I forgot which clear lenses i went with but I did get them from theretrofitsource. You should be fine going with fx-r. Tweaking the cutoff shield for color band was a giant pain in the *** because I had to match all 4 perfectly. It's tough when half of a mm of change is the tweaking we are talking about.

Modding the projectors to fit in the lower housing was not that hard- i just had to find access to the right tools. Modding the SHROUD to fit was a B!TCH- definitely a 10 on a scale of 1 easy to 10 hard. lol

 

do you think there is a lot of demand in the sedan community?

i've been toying with the idea of a business in this for over a year and a half, but when i see the type of *cough* trash coming out (see another thread in the lighting forum on the main page... ) it makes me sad to be an owner of a car that has gone "downhill" with the mods coming out , so to speak.

I'd love to create some beautiful products for people, but do people want sh!tty $240 aftermarket crap or do they really want to stpend $500-1000 on a prisitine set of luxury lights to go with their luxury car? it's hard to say really now that these cars are older and selling for $10-15k, i just don't see a good market in making "good" lights anymore.

 

Crap I meant to reply to this but got busy and forgot about it.

I just saw your thread and wow all your light mods look very nice, congrats! Not sure if my thread was any help at all but I hope it was

Do you still need the m5 rods? I can get you as much as you need man, just ask again. Same with the spacers.

 

Hey man thanks for the reply and comment on my lights . You gave me the idea to go with g35 shrouds from yours and i have a bunch of spare shrouds . How much for the m5 rod and spacers ?

 

I think the spacers are maybe 25 cents apiece for 1" long ones and a 3 foot long m5 rod is like $3. i remember my total bill for buying supplies was around $10. i can hit up the store later this week and find out for sure,

what quantities of each do you want?

Email me and we can talk there. ill pm you my address

 

How'd that job for the guy in Puerto Rico turn out?

 

I never took the job from the guy in PR because I am a perfectionist and I am not confident in the reproducability of my design. Sure it worked great for me, but what happens if I F something up on a customer's shroud? G35 shrouds alone are not always on the market for sale- i might have ended up having to buy an entire new set of headlights for a simple mistake, ya know?

However, I did do a mounting job for ironmike in Boston. he was doing his own quad setup and wanted me to put together a mount kit for him identical to what I used, which I did. He started his own thread after he finished his project. He also used another set of g35 projector bowls for the lowers.

I am still very upset with the latest "aftermarket" lights that came out this week for our cars and am strongly re-thinking going into production and making REAL, luxury-sport headlights with proper components inside. It's just a lot to swallow when I have never started a business before and I am not sure if the demand is truly there or not Part of me thinks the guy with the el-cheapo headlights will succeed because that is what our cars have devolved into? I am torn on the subject.

 

damn I'd give a left nut to get these lamps... great job!!!

 

visibiliti, can you clear some room in your PM box? I wanna chat with you about this.

 

awesome lights

 

I highly recommend you take the plunge. You might strike a gold mine and we all know there's people out there willing to spend the coin on nice lights. Bring competition to the market with a quality product and I can almost guarantee you it will sell. It may not be as many as the "el cheapo" sets but it will. Due to the time involved, this may actually be a steady business. This thread really shows you got the skills (creativity to be exact) and the time that most of us wish we had. The business aspect will come with time and may take months or years to get settled in. Remember you will make mistakes in production, finances, customer service, shipping, marketing, and everything else that is involved. Just remember to learn from them to keep reshaping your business. All entrepreneurs go through this and periodically streamline their business. You might have to start small, doing a few sales here and there and then gradually increase production. Remember this: no company was ever started by NOT testing the waters.

 

Whether or not you are successful (profitable) will depend on many factors but a very important one is price. Many people's willingness to pay for quad projectors is not high enough given the cost of parts and hours of labor that goes into making a set. If you can somehow get your cost down I think there is a large market for this, but given the nature of making quad projectors its gonna be tough to cut down the labor hours that goes into making them.

 

I thought of doing quads all the time as well expecially since i do all other lighting retrofits but to me its not worth it really . There arent many people want to pay enough money to make anything . Theres a bunch of people that say they want it and ask tons of questions but when it come to actually doing they dont go thru with it . 1 customer every few months is not gonna make a successful business . Another thing to consisder is the amount of time it takes to make them . You will never get paid what there worth in labor .Then theres the fact that even a master at them will screw some thing up every once in a while costing you money . There is also the fact that people are gonna try biolding it themself . All in all a side job ok . As a steady business not so much

 

^ wow, I really appreciate all the discussion. Everyone brings up good points.

We'll see what my mind conjures up. I haven't been able to sleep well the past few nights- LOL!

 

This man speaks the truth. I was willing to start retrofitting based on the extreme interest that I got after doing this Suzuki SV650s retrofit. I even went so far to source the main parts from China and start importing them. Soon after my first big order I noticed the interest and enthusiasm would fade when it came to taking the plunge. I tried to put together kits, to remove the cost of entrance and research. I got a lot of feedback about wanting me to do it for them, but then the cost would be too high.

So, I just purchased a 04 G35 last Saturday and have some extra HID kits, FX-R projectors, relays, and side emitting led strips sitting around. So it looks like I will be joining the quad projector setup club over the next week or so. I'm trying to decide how I want to paint them, and will probably do the LED strips in the parking light slits if it looks good when I mock it up.

My car is silver, so I'm not sure if I want to go black yet. Something like a gunmetal color might be good if I can find it.