LED halo install question
12-23-2012, 11:05 PM
#1
Intermediate
Thread Starter
Member Since: Jun 2012
Posts: 33
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
LED halo install question
Been a while since I've needed some insight from everyone and I'm almost done building up my stockpile of car parts for my car build...BUT, I'm thinking of installing Oracle colorshift halo's in the headlights and wasn't sure if anyone else has done this install themselves or had it professionally installed? This is basically the last mod I'll do to the car once I have the motor built this summer. Any tips, tricks, help is greatly appreciated. 
(I've watched a couple youtube vids of people baking their headlights to pop the assemblies apart but this was for those cars that run coffee can mufflers and sound like a pissed off weed eater. Not exactly the people I trust for how-to tips.)
(I've watched a couple youtube vids of people baking their headlights to pop the assemblies apart but this was for those cars that run coffee can mufflers and sound like a pissed off weed eater. Not exactly the people I trust for how-to tips.)
12-28-2012, 08:33 PM
#4
Advanced
Member Since: Jun 2006
Location: Jacksonville Florida
Posts: 70
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes
on
2 Posts
I was searching for some wiring advice on my project but I came across your post and thought I would let you know what I have learned from the same project. I started this about three weeks ago. I have had the Oracle color shift LED Halo’s sitting in the garage for 6 months but I was dreading the headlight baking and the tear down of the front end to get them out. So I finally went ahead and went for it.
My headlight lenses needed replacing so that is what started the whole process. I figured since I had to take the lenses out anyway I might as well install some Halos. I read some posts up about people taking the headlights out for this process and although one post the guy did it without removing the front bumper he just pulled everything away from the headlights I decided to remove the front bumper shell. So basically I removed the wheels, front inner fender wells, lower rubber air dam (all 3 pieces), release the screws on top of the bumper and the top of the fenders, then took the front bumper cover off. There are some posts on the site with detailed information on how to do all that so I am not being very detailed on it. It’s pretty straight forward, lots of pushpins.
Once everything was apart from below the headlights, which you can now get to with the fender wells, I removed there are three nuts to take off that hold the headlights in place. Then you pull up on the fender that you loosened during the bumper removal to give you enough room to lift the studs on the bottom of the headlight out of their mounting holes and pull the headlight forward and up. Now you can’t move it far because it is still plugged in, so then you unplug it and you can pull it all the way out.
From there you will remove the rubber gaskets that mate the headlight to the body panels. My car is 6 years old and if yours is like mine just order another set now because they are dry and will rip as soon as you try and take them off. Then you need to remove all of the lights, wires, ballast, and screws from the headlight. I pretty much took everything off that I could. The wires will only come out of the hole that the outside plug in for the light is and there is a clip on the inside holding these in place that you have to stick a screwdriver through the hole where the ballast is and pry off. As far as the baking process goes I read a lot posts for different kinds of cars and lights for this process. One post or article I read said 400 degrees but that is for replacement of the lenses because that much heat clouds them. I settled on a much more conservative 250 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. I let the oven heat up to temperature first and then put a cookie sheet on the rack and placed the headlight on top of that. Prying the lenses off is a delicate procedure; all the way around the headlight are tabs on the lenses that fit into tab slots on the headlight bucket. These are what held the lens in place while the original sealant cured with no clamps. Do your best not to break them but if you do its ok because you can just clamp the lens during the cure time. However you will need 4 or 5 clamps. Just slowly work your way around the light prying a little at a time until you get the lens off. I would say this took about 10 to 15 minutes per headlight. The harder part is getting that darn sealant out of the groove around the headlight. This took about 3 hours with multiple trips back to the oven as the buckets cooled. I pretty much just kept rotating them in and out of the oven while I worked on the other one. The good news is if you are doing the fog lights also as I did the sealant in those is much easier to deal with.
Once the headlight is finished and the sealant is out remove the 3 screws that are holding the inner colored headlight panel to the lens. Then remove the chrome rings for the high and the low beam from the colored panel, these are where you will mount the halos to. My halos came with some 3m tape on them to hold them in place however since the rings are beveled at the end I didn’t think this was enough surface area to hold them in place, especially in an area that I can’t get back into to fix easily. So I took the 3m table off and went with epoxy. But before I get to that you have to prep the ring for the wire. On the bottom side of the ring I drilled a hole just big enough to get the wire for the LED through just off center so it doesn’t get in the way of the alignment tag on the rings that you will see when you take them off. On the LED’s I also cut off the wire tie that they wrapped around the wire and circuit board for the halos so that I could flatten the wires out and they would look better. Test fit everything as you go so you know how it goes together before you start the epoxy. For epoxy I was using Loctite 1 minute fast set. It’s a plunger 2 part epoxy set up but the nice part is it has mixing tips so the epoxy is ready to go as it come out. I put all 4 lights led side down and one at a time added a small bead of epoxy all the way around. Then I held the chrome ring directly in the center with the wire hole lined up and gave it a few seconds to set. If you are using the fast set of epoxy like I did it will take more than one kit because it will set up in the mixing tube but if you use the longer set time you have to figure out how to hold the ring in the center of the led while it sets and you move on to the next one. The led ring will overlap slightly on both sides of the chrome ring so what I did for extra security is put another bead of epoxy around the inside of each ring after they were stuck down. You do have to do all of this sparingly of course because you don’t want a mess or the epoxy on the front of the LED ring. After that I pulled the wires through the holes in the ring and then hotwired the controller to a battery and the lights to the controller to make sure everything was still working. I actually started this type of testing from the start before the epoxy. Keep testing them throughout the process the last thing you want is something not to work once you have sealed the headlights back up. Once you know that the LED’s are working then reinstall the chrome ring into the colored panel. For the wires on the inside I wanted keep the wires as far away from the headlights as possible for heat so I used the aluminum duct tape to neatly tape the wires to the back of the colored panel and toward the front of the light. I also took the two sets of wires and soldered them together so there was only one set of wires to deal with coming out. For the exit coming out of the light beside the hole where the original plug in is I drilled a hole large enough for the wires to come out and epoxied the hole with the wire coming from the two LED’s through it to seal it back up. I wanted the lights to still be able to come out so I ordered a set of waterproof automotive style connectors from Summit (Casper electronics is who makes the set) and I added one of those to the wire coming out leaving about 4 inches of wire coming out before the connector. By the way if you want to go with the waterproof connectors the kit is the way to go. I couldn’t find this style of connector for below about $16 each and the kit was about $80 and gives you enough connectors to do lots of projects.
Once all the wiring is done then it’s time to put the headlights back together. If you can, blow out the buckets and the color panel with air. Then clean the inside of your lens for fingerprints and dirt reassemble the color panel back on the lens and then you are ready to seal the light back up. The sealant that came with my new lenses was PL Premium and it is available from Home Depot. Don’t be afraid to put a good solid bead of sealant in the channel around the headlight bucket it’s going to squeeze out but it’s not visible when the headlight is in the car. I clamped my headlights using 4 or 5 Erwin Quick clamps and let them set for the full 24 hour cure time. When I came back they seem pretty rock solid. When putting the rubber gasket back on the headlights it took me some time to figure out which way they went on but from what I can tell they will only go on one way and still have all the holes in them match up to the correct connection spots on the headlight bucket.
From there it’s just a matter of putting the headlights back in the car; reassembling the fenders, bumper, wheel liners, etc. I am at the stage where I put the bumper back on and I built my wiring harness. Since I also adding the halos to the fog lights I have two connectors on each side so I built a harness that had two connectors on each side those come together and run one wire up the passenger side to the fuse box. That is one wire being the four wires together red, blue, green, and black. By the way since the color shifting controller is not waterproof and you need to be able to get to the buttons anyway so I am working on mounting it in the cockpit. This leads me too you will need more wire than what the LED’s come with. I order 30 feet of the RGB Led wire off Amazon for about $25.
So that brings me to why I was searching about halos. I want to wire the halos to be on a switched power source so they just come on when I turn the car on and I was seeing if anyone had any suggestions. I was thinking on the same circuit as the daytime running lights however I don’t see any circuits marked DRL in the fuse box. Does anyone have any suggestions? It doesn’t have to be for just halo’s what has anyone used for a switched power source when hooking up their electronics?
By the way I have hotwired my controller with all 6 halos on the car since I got the bumper back on and they are incredible. Very bright and they look awesome but it has been a lot of work. If I breezed over anything that you need more detailed information on just ask, I would be happy to help. Sorry but I didn't take any pictures of the internals of the lights or process, I was just tying to get it done and not screw it up. LOL.
My headlight lenses needed replacing so that is what started the whole process. I figured since I had to take the lenses out anyway I might as well install some Halos. I read some posts up about people taking the headlights out for this process and although one post the guy did it without removing the front bumper he just pulled everything away from the headlights I decided to remove the front bumper shell. So basically I removed the wheels, front inner fender wells, lower rubber air dam (all 3 pieces), release the screws on top of the bumper and the top of the fenders, then took the front bumper cover off. There are some posts on the site with detailed information on how to do all that so I am not being very detailed on it. It’s pretty straight forward, lots of pushpins.
Once everything was apart from below the headlights, which you can now get to with the fender wells, I removed there are three nuts to take off that hold the headlights in place. Then you pull up on the fender that you loosened during the bumper removal to give you enough room to lift the studs on the bottom of the headlight out of their mounting holes and pull the headlight forward and up. Now you can’t move it far because it is still plugged in, so then you unplug it and you can pull it all the way out.
From there you will remove the rubber gaskets that mate the headlight to the body panels. My car is 6 years old and if yours is like mine just order another set now because they are dry and will rip as soon as you try and take them off. Then you need to remove all of the lights, wires, ballast, and screws from the headlight. I pretty much took everything off that I could. The wires will only come out of the hole that the outside plug in for the light is and there is a clip on the inside holding these in place that you have to stick a screwdriver through the hole where the ballast is and pry off. As far as the baking process goes I read a lot posts for different kinds of cars and lights for this process. One post or article I read said 400 degrees but that is for replacement of the lenses because that much heat clouds them. I settled on a much more conservative 250 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. I let the oven heat up to temperature first and then put a cookie sheet on the rack and placed the headlight on top of that. Prying the lenses off is a delicate procedure; all the way around the headlight are tabs on the lenses that fit into tab slots on the headlight bucket. These are what held the lens in place while the original sealant cured with no clamps. Do your best not to break them but if you do its ok because you can just clamp the lens during the cure time. However you will need 4 or 5 clamps. Just slowly work your way around the light prying a little at a time until you get the lens off. I would say this took about 10 to 15 minutes per headlight. The harder part is getting that darn sealant out of the groove around the headlight. This took about 3 hours with multiple trips back to the oven as the buckets cooled. I pretty much just kept rotating them in and out of the oven while I worked on the other one. The good news is if you are doing the fog lights also as I did the sealant in those is much easier to deal with.
Once the headlight is finished and the sealant is out remove the 3 screws that are holding the inner colored headlight panel to the lens. Then remove the chrome rings for the high and the low beam from the colored panel, these are where you will mount the halos to. My halos came with some 3m tape on them to hold them in place however since the rings are beveled at the end I didn’t think this was enough surface area to hold them in place, especially in an area that I can’t get back into to fix easily. So I took the 3m table off and went with epoxy. But before I get to that you have to prep the ring for the wire. On the bottom side of the ring I drilled a hole just big enough to get the wire for the LED through just off center so it doesn’t get in the way of the alignment tag on the rings that you will see when you take them off. On the LED’s I also cut off the wire tie that they wrapped around the wire and circuit board for the halos so that I could flatten the wires out and they would look better. Test fit everything as you go so you know how it goes together before you start the epoxy. For epoxy I was using Loctite 1 minute fast set. It’s a plunger 2 part epoxy set up but the nice part is it has mixing tips so the epoxy is ready to go as it come out. I put all 4 lights led side down and one at a time added a small bead of epoxy all the way around. Then I held the chrome ring directly in the center with the wire hole lined up and gave it a few seconds to set. If you are using the fast set of epoxy like I did it will take more than one kit because it will set up in the mixing tube but if you use the longer set time you have to figure out how to hold the ring in the center of the led while it sets and you move on to the next one. The led ring will overlap slightly on both sides of the chrome ring so what I did for extra security is put another bead of epoxy around the inside of each ring after they were stuck down. You do have to do all of this sparingly of course because you don’t want a mess or the epoxy on the front of the LED ring. After that I pulled the wires through the holes in the ring and then hotwired the controller to a battery and the lights to the controller to make sure everything was still working. I actually started this type of testing from the start before the epoxy. Keep testing them throughout the process the last thing you want is something not to work once you have sealed the headlights back up. Once you know that the LED’s are working then reinstall the chrome ring into the colored panel. For the wires on the inside I wanted keep the wires as far away from the headlights as possible for heat so I used the aluminum duct tape to neatly tape the wires to the back of the colored panel and toward the front of the light. I also took the two sets of wires and soldered them together so there was only one set of wires to deal with coming out. For the exit coming out of the light beside the hole where the original plug in is I drilled a hole large enough for the wires to come out and epoxied the hole with the wire coming from the two LED’s through it to seal it back up. I wanted the lights to still be able to come out so I ordered a set of waterproof automotive style connectors from Summit (Casper electronics is who makes the set) and I added one of those to the wire coming out leaving about 4 inches of wire coming out before the connector. By the way if you want to go with the waterproof connectors the kit is the way to go. I couldn’t find this style of connector for below about $16 each and the kit was about $80 and gives you enough connectors to do lots of projects.
Once all the wiring is done then it’s time to put the headlights back together. If you can, blow out the buckets and the color panel with air. Then clean the inside of your lens for fingerprints and dirt reassemble the color panel back on the lens and then you are ready to seal the light back up. The sealant that came with my new lenses was PL Premium and it is available from Home Depot. Don’t be afraid to put a good solid bead of sealant in the channel around the headlight bucket it’s going to squeeze out but it’s not visible when the headlight is in the car. I clamped my headlights using 4 or 5 Erwin Quick clamps and let them set for the full 24 hour cure time. When I came back they seem pretty rock solid. When putting the rubber gasket back on the headlights it took me some time to figure out which way they went on but from what I can tell they will only go on one way and still have all the holes in them match up to the correct connection spots on the headlight bucket.
From there it’s just a matter of putting the headlights back in the car; reassembling the fenders, bumper, wheel liners, etc. I am at the stage where I put the bumper back on and I built my wiring harness. Since I also adding the halos to the fog lights I have two connectors on each side so I built a harness that had two connectors on each side those come together and run one wire up the passenger side to the fuse box. That is one wire being the four wires together red, blue, green, and black. By the way since the color shifting controller is not waterproof and you need to be able to get to the buttons anyway so I am working on mounting it in the cockpit. This leads me too you will need more wire than what the LED’s come with. I order 30 feet of the RGB Led wire off Amazon for about $25.
So that brings me to why I was searching about halos. I want to wire the halos to be on a switched power source so they just come on when I turn the car on and I was seeing if anyone had any suggestions. I was thinking on the same circuit as the daytime running lights however I don’t see any circuits marked DRL in the fuse box. Does anyone have any suggestions? It doesn’t have to be for just halo’s what has anyone used for a switched power source when hooking up their electronics?
By the way I have hotwired my controller with all 6 halos on the car since I got the bumper back on and they are incredible. Very bright and they look awesome but it has been a lot of work. If I breezed over anything that you need more detailed information on just ask, I would be happy to help. Sorry but I didn't take any pictures of the internals of the lights or process, I was just tying to get it done and not screw it up. LOL.
The following users liked this post:
wildunko (04-19-2020)
12-29-2012, 01:11 AM
#7
Supporting Vendor
Member Since: Sep 2007
Location: Pensacola Florida GO GATORS!!! www.rlsebring.com www.c6c7vette.com
Posts: 11,216
Received 174 Likes
on
92 Posts
St. Jude Donor '17
The easiest way to wire to come on when the car is turned on is a switched fuse in the underhood fuse box. If you wire into the DRL you'll lose the current when the DRL switches at night (or day depending on which leg uou are wired into)
Nice write up BTW.
Nice write up BTW.
12-29-2012, 07:21 AM
#8
Advanced
Member Since: Jun 2006
Location: Jacksonville Florida
Posts: 70
Likes: 0
Received 2 Likes
on
2 Posts
RL,Thanks for reminding me I forgot that the DRLs turned off at night. I was planning on wiring into the fuse box but I am still trying to figure out which fuse, do you have any suggestions?
12-29-2012, 11:46 AM
#9
Supporting Vendor
Member Since: Sep 2007
Location: Pensacola Florida GO GATORS!!! www.rlsebring.com www.c6c7vette.com
Posts: 11,216
Received 174 Likes
on
92 Posts
St. Jude Donor '17
I've had many customers that wired into a switched fuse in the underhood box but didn't think to ask. Might be able to tell from the labeling but certainly with a meter.
01-03-2013, 11:27 PM
#10
Former Vendor
RLSebring makes some very cool halos and I'd get with him on those as they are perfect fits and look awesome on my car. As for where to tap power... in the fuse box under the hood there is a bolt you can use and I think you'll need a 10mm bolt. From there you'll need a ground and if you look straight down on the frame you'll see a 7mm screw I think, you can use that.
01-04-2013, 07:03 PM
#11
Intermediate
Thread Starter
Member Since: Jun 2012
Posts: 33
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Andrew, doc, RL, thank you all for the info. Doc especially for one heck of a write up. That helped me a lot as far as how long to bake the headlight assemblies and potential disassembly issues. All of it was great info, actually. Above and beyond what I expected for an answer. Thank you all once again, you guys are awesome. Haha
01-06-2013, 09:53 PM
#12
Heel & Toe
Member Since: Oct 2010
Location: Glassboro N. J.
Posts: 17
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I have read that a lot of other customers have had a lot of problems with the halos. I have checked other websites that belong to mopar products and have had issues with their lights and customer service.
01-08-2013, 08:26 AM
#15
Former Vendor
I will say I have seen Rlseabrings work and have them on my car and they are flawless.
Last edited by Andrew6@TheDoubleAA; 01-08-2013 at 11:49 AM.
01-08-2013, 11:07 AM
#17
Former Vendor