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DEPO OEM-Style Projector Headlamps -- Any interest?

Dpro

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Seems like none of the black ones have the DRL, but the $301 Hella's do have the LED's, but at that point that is about as expensive as the Euro OEM's and I hear Hella may be the manufacturer anyway, just depends on how much you want to spend and where... It's just that I'm on a budget and I hear that Depo are very good for the money and if all else fails stock replacements are cheap too, like $110-120 for certified aftermarket. My factory ones are way too beat up from trying many different bulbs and I even broke out the bulb holding section on the driver side when a cord got caught and have a bulb placed in there with caulking, LOL.
Make sense, in the BMW world the Depo are the cleap glass alternatives to real ZKW or Hellla’s for the M3’s as U.S. M3’s came with DOT plastice housing headlights( like everything else) that tend to cloud over time.
In the lighting world Depo are not known for being exceptional quailty just ok. Lots of people run them because you can get a pair for $200-300. Real M3 glass costs around $400 used or higher and you do not even want to know what factory European ones cost. Lol

My friend Mike Mamos who owns and runs Clearcorners.com frowns on Depo’s lol

If I get them I am not going to say anything because he will definitely rib me for running them,lol
 


danbfree

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I think on reddit that I read some people were ordering used headlight switches from the UK to and temporarily custom wiring them to our cars to electrically change the levels of the light. I'm considering going the projector route so I'll be researching this if I do.
It was actually a thread on here discussing that, think it was buried in the wiring harness thread somewhere...
 


danbfree

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Those Hella’s would be tight but the left hand drive version has the price jacked through the ceiling.

They are pretty equivelent or better than stock though .Hella is good lighting company.
Oh and why does Depo only have the black case ones without DRL?
Hella's are expensive because they are literally the manufacturer of the OEM, it has been said.. yes, black in projector would be great, but apparently VERY hard to find unless you went with the crazy halo ones from Asia...
 


danbfree

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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:
dot-ece-cutoff.jpg

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:

ece-cutoff-beam-300x225.jpg

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.
 


danbfree

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Justa quick update, the new Depo Euro projectors are amazing quality! They came close to aimed perfectly and have tons of vertical adjustment available with the one screw on each side. Only issue is that they, unlike Depo's of the past, do have the same wiring as OEM and TYC, so you do have to do a pin swap to get the LED strip to work. Also, since they are "halogen projectors" (blah, clash of good and bad there), LED's designed with halogen filament placement in mind work really well, HID's with the long bulb and capsule too far forward in the the projector do not.. but they also are FAR easier to upgrade the projector on with the butyl sealant that can be oven warmed and split with a Morimoto 4LR-R upgraded in easily, but with Katana H7 LED's I'm loving the clean output!
 


erikv

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Justa quick update, the new Depo Euro projectors are amazing quality! They came close to aimed perfectly and have tons of vertical adjustment available with the one screw on each side. Only issue is that they, unlike Depo's of the past, do have the same wiring as OEM and TYC, so you do have to do a pin swap to get the LED strip to work. Also, since they are "halogen projectors" (blah, clash of good and bad there), LED's designed with halogen filament placement in mind work really well, HID's with the long bulb and capsule too far forward in the the projector do not.. but they also are FAR easier to upgrade the projector on with the butyl sealant that can be oven warmed and split with a Morimoto 4LR-R upgraded in easily, but with Katana H7 LED's I'm loving the clean output!
Can you post the exact part numbers you ordered?
 


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Has anyone ordered the TYC headlights from the same site?
Yep. My drivers side TYC light worked great. My passenger side light wouldn't aim up or down so I had to email back and forth then finally uploaded a video to YouTube showing them the light wouldn't adjust and they shipped me a light that was actually aimed perfect. I didn't test its adjustment because I didn't want to mess it up lol.

I ordered the depo lights for this Fiesta (sold my last one because I'm a moron).
 


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