose to use some JB weld to glue the shrouds into the housings because it bonds
well to PVC and it’s also rated for 300 degrees so it won’t be bothered by any high
temperatures either. I mixed up just a small amount at first, and
put in just a few spots of glue here to tack it in place, and then came back again with
another mixed batch of JB weld and filled in all the rest of the areas that I could
get to where the conduit touched the housing and made sure it was all filled in; tried
to fill in any gaps that were left. For extra strength and more importantly waterproofing,
I used this aluminum tape I found at the hardware store to seal the rest of the projector. There
were some areas that didn’t get filled 100% with glue, some small gaps, so this tape made
sure that everything sealed and water tight so that no moisture could get into the headlight
housing. And also this tape is rated for aver 300 degrees as well, so it’s also not going
to be bothered by any of the heat and will stay stuck to the housings.
Those little wires there for the projector are for the high beams and low beams, there’s
a shroud inside the projector that – an lens – a cut off shield that raises and
lowers to make for high beam and low beam. I also cut out the little area for that blue
light. And, I ended up using the blue light, but I removed the bulb and snipped off the
two wires and just used the rubber grommet part to plug up that hole. That way I made
sure that no water or moisture could get in there.
And that’s pretty much it. If you can make one, you can make two.
Now if your car already has 4x6 headlights, it’ll be pretty easy to finish off your
installation and just pop them into the car. But if you’re like me and going from this
big round one to these 4x6’s, you’re going to also have to do some custom mounts and
make some shrouds for it, but you could use this method to make any size housing you want.
You can start with any projector or and housing that you can find on the internet and the
combinations are just up to you and your vehicle. Hope you guys found that helpful and good
luck making your own.