Hi

Thought this might be useful for non technical numptys like me wanting to fit UK OEM STi Subaru headlights to a bugeye WRX. These are the standard halogen units supplied to UK STis when new.

See pics at: SimmoSub - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

1. Lights from Subaru - £500. 48 hours from order to pick up.

2. You can't plug STi lights staright into a WRX loom without modification. so. either struggle yourself with bits of wire and solder or order a wiring loom adaptor from George at Chaoi Fang Imports in Canada.

Email: george.davies@ChaioFangImports.com. Pay george $75 USD - I used PayPal. Looks OEM, works perfrectly.

3. With wiring loom adaptor and lights ready remove grille and little panel bits either side of the grille. - Be careful when removing the grille as fixings are brittle. The top fixings were easy - puled out, there are two at teh bottoem, one eother end which could be relaeased wth a screw driver inserted through the dash. I used brute force and snapped one off....

4. Unbolt one light with a 10mm socket. 3 bolts, two at front, one on top.

5. Wiggle light free. Remove all elctrical connections once free - I found this tricky - the key is putting enough downward pressure on the plastic tab on the connector to release it once you do they it come out easily.

6. Connect new wiring loom to existing. There will be one connetion on the old loom that is left over - this is for the levelling fuction in your car, meant for adjusting lights when towing. Either order an additional wiring loom from George or live without it. If you want leveling you will also need to change the switch in the cabin - Subaru will supply or use a scrap item from another make of car - threads exist on this.

Worth noting you don't need the levelling unless you use it now for towing etc. To adjust beam pattern the lights can be adjusted manually. AT the back of the lights two white plastic adjusters: the bottom one is for the vertical adjustment, the top one is for the horizontal adjustment. I dod not need to adjust the new lights.

7. Check lights function OK then bolt in, put back grille and panels.

Are they any better than standard items? Yes a bit and full beam a lot. For me the real gain is how they look.

Cheers

Simmo

 

£530 approx

am i missing something?

headlights are headlights

 

Any ideas which harness you need for a UK WRX though?
George says he can provide them for:
- Bugeye STi without HID
- Bugeye STi without HID, but enabling so the main beam and dipped beam
(both high and low beam) stay on together.

It's not immediately obvious looking at the car with main beam and dipped headlamps whether both come on together (not without blinding myself anyhow!).

 

To follow up, apparently the standard UK STI models have both the dipped and main beam come on when you are on full beam - just an FYI to anyone else thinking of performing this swap.

 

The advantage of having dipped on at the same time as main beam is that it effectively "fills" the space from the front of the car up to the bottom of the main beam giving a lot more light on the road in near to middle distance. With the fog lights then converted to spot lights coming on with main beam you will have 320 watts of illumination [or even more if you put more powerful bulbs in: these are illegal I have to say but who is checking?] versus the 110 watts on main beam only.

 

Too true. I personally opted for the wrong harness from George and got one where both don't come on - just the main beam. However, to be fair, the main beam is still far better than the OEM WRX items, so it's not bothered me that much.

 

Simmo.

Which harness would i need to fit a 2002 WRX for these light?
And is this right that once in, ill have xenon light??

 

​​​​​​I have an rx model and the headlight connections seem to be completely different and they guy said I need a new harness. Can u tell me what I should do from here?