So, since I'm a masochist and am kind of thread bombing for attention, just wanted to provide some updates... First, I finally read through this thread real quick, and Andrew from TRS says the Depo's are good quality, actually excellent quality for the money. and this is a good thing as I went ahead and ordered the Euro replicas from the Latvian company directly, the $141 each
HERE, vs. quite a bit higher cost through eBay. Cost for both shipped
was $337 but now, 10 days later after ordering, when they claimed 5-7 days for handling, the shipping company, wants $17 more... so gotta pay up, so now we are a little over $350 which is still better than the $650-900 shipped for the actual OEM ones.
For those who were talking about cutoffs earlier who don't know, this is the difference between DOT and and the 2 different driver side Euros:
So you can see how the Euro in general go up at an angle so if we are "stuck" using the Euro/ECE cutoff, we want the upward part to go to the right so we don't blind oncoming traffic coming at us from the left. In the real world, it looks something like this:
So a little aiming might be required and HID or LED will look better than that color as well, but just a little pic to see... If you don't want that kind of cutoff, then you have to upgrade the projectors, which is much easier than a full retrofit of a reflector housing, and when using aftermarket headlights, they are much easier to split than OEM too. I've had a chance to chat with some people who have done this exact thing on a FiST, upgraded these Depo headlights to better projectors but that would be about $275 for the projector kit and HID kit and I'm just not interested in spending that much right now. Unfortunately, the one person I have chatted with directly on this didn't even bother trying the projectors they came with first, UGH, would have been nice to see a before and after! Anyway, it may be a project down the road for me where I paint the interior black as well.
So, the way they come they take H7 for the projectors (low-beam) which equates to a halogen bulb of course, BUT, I really don't see why an HID kit wouldn't work just fine in an actual projector with a hard cutoff so I ordered the best bang for the buck kit there is, the DDM Tuning Premium, for only $60 off Amazon. Didn't know at the time, could have gotten their Ultra set with even better ballasts for only $20 more from their direct website, but regardless, they are the #1 "budget" set on BulbFacts.com, which is an awesome independent review site, BTW. I have become remote buddies with the owner, Blaise, and he also has some good videos on YouTube as well. The site is more or less a hobby for him, he only makes a few bucks from the affiliate links, not from ads or kick backs, whatever from bulb companies. Anyway, full disclosure here, he "sponsored" me by paying for a nice chunk of these headlights simply because I provide word of mouth for his site, which again is independent and unbiased, it's worth a look.
Moving on, the high beam is also an H1 like our reflectors in North America and the turn signal/marker is PY21W, which is different than our stock reflectors but cheap to get a pair in halogen ($6) or LED (~$15). I want to go LED to complete the modern look of having projectors in the first place, but I really don't feel like messing with resistors either, which they might not even need if only doing one pair of LED's compared to the rest of the blinkers. The headlights themselves are illegal because of no DOT cutoff but also no marker light for the corner part, but with the blinkers/markers on our side mirrors too, even if still illegal, those cover the "spirit of the law" in my view, no loss of sleep here. I may even do corner headlight tinting as well. Back to the high beam, no LED fits in the small H1 area, so existing ones for now, but if I get around to a change in projector then I can go Bi-Xenon at that time too.
