Pearl2010 Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Just yesterday, I did a HID retrofit on a 2010 Legacy 3.6R. After looking around at all the different HID options, I decided on the Morimoto Retro0Quik System from The Retrofit Source. I was a little apprehensive at the prospect of baking the headlights, but going from a Land Rover LR2 with HIDs to the 3.6R I really wanted to get it right. Anywho, here are a few before and after shots before I outline some of the highlights from my process... BEFORE - Low Beams http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/1336/img0434if.th.jpg BEFORE - High Beams http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/8398/img0435lt.th.jpg AFTER - Low Beams http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6214/img0457sv.th.jpg AFTER - High Beams http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/6449/img0458g.th.jpg The kit came with mini projectors, mounting brackets, bulbs, and harnesses. Pretty much everything necessary was included, I supplied the tools and silicone sealant, and beers for the help. I'm fairly handy, but vehicle wiring is not one of my strengths. If I were to rate this HID retrofit on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest, I'd probably rate it at about 6, mostly due to the disassembly necessary on the car. I'm not going to go over the whole process, it's very similar to the other threads on doing a HID replacement. Here are a few highlights... 1. Yes, taking off the whole bumper is a good idea. You need two people. LOADS of clips to remove, and be careful at the "seam" between the front bumper and the front fender near the lights. I used a set of trim removal tools to help pry the bumper away from the fender AFTER I released the tabs on the black plaster retaining piece. That area is probably the toughest part of the process. 2. I decided to bake the headlights, a heat gun probably would have taken forever. 250° for 10 minutes is all that was necessary. We have a 36" stove and the assembly just fit diagonally. For baking, I removed only the dust caps and low beams. 3. The Retro Quik Kit just bolted right up, I'll include a picture below to show how. 4. ** Below the low beam is a rubber plug for the wiring for the low beam. I pulled the wires out of that. On the drivers side This gave us much needed wiring length to reach the wiring harness. On the passenger side I snipped off the pink/grey wires as they are not necessary. I fed the wires for the Bi-Xenon solenoid through those holes and sealed them up with silicone. NOTE: This required soldering for the drivers side. Subaru uses some glue that fuses the wiring insulation to the grommet, so I cut the wire at both ends and used a nail punch to clean out the holes. 5. Mounted the relay and one ballast near the water bottle on the drivers side. Mounted the other ballst to the mouting location of the horn on the passenger side. The current wiring harness is real tight, I gave feedback to TRS about maybe lengthening a couple of the pigtails. 6. As much as I didn't want to, you really need to drill out the dust cap. I used a 7/8" spade bit (with barbs). Got the hole started on one side and switch to the other. The grommet fits perfect, although it's a bit tough to fit it. 7. As mentioned I used the Bi-Xenon setup available on these projectors. All that's necessary is splice the solenoid wires from the projectors up the high beam wires. When you turn on your high beams, it triggers the solenoid which drops the cutoff plate on the HIDs projecting more light higher. Works great, but you don't have to hook that up. TRS provides a couple of harnesses that you use, you plug the wire ends into the adapter which makes up on end, the harness plugs into that and you can crimp the other end of the harness into the wires for your high beams. Easy Peasy! I opted for the 5000K color kit. The color is crystal white, I don't detect any blue. There's surely no yellow tinge to the color. At the same time, I replaced the daytime running lights with PIAA Xtreme White wedge bulbs and Silverstar Ultras for the high beams. Color match on the SilverStar's isn't right, but I can live with it. The PIAAs look real nice... PERSONAL OPINION: These HIDs are like day vs night over the stock lights. Coming from a vehicle that has some of the brightest lights in the industry (Land Rover), the stock lighting on the 2010 Legacy was a let down. I have a couple of pictures of the stock projectors and the quality is actually pretty poor. They are pitted and not very reflective. The lenses are cloudy compared the the TRS kit as well. Quality on the TRS kit was top notch, well worth the money. The whole retrofit took about 10 hours, much of it was trying to run the wires, so hopefully TRS can maybe adjust their 2010+ Legacy kit to make life a bit easier. I've got 2011 Outback in the second garage bay, and she's going to be getting a TRS Retro-Quik Kit installed soon. I can highly recommend going with this kit. Miscellaneous pics: Disassembly necessary - This is about maybe 30 clips and 15 bolts (mostly holding the headlights in place http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3872/img0442ow.th.jpg Stock Projector - This is what you're replacing. http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5976/img0444wc.th.jpg Projector comparison - Stock on the top left, Morimoto on the bottom right. http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9824/img0445tw.th.jpg Stock halogen reflector - This is a close up looking throught the cutoff plate at the reflector housing. Notice the pitting, etc. http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/3559/img0451bo.th.jpg Morimoto H1 reflector - Much better! It's actually so reflective it's tough to see what's going on. On the left of the pic is the bi-xenon solenoid, on the right is into the reflector housing. http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2724/img0448wk.th.jpg Morimoto Projector Mounted - This shows the mounting of the projector, order goes from left to right, bolt, projector housing, stand-off, mounting plate, lock nut. All of that is attached with the existing mounting screws to the headlight assembly. http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/3426/img0446o.th.jpg Front view of projector, notice how I routed the bi-xenon solenoid wires out the rubber grommet. The housing is upsidedown, normally there are pink/grey wires coming out of that grommit for the low beam bulb. http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/1306/img0452aa.th.jpg Done! http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8610/photofec.th.jpg Enjoy, any questions, I can try to help... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ehsnils Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 Nice work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ehsnils Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 Moved thread to Exterior section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GravityGear Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 Yes!!!! F-in baller. I've been bugging matt at trs about this. So you are the one that tested it! So this is the 09 kit and itworks with the 2010 or is this a new kit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd3.6 Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 So this is the 09 kit and it works with the 2010 or is this a new kit? +1 Need to know the specifics! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl2010 Posted September 4, 2011 Author Share Posted September 4, 2011 Yep, I'm the one... You would have to ask Matt about if this is an existing 09 kit or reworked for 10+. They were pretty sure that the existing Legacy kit would fit, and the projectors, etc are all bolt up. We spent about 3 hours trying to run the wires somehow to reach everything. We ended up putting the relays near the water bottle, along with a ballast. On the passenger side we mounted the remaining ballast in the horn mounting location. The wiring harness had TONS of length for the battery and the ground, but getting the low beam pigtail and the pigtail for the ballast on the drivers side to reach gave us a headache. To get over to the passenger side we just got by routing the pigtail in the radiator support and had about an inch to spare (it was very close). I left him a note that adding a foot to the passenger side pigtail and about 6 inches onto the OEM light pigtail would have opened up a ton of other mounting opportunities. Taking that length from the ground and battery could help keep the price the same. It's only been a few days, but these really are amazing! I haven't done any aiming on them just yet, they are pretty darn close. Not even a hint from oncoming traffic these are in a problem. In the LR2 I would get flashed at a rate of about 1 in 10 drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apexi Posted September 5, 2011 Share Posted September 5, 2011 Great write up! Thanks for taking the time do this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fletch113 Posted September 19, 2011 Share Posted September 19, 2011 Nice! Did you get the whole kit or just the projectors & brackets? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl2010 Posted September 20, 2011 Author Share Posted September 20, 2011 That is the Retrofit-Quik Kit, it included H1 bulbs, ballasts, wiring harness with relays, projectors and brackets. I'm not sure how compatible other ballasts are with this kit, but the bulbs I believe are real H1 bulbs, not rebased bulbs. Give TRS a call if you have questions on what you might need. They were more than helpful with every step of the process, they really know their stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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