Far as long as I have owned my 2003 G, I have greatly disliked the chrome inside the headlights. Not only does it look garish, but it throws lights everywhere I don't want it and is a big problem in fog and snow.

So when those black headlights started to appear on eBay, I finally had hope for a solution. I did have a concern, however, that they wouldn't be a direct fitment. So I studied the various listing carefully (perhaps all the same seller under a different name for all I know) and even wrote to them for assurances. Finally, I came across one that claimed to be a direct fitment which they confirmed in an email, so I bought a pair which, per the listing, would fit my G.

I scheduled an appointment with an installer, took time off work and went by with the G. After disassembling the front of the car as described elsewhere in these forums and removing a headlight, it immediately became apparent that I had been had. The black headlights I bought could not be installed. Now I was faced with the labor bill for the disassembly and reassembly of the front end and I lost more than a whole day of time before all the dust settled.

The problem was that the lights I bought could not accommodate the HID bulbs or ballasts that came OEM with the car. There was just no way to mount the necessary stuff and additional time was lost trying to make that happen.

Of course the seller didn't want to allow a return and started throwing up a smoke screen. They ever wrote to me and said they never claimed that the headlights were like OEM (?!?).

Fortunately, I had paid for the item throught PayPal and after filing a complaint, they eventually secured a refund for me for what I originally paid. But the loss I experienced was a lot greater than the purchase price for the headlights including labor charges, lost time away from work, all the driving around, return shipping charges (not paid by the seller), not to mention all the time blown trying to get my money back.

In the end, it appears that eBay does little to put sellers like this off line. False advertising or misrepresenting an item seems unworthy of much followup.

Unfortunately, some of these specialty items for imports like the G are sold by people working out of an apartment or storefront in southern California and it's very difficult to get a handle on them or find out anything specific ahead of time.

My advice would be to look elsewhere if this is something you are interested in.

The seller was JSAUTO, something or other.

 

I hate Ebayers like, damn fa***ts...

 

If you wanted blacked out housing...could've ask many of the people on the forum who would do it for you or there is even a DIY.

I will do another DIY soon. Don't trust ebayers without fully research.

 

Yeah, I think I remember someone on here saying that they were for the Halogen light only.

 

I did all the research I could. Folk like these specialize in being fuzzy and vague. The problem is that this is a specialty item that is hard to come by.

Having someone on the forums do it is essentially impractical. By the time the lights were shipped back and forth, plus labor time, the car would be down for at least a week. That would be very tough to handle for tranny work, much less lights.

In any event, after this fiasco I did have my OEM lights blackened locally with excellent results. It produced exactly the effect I'd hoped for. Curiously, the overall impression is that the profile of the front is less distinct when viewed from the side, kind of a low key look.

 

Well then, post up! We want to see.

 

OK, bugs and all!

 

Ended up doing a diy?

 

Not exactly. I don't have the time or skill. but I found someone locally who did.

They removed the headlights, separated them and took out the "chrome" part of the housing and sprayed them flat black. Then they were reassembled and reinstalled. I'm 99% pleased with the result. The only thing I would prefer would be for the black to be even blacker. Flat black paints tend towards dark gray rather than true black.

I did get one piece of discouraging news in the process which I confirmed by seeing it myself.

The reflectors for the high (so called fog) and low beams are all one piece of plastic. What that means is that it is impossible to adjust the high and low beams separately. So if the high beams are aimed high enough so you can see where you're going, the low beams will be in other driver's eyes. And if you aim the low beams where they should be, the high beams hit the road only 50 feet in front of them.

There are a few things about the well designed G that I consider totally brainless and this is one of them!!!

For you guys who live in Houston or Los Angeles where it never gets dark, this may be a non-issue. But for rural drivers in deer country, it is intolerable.

There are only two plausible solutions. Either stay at home when it's dark or mount auxilliary lights on the car. Unfortunately, the style people at Infiniti made this nearly impossible with the OEM front for any lights large enough to make any real difference.

 

The same goes for 03-05 coupes that they are both mounted on 1 piece of steel bracket. Adjustability can be had with a little bit of tweaking tho.

As far as impraticality of shipping back and forth, it all depends on what you want to get done, I have had loaners available for people to use so there is no down time on the car. Also blacking out headlights is simple enough for DIY if you had just asked. Either way, glad you got it done the way you wanted it.