Hey guys,

WHO: Justin from http://www.advancedautomotiveconcepts.com/

Where should I even start… Lets start with what I wanted done:

Things I have included in this or these packages:
-1 set of G35 headlights(oem HID)(L+R) that I attempted to do my own angel eyes.
-1 set of G35 headlights(oem nonHID)(L+R) This is the set you should be sending back to me with everything on it
-1 set of G35 plastic outer covering with black(use to be silver) piece(L+R)
-1 set of E46 bixenon headlights with ballast, bezels, and bulb(I believe they are the 5300k)
-1 set of Stanley ballast(2) for the M45 projectors
-Lots of signal pieces that were from the other headlights that I took apart
-1 set of M45 projector with ballast with motors

What I want done on the headlight:
-Angel eyes hooked up to the parking light and installed.
-Paint the housing like the gloss black on my car. (paint code KH3 I believe)
-Clear the signal piece and put a plastic one there
-Use something like nail polish to rub off the layer of stuff that is in the inside of the plastic clear piece of the headlight. It makes the headlight look foggy later on.
-Please use the E46 bezels and projector for the top of the headlight. Please make the bixenon function work as well(please use the wiring for the “foglight/high beam” from the lower compartment.
-For the bezel, please use as much of it as you can for the upper portion of the headlight because it will match the M45 projector bezel. Please also cut out slits that already exist on the e46 bezel so that the light will shine through just like the M45 projector will.
-Please see if you guys can incorporate the motor for the M45, if not its ok.
-Please put a led or two inside the projector so that it will glow blue when the projector is not on (please wire this to the outside of the headlight and I will give it a power source of my own and have a separate switch for this function).
-Please leave the bezel pieces chrome unless you think I should paint it black.
-For the M45 projector plastic housing that covers up the bezel, you may choose to include that in the headlight or not. If you do, I think maybe then we should paint the bezels(e46 and M45 bezels) black. But one of the plastic housing for the M45 projector has a little crack on the edge.
-Please include the 6k D2S bulbs when you ship back the headlights.(For all Four projectors)
-Please include all the wiring harnesses and some instructions when you send the headlight back

That about sums up what I wanted done. What did I get?? Maybe 75% of the job that’s done right if that…

Sigh…

When I got my headlights back. There were things missing:

Both sets of ballast, a set of ignitors, my day time running lights cap. The rubber pieces for the light cap was missing(the rubber piece that keeps moisture and water out)

His response was that they were shipped separately.. HUH?? What is that? You can just package them and make it fit. The headlight came in a HUGE box. He could have shipped me everything at once. I am not complaining that much about this though.

Problems:

1. I told him it was ok to bolt on the E46 projectors and leave it stable. I admit that was totally my fault. I was dumb at the time and wanted the headlights back. He did a really bad job on this. The two projectors are not level and he said he will try to level hem. Ok my bad. Not much his fault I guess. More like my fault. But when he did this he drilled several holes in my headlight. What is this? I gave him an EXTRA set of headlights to experiment on… I also see lots of screw ends on the outside of my headlights. He also used self tapping screws that may come loose at one time. WHAT IS THIS!!! Some of the tapping screw ends are seen on the outside on the headlight.

2. Then when I opened up the top portion of my headlight, I see that there was a bulb in there and NO IGNITOR. How am I suppose to put an igniter there and close the cap? ITS IMPOSSIBLE. What was he thinking?? He seems to think that its ok to leave the cap open and leave a gap?? If someone is going to do something and get paid for it, think ahead and do it right or tell me he can’t do it at ALL!!!

His response: That will have to be assesed once the lights are in the [Car]

WHAT!!! This should have been in the headlight so that the caps stay on the headlight.

3. There were LOTS of random holes that he made and DID NOT COVER THEM!!! Also there were lots of holes that were drilled for wiring, and those holes were bigger than the wires and there were no attempts at sealing those holes either. And there were other holes and it seems like it wasn’t drilled…

His response was “we rerouted the wires to make them cleaner at one point, I must not have sealed the holes,”

My response to that is, its still a mess now! When he showed me pics I thought that may be the wiring harness that was shown in the pic that he did but I guess I was WRONG! The wiring should be kept inside and come out all at once.

4. next for the m45 projector. Not much complaint here. He did what I asked. Don’t know if its movable for angle adjustment. BUT he glued in the bulbs. What is that?? What if I wanted to change the bulb??

His response: Xenon bulbs dont have filaments so they should outlast the car,

My response: what if I want to switch back to 4100k bulbs if I get caught? I CANT!!!!!!!!!

5. He told me that he had polished the inside and outside of the plastic clear piece of the headlight. This was evident in the driver’s side but in the passenger side when I fired up the headlight, there were still oem fog haze on the clear plastic piece. Again, it was not well done and it looked like a half A$$ job.

6. Even their own angel eye job was messed up. One side already came off. Its already apart from the headlight. On the same headlight, there is a part where he put too much glue and it dried up there and shows in the headlight.

His response: I see that in the pics, if it is just one side you may want to send it back. Not sure why that happened.

That’s great and all but why couldn’t this be prevented the first time. What guarantee do I have that the passenger one won’t come off also? It may just be a matter of time. I do not want this back and forth and reopening of the headlights everytime something comes apart.

He’s had 2 months to do these headlights. That’s a while… He even told me that this was the cleanest headlight he has done….. OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whats good:

The mounting of the ignitor of the E46 projector outside of the headlight underneath of the fog light was great. No complaints there..

He integrated the motor that I wanted on the m45. The paint looks good except for the fact that its getting scraped off at the corners of the plastic bezel.

Tried the motor at no extra cost.

Very nice to the client except his response is slow.

Pricing isn’t bad either but the job was not very well done.

The seal of the headlight is done right. Seems like it was machine pressed but I have not tried to wash them or anything BECAUSE there are random holes in my headlights that was not covered.

Bottom line. Don’t get it “PROFESSIONALLY” installed at aacstyles.com with Justin unless its something really simple but even that I wouldn’t. Another owner had LOTS of problems like me and he will soon post about this I am guessing. This is the worst experience I’ve ever had.. Or maybe its just me and I was being a perfectionist. Let me know what you think guys…

I doubt I can get a refund cause he actually did work on the headlight. What shall I do guys?? I doubt I can salvage it. Time and money was wasted now… should I just give up??

basically he's going to pin on me that i told him to mount the E46 stable. yea i know my fault. i admit it but everything else was a mess. Wiring, holes, angel eye falling off, no wiring harness..... not professional...

PICS: http://www.imagestation.com/album/pi...il-AlbumInvite

Ed Lin

 

that sucks to hear

 

wow, im sorry to hear that man

those headlights wouldve been awesome though

 

sucks bro.......

 

Argh, makes me worry about mine...
Although I am having them done at a different place...
But basically the same kind of mods...

 

wow. this is not good. i thought they would have provided some top quality service, but this is definitely not good for their reputation. one thing i do hope is that they make things right with your case to show that they'll do the right thing when problems like this arise. good luck ed!

 

Sorry to hear about it Ed.

Ed came over to my house yesterday, so that I could examine the lights first hand. As many of you know, I've done a few retrofits, my latest here.

https://g35driver.com/forums/showthr...light=tsx+quad

I'm not good at electronics, otherwise I would help Ed make the lights a little cleaner. I did recommend to the one guy that I think clearly does better retrofits than me, if you guys are on hidforum, you'll know who I'm taking about (littodevil). This guy only uses Stanley projectors (S2000, LS430, TSX, TL), and converted the LS430 projectors to bixenons. Just about all his retrofits are quad projectors now, and he's able to achieve perfect aim everytime with a built in rotational adjustment screw. He's also redone several retrofits for others. Unfortunately, he didn't think he could redo this one, after looking at the pics.

I haven't ever looked at the sedan lights closely, but it would be very hard to fit projectors in the low beam section. Ed's using a 3" projector for the top, after thinking about his situation, I think a 2.5" projector would probably be a better choice. The bezel was significantly cutting out the foreground lighting when we fired up the lights yesterday (this isn't anyone's fault, BTW).

What Ed's talking about with Problem #2 is that there was no room for the HID bulb plug once the dust cap is on. The end of the bulb itself, even without the wire plug, is already nearly touching the dust cap.

This is my own light, obviously, but it shows how little room I had once the HID plug was placed onto the bulb.

There's not much room behind the headlights even in stock form, as you start hitting the fenderliner. Even with this profile, I had problems with the second ballast plug touching the fenderliner:


In terms of Problem #1, ideally one would use bolts/nuts/washers. No one can get the aiming perfect the first time around, so you'll need some ability to adjust the projectors. With the TSX projectors on my car, this is how I mounted them:


It then bolts onto the stock metal bracket just like if you were putting back the stock reflector:


Quad projectors is more involved than just putting in twice the amount of projectors. Aiming is critical, especially if you use projectors with sharp cutoffs. If all four Z patterns are random with respect to each other, or if the cutoffs are all slightly rotated at different random angles, the beam pattern will look horrible.

It's very hard to ensure perfect aim unless you have access to the car on which the lights are going. I remember on the website for another professional retrofitting place that had a disclaimer that unless the cutoff is off by 15 degrees or more, they're not responsible. I showed Ed the method I used yesterday that ensures just about a perfectly level beam pattern while adjusting the lights in my living room.

It took me one week just to aim my 4 projectors, making sure that the Z cutoff of the TSX sat right above the TL on both sides. Even then, when I mounted the lights, the passenger TL was too low (fixed, since that time).

In summary: Quad projectors = more than double the work. However, end result is that you have brighter lights than anyone on the road.

(not trying to hijack thread, Ed and I are on the same level of understanding via PM)

 

wow e_k, that is really clean! I hope you wont mind too much when I attempt to drag you out of retirement later on

i must admit after seeing ed's headlights in person, it seems that the guy who worked on it just dove in hacking away at it without a well thought out plan. from a distance the headlights look alright, but up close, its obvious that not only was it poorly thought out, but also no attempt was made to make it clean.

 

Damn Ed, sorry to hear all that went wrong, i was really looking forward to seeing the new lights on the car, i geuss that cant happen now. That's too bad cause i was going to get my lights done at aac too, definitely not now. Hope it all works out for you.
-GP-

 

so www.advancedautomotiveconcepts.com is garbage?does anyone else do retrofits?

 

Ed,

To just bolt the projectors without any sort of glue/loctite holding the bolt/nuts in place is a VERY bad idea. Overtime vibration will completely undo everything. I bolted my projectors in place for aiming purposes only. Once I was done aiming I JB welded all the bolts in addition to JB welding the projector body to the mounting points.

Wow...that is just wrong.

This is inexcusable. Your headlight from the factory is not air tight. However, by opening up more air you will be upsetting the moisture balance within the headlight. I am willing to bet you will have condensation problems.

That is the most ridculous thing I have heard. HID bulbs DO burn out, you will need to have the ability to change them in the future. Also, they will color shift as time goes on which will cause a drop in output. I am shocked that a "professional" would do something like this.

Angel eyes on a Nissan... no comment

From looking at the pictures you posted I think you shoulld ask for all your money back + a set of stock headlights.

 

Pete, it wasn't just an issue of no loctite or glue, it was the screws just being screwed into the black plastic of the housing. You know those screws meant for woodworking with a pointed tip, and widely spaced out threads? Those were used, and you can see the sharp tips coming out of the headlight housing. You can't even secure them with nuts.

I used a combination of locknuts and red loctite for securing the projectors in my latest project.

 

that sux bro, hope he steps up and refunds u your money and takes care of all the damage

 

Wow, even worse. How can anyone think that would be secure enough?! They must flicker like crazy when driving down the road. Horrible, just horrible.

Ed, if you don't mind me asking. How much did you pay for this?

 

i remember a few people had good experiences with these guys...have the owners changed?

i was going to use them..but kinda shaky now...