Travis, yours definitely has a sharper cut off. If I wasn't so skidish about doing all that cutting on my lamps, I would do it.

 

The thing that would cause people with RR's to have to do cutting would be if the projector is too long (front to back). I just checked out on hidplanet.com and the mini-cooper projectors are pretty small. All the dimensions are available on that site. If someone could pull their bulb and stick a tape measure in there to give me a distance from the glass to the back of the housing, we could figure out if there is even a projector that would prevent cutting on the housing.

 

i looked and found that there is a REALLY small projector...2.5" maybe...or smaller...the only problem is they are essentially HID fog lamps...although i could easily fit those in my f4i housing, i don't know if foglamp, even an HID would produce enough output to work as a true headlamp...but i don't know...

i was actually thinking about trying to cram two of the small fog HIDs and two slightly larger HIDs and use the larger as regular and the two extra fogs as "high" and just aiming them higher...dunno...

 

If the projector lens is non-colored, and it takes a D2S (standard) HID bulb, then it will output the same amount of light as any other projector. If I were doing this on an F4i or RR I would remove the stock bulb and measure the distance between the glass in front and the back of the housing. It's that distance that will be the "longest" projector you can use without cutting the housing. Then I would find a BI-XENON projector that will fit. The reason I would do that is that you could then have BOTH beams for low AND both beams for high. Since you can't turn the HID on/off like halogens do, the only other way of keeping your high beam is to keep the OEM high beam as halogen. Then again, if you did that, it wouldn't cost as much since you wouldn't have to buy two projectors, and the one you did buy would be single xenon which are less expensive, and don't require you to wire the solenoid.

 

i donno im pretty happy with my kit... its a heck of a lot cheaper and almost identical to your results, i dont have scattered light and my low beam cutoff is perfect.. and despite what you said with the "kits" being illegal, your projector setup is illegal as well. Any headlight modification is illegal, so hids on any vehicle that didnt come with them from the factory is against the law. there are plenty of people who aren't aware of this, and assume it is because they aren't in projectors, but there are oem hid fitted cars that don't have projectors (cl's, tl's, more that i cant think of)

So i would change the DONT section in installing the kits to DO and put a DONT on hacking up a 450 dollar headlight assembly to do something that the people who aren't mechanically gifted will do a poor job with.

not bashing you here, but the kits are a fraction of the cost and work just as well

 

Your statements aren't exactly correct.

Those HID pics on the left show a dual filament headlight housing being used as HID's. That's a no-no. Reflector mirrors are different inside headlights with high beams, low beams, and those that have both in the same housing (F4, F3).

Granted, it's still not normally DOT accepted to install an HID in a non-projector housing - but the difference is more than measureable.

You're not being completely fair!

Nice work though - end result looks good but the front looks funky now with that projector beam in there. I never did dig the single headlight look.

 

Justin,
Your numbers are off. $150 is the cost for the projector mod on a single lamp setup. Secondly, hacking up your housing is not necessary with the right projector. You don't actually have to cut anything on the housing.

 

Kid, I think I'm starting to understand why the RR's and F4i's aren't prone to beam pattern problems. As you pointed out, the bikes with two headlights have reflectors built for single filament (not hi/low). The intense beam scattering on the F4's and other dual filament housing is from the light source being in a different position than the stock bulb.

As far as legality, I'm not going to argue about it because I don't know the law well, but I do know that if light is being emmited from your vehicle in a cops face, they are gonna pull you over... even if it's just because your OEM setup is aimed incorrectly. If your average cop pulled me over with the projector, they not only wouldn't know the difference, but there is also no scatter so would not have a reason to cite me. If I kept riding around with my setup as it was before, it wouldn't be long before I got pulled over.

With that said, it seems like single filament reflector bowls don't scatter the same way.