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Old 01-02-2012, 02:36 PM   #92
Dartholomew
Scooby Newbie
 
Member#: 208771
Join Date: Apr 2009
Vehicle:
2009 WRX
OBP

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Having just finished this retrofit over the weekend, I think this is a very accurate description of what's involved.

Quote:
Originally Posted by phenryiv1 View Post
Tap into OEM wiring (particularly for the bi-xenon part of the upgrade, which is the real benefit to the TRS kit)
Spend SIGNIFICANT time aiming this kit to get it right
The kit I received for my 2009 WRX came with a y-splitter for the OEM high beam, so there was no wire cutting, soldering, crimping, etc. needed. Two minor hitches: first, the high beam bulb had a pin that didn't fit into the groove on the male end of the splitter, so I had to file/melt the groove down. Second, the black/red wiring was reversed on the splitter. No big deal since the solenoid ignores polarity, but something to note for the high beam when doing the install.

I spent about 2 hours getting the aiming right on my kit after the install. Much of that time was getting to the left/right aiming bolts with the headlights reinstalled on the car. I had to take off the air dam on the passenger side and move the washer fluid fill nozzle on the driver side to do it. I also learned that there's aim and then there's aim. You can move the projector housings via the aiming bolts, but the way the bulbs sit in the projector affect the direction of the center hotspot and shape of the cutoff. The biggest potential aiming issue IMO is rotational alignment. It's hard to know if you got it wrong with the lights off the car, and once they're back on, you'll have to go through the entire process of removal, baking, etc. to try to fix it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by phenryiv1 View Post
All that being said, while I love the bixenon illumination, I rarely had to use high beams with my old (properly-aimed) DDM PnP kit. With the TRS kit, I am always switching them on.
This is interesting. The TRS kit is a massive, massive improvement over stock halogens. The beam covers the entire width of a 4-lane freeway and the cutoff is sharp and clearly visible, noticeably bisecting street signs and markers as the car bobs up and down while driving.

Does it really not "throw" as far as other kits? I don't have anything to compare it to, but against the stock halogens, I'd say they throw farther, but the massive increase in brightness and sharpness of the cutoff makes the end of the beam much more abrupt. I have no idea what a TSX/S2K beam looks like in comparison.

All in all, I'd say it was well worth the 8-10 hours spent on the retrofit, and I'd do it again if given the chance.

As to the harness, it's dead simple once you figure it out, but you get it as a massive octopus tangle of 5-6 10ft arms with no labeling (unless you search online), no instructions, no attachment hardware and no description of why you need it or what it does. Separate connections for power and signal make it difficult to intuitively figure out why some cables are needed, and for those of us who don't work on our cars often, we're kind of left wondering whether it'll spark and explode if we hook up the battery terminals in the wrong order, or where we can safely route the wires under the hood without having them get melted by some hot component or caught up in a fan or crushed by the hood etc. A simple instruction sheet would have helped out quite a bit.
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Last edited by Dartholomew; 01-02-2012 at 02:43 PM.
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