I spent awhile tonight dissecting one of my ACA headlights to see if there was a way to modify it so that the high beams work properly. Took a few hours of playing around, but I think I got it working decently well now. I still have to do the passenger side and then adjust the two of them again, but so far things look like they went pretty well.

The HID assembly is held on to the main housing by 4 screws, and then the HID part itself is pretty much held together with a few more screws and silicone.



The cutoff is just a piece of metal that is sandwiched in between the other components and again held in with the screws and silicone.





My approach was to trim the cutoff so that I could slide it "up" higher, which would actually lower the cutoff allowing the entire headlight to be adjusted higher so the high beams don't point down. I did this with a bench grinder since I was too lazy to dig out the dremel. You can see how much higher the cutoff is sitting in the opening.



I then siliconed it in place, and cut a piece of aluminum foil and used silicone to hold that across the gap created at the bottom from the bulb side of the assembly. It's not the prettiest, but it serves its purpose.



Then everything was reassembled as before and mounted back in the car.





I did a little quick adjusting and took it out to test things. The modified light is on the left and the ACA as shipped is on the right. The first picture I took was of the low beams. Notice both are adjusted with the cutoff relatively close to each other.



Then the high beams... Notice the right side high beam isn't even visible as it's pointing so close to the front of the car while the left side is quite visible. And this was with both low beams adjusted to the same cutoff height.



Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to finish the other side and get all the adjustments figured out, and hopefully this encourages anyone else brave enough with this problem to do some modifications of their own.

Chris

 

wow dude, that's some major surgery.

can you also post pics of the beam against your garage?

also, do you find you need to use your high beams a lot?

 

I'll attempt to get one tomorrow. Where I have my car parked there's no flat wall in front, and to get it to one would require a lot of moving cars around and noise, which the neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate...

I don't need to use them a lot, but I sometimes find myself on roads where it would be nice to be able to see a little farther. And besides, for what these cost, they should work.

 

Nice work,

Would like to see pics on a wall at a distance

 

Looking at it again today there is a slight drop in brightness from modifying the lamp. Most noticeably you lose the "hot spot" in the center of the beam. I'm going to try to do the other headlight differently and see if I can avoid the problem. It's going to be pretty cold tonight, so I'm not quite sure how much I will get done, but no matter what, I will post results when I have them.

Chris

 

Good info

Chuck

 

I solved that "problem" by installing the bi-xenon upgrade projectors into my ACA housings.

the bi-xenon projectors have a solenoid that lifts the cutoff when high beams are turned on.

 

yet you dont share pics or details.

 

Need info on these

 

Would like to know also

 

sorry guys..........
I didn't take any pics of the upgrade.
but basically you remove the ACA housings from the car, remove the "old" projectors from the housings and bolt in the new bi-xenon projectors.
then replace the "old" wiring harnesses with the new ones supplied (the old ACA wiring harnesses won't work with the new bi-xenon projectors).

then re-aim the headlights.

piece of cake!

I have no idea how you guys can get this "upgrade", because I got it from a former member that was selling the ACA HID kits originally
(Thanks Brian!), and I haven't heard if any of the current vendors are offering the bi-xenon upgrade for the ACA kits.
so good luck on finding it.