Original thread: http://www.civictype-r.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=112&t=140796

Author: omni & Matty McRae

I’ve decided to put a thread up here because I get quite alot of questions about this from people interested in doing the conversion, so rather than keep having to re-do it all in PM’s, i’ll stick a thread up here and I can just link them.

So, before I start, i’m affraid I don’t have any really detailed photo’s of the nitty gritty bits, so I may have to cross-reference other threads for specific jobs, like removing the front bumper etc. Most of the actual taking apart and putting back together is pretty obvious though, and if you’re the type that isn’t mechanically or electrically minded and struggles with removing a few nuts and bolts, i’d probably recommend you don’t try this conversion

So – Start off by removing your front bumper. (unfortunatelty the guide I used first time I did it now seems to have disappeared forever so maybe someone else provide a link if they know of one)

Then remove the old headlights, its fairly obvious where all the bolts are which hold these in.

I have a list of part numbers and prices of bits which I used for the conversion, they are as follows.

All prices are EXCLUSIVE of VAT

1 x 33101-S5T-E62 – Right hand headlight unit – £80.37 ea
1 x 33151-S5T-E62 – Left hand headlight unit – £80.37 ea
2 x 33115-S84-A11 – HB3 main Beam bulb – £4.02 ea
2 x 33126-S0A-003 – Cover Rubber – £8.44 ea
2 x 33126-S6A-J61 – Cover Rubber – £6.60 ea
2 x 33303-SAA-003 – Indicator bulb holders – £5.45 ea
2 x 33303-S2R-003 – Indicator Orange bulbs – £1.18 ea
2 x 33305-S5A-003 – Side-light bulb holders – £4.85 ea
2 x 33116-SD4-961 – Headlight bulb Holders – (Optional) – £7.49 ea

So thats everything from Honda – which comes to a grand total of £236.80 –

(£278.24 inc VAT)

The reason I say the last bulb holders are optional is because some people reckon you need to buy them and modify them to hold the HID bulbs in, personally I don’t think its necessary, I never used them on mine and they are held in fine just by slightly bending the metal clips.
so you can potentially lose about £20 off that bill. Obviously if you’re not going for HID’s you need them and some H1 bulbs. (34901-SZ3-000 £5.64 ea)

Fit all the bulbs and seals into the light units (If you are using HID then you will need to bend the metal clips slightly to hold in the HID bulb units, but this will all become apparent when looking at it. If you’re not satisfied with bending the clips, you can follow the guide for fitting HID’s to a Facelift found here)

Now for the wiring, when you offer the new lights up you will notice straight off that the plugs for the indicators are different, so far as I know you can’t buy new ones from honda seperately (without the loom!) so I went to a scrapyard and found some suitable ones from another vehicle (just take the bulb holder down with you and have a root round) Same with the plugs for the new main beam (HB3) bulbs, you will need to be a little creative here when sourcing these parts.

The Side lights plug straight on, as do the headlight adjustment motors, but helpfully the plugs for these are part of the same loom, so because the adjustment motors are in a different position on the facelift lights they don’t reach! Easiest thing to do here is to cut the two wires for the sidelight plug and extend them by approx 8 inches so they reach.

Once you’ve found some suitable indicator plugs – cut off the originals and splice on the new ones. (I personally prefer to solder and heat-shrink all the wires I cut and rejoin, but its up to you, you can use connectors if you don’t have a soldering iron.)

Next up, you need to modify the original car headlight wiring, because we’re changing from an H4 Hi/Lo bulb for both headlights and main beam, to seperate bulbs. You have to do this otherwise when you go to full beam the projectors will go out, which is not only rubbish for driving with, but also an MOT failure.

You need a standard 4 pin switching relay, a couple of reels of 8amp cable, an inline fuse (or, as I have done, a relay with integrated fuse) and a few various spade connectors. All available from halfords.

I’ll assume we’re using HID’s here, if you’re not the wiring is the same, but instead of connecting the wires to the HID ballasts, you’ll simply be connecting them straight to the H1 headlight bulbs.

Mount the Ballasts on the inner wings, negative side of both ballasts goes to a suitable earthing point (somewhere on the body or engine which is not painted) Obviously it goes without saying to make sure you keep all wiring away from rotating pulleys and hot bits of the engine…

On the original wiring plug you’ve got 3 wires, one of them will be live when you switch the headlights on, the other two are switchable earths. One of them will be an earth when your in headlight position, one of them will be an earth when you’re in main beam position. You need to identify which is which with a multimeter – I can’t remember what the colour codes are off hand. but I believe they are discussed in Mr Bilko’s thread here

Once you’ve done that, the wire which is an Earth when you’re on headlights is not needed (as these will now be permanently earthed) so you can tape it up and forget it. On the passenger side, find a suitable place to mount the relay.

You wire up pin 30 of the relay to a permanent feed from the battery (Via an inline fuse holder if you don’t have a fused relay) and pin 87 to one side of your mainbeam bulb. On pin 85 you wire in the live feed from the cars original wiring plug and also piggy back this off the positive side of your HID ballast. Pin 86 goes to an earth. Terminal 87 goes to one side of your main beam bulb the other side of the main beam bulb goes to the switchable main beam earth from the original car loom.

The other side is only ever so slightly different – identify which wire is which again from the cars original plug, wire in the live to the positive side of your HID ballast (the other side goes to a permanent earth as above) the switchable main beam earth goes to one side of the HB3 main beam bulb, and for the other side of the main beam you bridge a wire across from Pin 87 on the relay.

for clarity and ease of reference i’ve included Mr Bilko’s wiring diagram here.

Once you’re satisfied everything is working refit the headlights and bolt them in – you’ll have to use the metal bars off the bottom of the old lights – they fit straight onto the new lights – and refit the bumper.

Thats about all I can think of for now, but I will review it later and see if i’ve missed anything.

As I say, I don’t have any detail photo’s unfortunately, once I get going I don’t have the patience for stopping and phtographing every little bit – but here is some photo’s from my original thread – which can be found here – viewtopic.php?f=39&t=118420

Car stripped down

Test fitting headlights

As you can see, I mostly work in the dark, this is because i’m so impatient and cannot possibly wait until the weekend to finish it…

Let there be light.

Bumper back on

 

 Following this guide here: viewtopic.php?f=112&t=140796&p=1925267#p1925267

Didnt use a relay though as it’s not needed IMO

i couldnt find parts needed, connectors for indicators and full beam bulb holders from scrappy so what i done was bought some bits from halfords to wire it all up. didnt use a relay, just split the possitive feed (red/yellow cable) to the (+) on each full beam and dipped beam bulbs, then the original switchable earth from full beam (red/ blue cable) to the (-) on the full beam and ran a permanent earth to the (-) of the dipped beam to stop them going out when full beam is selected, so taped up the red and white cable as it wasnt needed

I got mini spade connectors and some 8amp wire and a cripming tool/wire strippers from halfords and bullet connectors to join and extend wires. put the mini spade connectors on the pins of the hb3 full beam bulb and the indicators then taped them up to water seal them and keep the cables from coming off.

On the last pics, you can see all i need to do at that stage is twist-fit all the bulb holders into the lights and plug the HID cableing in, with the kit, the wiring for the (+) and (-) are spade connectors so thats why i have spades on the end of my cableing from my split live and perm earth 🙂

was all quite easy really