[complete] audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - pics
Apparently at some point my car was in a minor front right accident ... and the jerk who fixed it saved a few bucks by replacing the headlight with a halogen model....
Well, I never noticed anthing wrong when I bought it, and later looking at the pathetically weak passenger side headlight I just figured the d2s bulb was going bad... so I bought a new one and went to replace it, only to find a halogen 'projector'... Further inspection found the ballast to also be missing... it really was a whole hallogen headlamp *downgrade*....
So, logically, I decided to fix this issue.... At that moment on ebay there weren't any decent deals on 2000/2001 xenon lights. As you probably know if you are reading this, up through 2001 standard xenons were used, and then in 2002 bi-xenons came around. Unfortunately, the two light assemblies differ in several important way: different overall shape (straight drop-in not even remotely feasable) and entirely different projector / lens internals. Specifically, the 2002+ bixenon units are substantially larger than their single-xenon 2001&below counterparts.
Without no easy source of a drop in 2001 xenon replacement, I made the decision that I wanted bi-xenons. Why not, i asked, they are just better! Not to be outdone, (or just without thinking...) I hoped on ebay and bought a pair of 2006 a6 bixenons w/ hardware. The hardware worked, but one of the lenses was broken beyond repair, so I got a pretty good deal.
In typical fashion, I had just signed myself up with more than I bargined for Here's a before & after : my car torn apart, the modified lights about to go back in, and the (not yet aligned) final product (low beams)...
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
Sponsored Links
This ad is not displayed to registered members. Register your free account today and become a member on Audi Forums!
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
The two units looked similar size online, so after removing my lights I tested the slight chance that they might fit anyway... well, I did know it was 'slight'...
So, same company, same model, just one yr diff - just bolt in the new projectors ? NO.
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
worth a try anyway. Yes, I did manage to fit i in the opening - backwards & with some pushing - but it was wasted effort as the two projecters are way different...
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
what if I could use my housings but with the 2002 lens & silver internals? Well, since I had some extra housings (the 2002's) i decided to find out.
Now just to get the stuff out of the '02 intact... with the cut off wheel that wouldn't be a problem, but in order to get it all into the 2001 i would need a way to get the housings apart *intact* ...
NOOOO amount of prying, gentle heat-gun use, etc would separate the lens from black plastic main body.... I remembered some suggestions people had offered when I needed to fix a leak on my old lexus sc, so I went to the oven to try to heat the whole thing up... Now, if someone really had some patience and did this right I bet it would work. The adhesive suposedly has a slightly lower melting temperature than the lens. Regardless, I was in a hurry and in minutes flat did this: :-) Good thing it was scrap anyway.... while I'm at it, I should warn you not to clean the silver internals with alchohol...
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
so, this project would require some real effort. Sometime later (hopefully sooner) i'll be the proud owner of a mill & lathe, but for now I am not. So this turned out to be an interesting process.
Basically, while the general form of the 2001 & 2002 projectors was the same, the lens' diameter, length, and bolt pattern were different, as were said dimensions of the lens half.
I wasn't (well, decided I couldn't be) too concerned about total length, since I figured I would just cut a hole in the black rear-cover & somehow weld on some more plastic to accomodate the 2002's being so much longer overall than the 01's... thankfully it ended up fiting fine, but with no way to test-fit and no motivation to model it all in catia, it assumed the worst.
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
The 2002 had some extra bulk, as well, in the bixenon-part, which if your not familiar with is just a small solenoid which literally moves a piece of sheet metal up & down in the image plane, which by design lays at teh front of the lens portion of the assembly. In the standard xenons, none of the extras are there, just a fixed piece of sheet metal with the slight s-jog in the middle. The pic here *is* right-side-up. The lens inverts the image (in all directions ie up->down, left->right) . As shown, it is in the low-beam configuration.
If the picture was taken on-axis with the light, you could see how the cross-piece i'm talking about here is straight and horizontal, with one half at one 'height', a small jog right in the center, then the other half at a lower height.
This whole thing blocks a lot of the output of the hid bulb - it exists to keep your lights out of the eyes of oncoming traffic... It is a shame that there aren't any clever designs to eliminate the need for this. I imagine it would be possible to at least make the reflecter such that much less are needs to be blocked, but that would be a lot more complicated of a reflector... who knows. anyhow, as it is now this plate does block a substantial portion of the output... It covers nearly half of the area of the image plane, is approximately coincident with the axis of the bulb, and since the reflector is roughly a symetrical oval it appears that this plate removes somewhere near half of the output!
Also, I don't seem to have any pictures of it, but there was nother aluminum sheet metal sheild on the top of the reflector... about 2 sq in, right on the roof. I removed it. This will only prove detrimental if it was there as a heat shield for the thermoset plastic reflector. I made the educated guess it just removed a part of the output, and I had enough of the light-removing stuff
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
So on to modification...
In case it wasn't clear above, the details of the problem force me to use all 2001 parts except the projector assembly (the lens & reflector).
First, enlarge the hole to fit the larger 02 lens diameter. I used a die grinder, and a lot of care. As you can see in pic1 towards the upper left, I had to grind a tiny bit off to eliminate some slight interference.
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
Next, figure out some way to bolt the 02 projector into the 01 housing. As before, the depth & hole patterns are completely different. In the previous post you can see the 02 lens set in its final position in the enlarged hole to the front. The 01 lens & reflector would line up with the bolt posts you see.
The two problems are the needed attachment points are in different posistions in both the horizontal and vericle directions. The 02 lens & 02 reflector will obviously have to stay in their original positions relative to each other, as they have a specific optical design.
My solution? God I wish I had a mill handy... so in ~ghetto fashion fabricate a bracket that would bolt down where the 2001 assembly would have been, and then provide the same bolt locations that the 2002 assembly had in its original unit.
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
It turns out that it was a little easier to modify the 2002 reflector for a new bolt hole, finally using that new hole + two of the original locaitons. in pic1 here you can see this mod partially complete. (I re-used some artifact from the units original mold...)
As you can see in pic2 here I also had to make a pair of cuttouts for the 2001 bolt studs... this seam less risky than trying to cut them off while still inside the housing.
Note the epoxy build up in pic1. It would *really* suck if these things broke after I finished & installed everything. On that note, I painted them black to look cool... no seriously, though, refering to the 'mystery-light-deflector' mentioned in a previous post, there is a distinct possibility that that was indeed present as a heat shield... perhaps durring testing VW found that the roof of the thing would get too hot, potentially melting, and rather than re-design it all Hella (the oem for these projectors, i believe) added this small shield. So the black should radiate heat a lot better than the previousl metalic silver, hopefully keeping it cool enough not to cause me a major headache. (Note: ~6 months later, not probs!)
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
RE: audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - successful!
And with the custom brackets installed...
in pic2 you can see that I didn't make the funny shape just-for-fun... (i'm holding a deep socket)
notice how the bracket fits exactly underneigth the lens frame, thus the lens and reflector can mount directly together, preserving their designed function.
working on:
>install ELO touchpanel (dash), older laptop (trunk) 4 media center
>bi-xenon from a 2002 + custom led accents
>interface to vag-com
>mount rear-view cam
[complete] audi a6 halogen to bi xenon upgrade - pics
Here's a before & after : my car torn apart, the modified lights about to go back in, and the (not yet aligned) final product (low beams)...
