DIY: Installing GT86 Headlamps on your FR-S

[tbwoodlee]

Installing GT86 Headlamps on your FR-S

This is going to be quick and dirty I wish I could provide more pictures for you, but I don't have time to take off my bumper. If you have questions feel free to respond and I will do my best to help you.

I am not a mechanic, nor am I an electrician; I am just an enthusiast. This information here is presented as a way to help out with your headlamp installation. If you don't feel comfortable doing this DIY do not do it! These headlamps are too expensive to risk damaging them. To my knowledge the only way to damage the lamps is by leaving the DRL resistor plugged in once you have it tapped into your lights. However, I cannot be held responsible if something goes wrong. Do this at your own risk. Some one on this forum once said that if you read and research a project and still have doubts about doing it, don't try it!

Prep Work
Before you get started make sure you have electrical wire (I used white to match the GT86 pin) and male and female bullet connections. These can be purchased from your local auto parts store. I purchased mine from Auto Zone. Here is an example what you want

You will also want some splice terminals: Example Here

Other things we need
Wire strippers
Pliers to close the splice terminals
Wire crimpers to secure the bullet connections
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Install-Bay-Heat-Shrink-Tubing/dp/B0053PYD3W/ref=sr_1_7?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1371686645&sr= 1-7"]Heat Shrink tubing [/ame]

Black Zip ties for clean up
Black Electrical tape.

Make sure you have all of this before you remove your bumper and headlights, you won't be able to drive out buy this unless you have another car (I did not have that luxury )
If this is starting to overwhelm you, don't worry, its really not that difficult. If I can do it anyone can.

Bumper and Headlamp Removal
1) Let's get that bumper off first. Follow the first part of @DarrenDriven DIY posted here:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8788

2) Continue to follow his DIY about removing the Headlights.

Removing the Electrical Harnesses
3) Once you have the headlights out, you want to remove the Harness. Take both of the bulbs out of your headlamp so you have the Harness and the two bulbs, place your old lights to side, we don't need those guys anymore.

4) You want to remove the black harness from the wiring and the old bulbs. If you look inside the harness itself, you will see little tabs for each pin. Use a small flat head screw driver to lift the tabs up. You can then pull the pins out of the harness.

5) Once you have your FR-S harness removed from the bulbs place them to the side for now. You won't need the old electrical wires or the bulbs

6) We want to remove the new GT86 harnesses the same as we did the previous harnesses on the FR-S.

Repinning the electrical harnesses
7) Now we just need to get FR-S harnesses on the GT-86 Headlamps by repinning the 86 wires in the FR-S harness.

Do this by following wiring in my pictures below. If you will notice the GT86 headlamps have 7 wires, and the FR-S harness only supports 6 pins. Don't worry, we will cover this shortly.

8) Repin the top three pins of the FR-S harness, match your harness to mine below: (Make sure the little tabs in the harness is still lifted. Once the new pin is in the harness press it to the closed position)

***The side of the harness has a top and bottom and it is important to match your harness with mine. Each side is cosmetically different though, so it should be easy to figure out which side is which***


You will notice you have two black wires, for this row you want the thinner black wire.

If you care about the wires actually do:
the blue wire is High Beam bulb position actuator GND
the thinner black wire is LED Common GND
the green wire is LED Low

9) Now that top harness is pinned, flip it over and wire it as I have wired the harness below:


Again if you care about what the wires do:
the pink/red wire is HID Ballast 12V +
the thicker black wire is HID Ballast GND
the yellow wire is High Beam bulb position actuator 12+

Do this for both Headlamps

*** At this point you can take your headlamps out to your car and plug the harnesses back in to their counterparts and test them out. If pinned correctly you will have functioning low beams and high beams. However the DRL's will not light up. ***

*** You will probably hear a high pitched humming. That is the sound of the ballast warming up, it is normal. This freaked me out at first and I was convinced I did something wrong. I wasted a good hour researching the noise ***

Wiring the DRLs

10) Now you have your harness pinned but we have a wire left over and not in the harness. That wire is for your DRL LED's. We want those guys to light up, after all they are the coolest part of the light!
@Moto-P explains how to do this by stating:

To wire the DRL properly, pull the DRL resistor located on the right front bumper just below the horn assembly. Tap into the live 12V side of the harness and leave the resistor unplugged so it does not feed the high beam actuator in the Japanese assembly.

Take the live side tapped wire to the LED high 12V wire on the Japanese headlight assembly so you get full 12V, and at the same time leave the socket off the resistor so it does not feed the High Beam actuator with attenuated voltage that normally powers the FRS high side halogen... (yes I said this twice to remind you)...

**I'd just simply remove this resistor altogether as you don't want a shop or dealer plugging it back in. The FRS only needs it so it can under-drive a halogen lamp on high beam at lower voltage during DRL. The Japanese system does not use it, as it has a LED array that is designed for this, separate from the HID high beam.

To simplify this a bit, you are looking for this:


Unplug it and remove it. If it is left plugged up bad things will happen. You don't have to remove it, but doing so ensures anyone working on your car will not plug it back in thinking they are helping when they are actually doing harm. It will fry your LED's and you will be out lots of money! Again, at the very least, make sure this is unplugged!

DRL for Passenger HeadLamp
11) Get your spare wire and measure out enough length to reach from DRL resistor to the passenger side light. Go ahead and install a female bullet connector on one end of the wire. Put the heat shrinking tube on the wire as well.

12) Now we want to tap into the live 12V side of the DRL resistor harness with the other end of the custom DRL wire using a splice terminal. Put your custom wire into the back part of the terminal, you will notice it will only slide so far into the terminal.

Now place the live 12V in the terminal, it will run all the through the terminal. Make sure the wires are secure in the terminal and press the metal sliding piece of the terminal down until it is flush with the rest of the blue terminal housing. Fold the little flap over to snap the terminal in place and secure it.

13) Now we need to connect this to the GT86 Headlamps. We want to remove the pin on the white wire and replace it with a male bullet connector.


14) Once your GT86 white wire is pinned with a male bullet connector, plug the custom DRL wire into the the GT86 light. You can test the headlamp out now. The Passenger lamp should be fully functional with high beams/low beams, and DRLs.

*** You can see a brief example of my pinned DRL line in the upper right of the second picture above ***

DRL for driver's side headlamp
15) The last step is to get the driver's side headlamp DRL wired. Repeat the process from the past few steps. Measure out wire long enough to reach from your custom DRL wire for the left headlamp to the driver's side head lamp.

16) Put a female bullet connect on the Head lamp end, and splice the other end into your custom DRL line you ran previously. Use another splice terminal for this. Don't forget to put some heat shrink tubing on this wire as well.

17) Remove the pin from the white GT86 head lamp wire and replace it with a male bullet connector.


18) Connect the bullet connectors for the driver's side headlamp.

*** Both lights should be functional now. If they both work continue with the clean up steps below ***

Clean up
19) Let's do a little clean up now. I wrapped all my splice terminals in electrical tape. Zip tie your DRL lines so they are hidden and out of the way of moving parts.

20) Secure your new lights into place and put the front bumper back on.

Show Off
21) Drive around town to show those bad boys off!!

Special thanks to:
@Moto-P He has taken a lot of time and posted a lot of information in this thread. . In addition he has provided much more information for our community. This DIY wouldn't have been possible without him.
@DarrenDriven His DIY has been referenced countless time for bumper removal and headlamp removal. In addition he has provided quite a few more great DIYs
And viewers like you!

[ft86me]

awesome write up!! kind of confused with the first part of the LED. is there a wire left over on the driver side? if taking off the whole daytime unit, where does it go? thanks!

[turbos86]

^ Do you really need to quote the entire first post to make a short comment?

Thanks OP for the write up!

[tbwoodlee]

Originally Posted by ft86me

awesome write up!! kind of confused with the first part of the LED. is there a wire left over on the driver side? if taking off the whole daytime unit, where does it go? thanks!

I am not 100% sure I understand what you are asking, but I think I understand.

Yes there is a wire left over on the driver's side.

Since the FR-S electrical harness only has 6 pins and the GT86 headlamps have 7 wires there will be one wire that will not go into the FR-S harness due to a lack of space. This will be true for both headlamps.

The wire left out of the harness is the white wire, which is LED high, aka DRLs.

Using our spare wire that we bought, we extend the length of the white write and tap into the live 12V side of the DRL resistor harness.

[Sukebe]

Can you take a picture of the wire at the DRL resistor harness to know where we are tapping this extra wire at.

Thanks

[Overland'n'5thGEN]

Very nice write up. I will hopefully need this down the road.

[suaveflooder]

Where in the hell are the pictures? Nice write up OP! Might do this someday! What's the pricing on these again?

[FRSfan111]

Roughly 3k for the lights

[suaveflooder]

Originally Posted by FRSfan111

Roughly 3k for the lights

Well, that's a mod that will never get done. lol Would look good though

[oofie]

Originally Posted by suaveflooder

Well, that's a mod that will never get done. lol Would look good though

lol, my thoughts exactly

[Trojan_SC]

Thanks for the DIY, I'll be doing this install this weekend. Woo hoo!

[iketiak]

Originally Posted by tbwoodlee

I am not 100% sure I understand what you are asking, but I think I understand.

Yes there is a wire left over on the driver's side.

Since the FR-S electrical harness only has 6 pins and the GT86 headlamps have 7 wires there will be one wire that will not go into the FR-S harness due to a lack of space. This will be true for both headlamps.

The wire left out of the harness is the white wire, which is LED high, aka DRLs.

Using our spare wire that we bought, we extend the length of the white write and tap into the live 12V side of the DRL resistor harness.

I think he means removing the DRL resistor and powering the DRL lights which is located on the passenger side underneath the headlights. I had a little trouble with that also. Thanks to you and motop post I am finally able to get everything working correctly.

[AG3NT_5CARFAC3]

Maybe when the FRS 10 Series comes out we can order those lights for less? Maybe?

[Trojan_SC]

Originally Posted by AG3NT_5CARFAC3

Maybe when the FRS 10 Series comes out we can order those lights for less? Maybe?

They will be on a VIN-only order basis, so you won't be able to get them easily. Besides the only amount you'll be able to save on is shipping. OEM HIDs are expensive nonetheless.