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Originally Posted by e92hobear
Wow, some great pointers on how not to fuck up in this DIY.. I'm guessing those are all mistakes that you made along the way. How much did it cost you to buy a new set of LEDs? would you say your mistakes cost as much as it would to just send your HL's to umnitza or OSS?
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I did make quite a few mistakes during this project, but I wouldn't really say it cost me anything in a monetary sense. Time - yes, a perfect result - yes. For example, I touched the reflector surrounding the turn signal bulb accidentally and it fingerprinted. I tried to rub it off, it smeared. So I put a bit of rubbing alcohol on a Q-tip to clean it. Oops, that chrome coating was GONE instantly. But it's behind a textured clear lens when you reattach the side reflector, so I was able to fix that with just a small piece of chrome tape over it. You literally can't see it at all.
I punched through the groove in the housing while removing the front lens in several places, it's kind of hard to avoid. It just took a lot more time to reshape those areas and I had to seal them from the back as well.
The LED rings I bought from Umnitza were $250. For another $250 (plus shipping cost, probably about $30-40 each way) I could have sent them down and had them do all the work. Originally I decided against that because after speaking to Matt, he made it sound like mounting the rings would be easy. That turned out not to be true, and I quickly began to wish I'd just sent the lights to Umnitza. But like I mentioned in my conclusion, I'm glad I didn't because my preference for ring size was different than their standard selection. I would have taken their recommendation, only to receive my lights back with rings that I felt are too small. That's why I posted so much detail on the available rings - for anyone who sends your lights to a shop for LED ring install, make sure you know what sizes you want first.
On a side note, I'm happy to say 10 days and a couple of very rainy Seattle drives later, no leaks in the headlights and they're looking great!