Before using these I had some Hella H4 units installed. They were better than the stock sealed beams by leaps and bounds. With some Silverstar bulbs they looked very nice. I had the opportunity to purchase the Euro units for a VERY reasonable price & took it. They are better than the H4's, definitely, but the difference was not nearly as dramatic as that between the sealed beams & H4 units. Had I paid the full marked price of $300+ I would have felt cheated, but with the deal I got I am very happy. They project a nice wide pattern, with upward sweeps to keep the light out of the eyes of other drivers. All in all, a very worthwhile upgrade. If you have sealed beams, look into these! These were the first things I put on my new 318iS!

A writeup for installing these can be found HERE.

These were a very worthwhile upgrade from the incandescent/halogen bulbs I was running before this. While the Ellipsiodal headlights were a fine upgrade themselves, the difference the HID lights made was immense. The kit was purchased from www.understeer.com for $175 with a lifetime warranty on the bulbs and ballasts. I highly recommend these to anyone. The installation was a bit tricky, and you need to be comfortable cutting up expensive headlight bits, but was worth it. I also have plans ready for a custom rear-enclosure for the headlight caps as they no longer fit with the new bulbs installed.

A writeup for installing these can be found HERE.

This project took a bit of work to pull off. I had some spare window motors laying around, and I determined how much current they would draw at stall using a car battery and a decent multimeter/Ammeter. It turned out to be ~15 Amps, which is a lot. With this as the driving design factor, I selected the appropriate mini-relays and wrote the controller code for Microchip Inc's PIC16F616 device. It has software debouncing built-in, current limit sensing to stop the window at the top/bottom/if something gets stuck in it, and is capable of operating both windows simultaneously. Eventually I will have some printed circuit boards made, which will hopefully reduce some bugginess. The hand-wired one is quite susceptible to electromagnetic interference and can behave strangely at times. A nice neat PCB should fix this. The total development cost for this was roughly $25. PCB's in a quantity of 20 will run me about $14US each, which is pretty steep. A single one would cost somewhere around $120US.

I waited a couple years to find the parts for this in good, clean condition. Adding these always appealed to me as it would make riding in my car far more enjoyable for my friends, and thus much more enjoyable for me. Installation was a breeze, and they look great. I got all the needed parts for $60 from a fellow enthusiast.

A writeup for installing these can be found HERE.

After purchasing the Euro Spec headlights and a new pair of fog lights, I decided that I did not want to let rocks destroy them. Rocks had been the demise of 2 sets of for lights before this, and I was done replacing them. I purchased all of the covers for $40 from www.lamin-x.com. These covers are 40mils thick and made from polyethylene cutouts. They should stop any minor damages or rock chips. I am pleased with them so far, and they will be on any headlights that I care about.

I purchased a pair of Euro style grilles with my lights. These have an "eyebrow" built into them that adds a slightly more agressive look to the front of the car. In the pic below the difference can be seen between the US grille [top] and the euro one [bottom]. Since they survived the crash, they are now on my new car.

I purchased these from classicgarage.com for $85 back in 2003. They were a huge improvement over the sealed beams that were originally on the car. These units were a direct swap for the sealed beams and took all of 10 minutes to install. The light projection pattern had the Euro-style cutoffs to keep the light out of other drivers' eyes. I was very pleased with them, and only upgraded to the Euro ellipsoid lights because I got an unbeatable deal on them.

As can be seen below, these lights allow for easy chainging of bulbs. The H4 bulbs put out a significantly greater amount of light than the sealed beams. In the third pic you can see the projection pattern. I had some Sylvania Silverstar bulbs in the units at the time, and they produced a very white light. I was very pleased with them while I had them.

As much as I liked the look of an engine half-painted with Cosmoline and grease all over, I decided to tidy things up under the hood. I removed & painted the valve cover, AFM, throttle body, intake manifold and oil filter cover black with yellow highlights. Though red may have seemed a better match, I wanted the engine to stand out a little more. I will probably sand off the yellow parts and leave the exposed aluminum when time permits. That would probably look a tad neater since I am not trying to make a "show" engine. The yellow on the AFM was a little over the top, and I will probably paint those parts black in the near future. Some of this has occurred on my new car, minus the yellow paint. Aah, high school...

I felt that the front of the car would look much cleaner with a black grille rather than the stock chrome one. It helped the appearance in my opinion. I also painted the headlight retaining rings black. My new car sports a slick black kidney as well (shown in the picture).

The rear of the car looks much cleaner without the badge, but I have not removed it on my second car yet. I am not sure if I will or not.

After breaking my oil pan 10 miles from cell phone service, I invested in one of these units. It cost $210 and took a lot of effort to install. The included hardware is utterly useless, and I needed to buy some crush nuts. Some drilling into the front crossmember was required, and a MIG welder was very useful to make some custom fixturing to install the crush nuts. Installation is not easy, and should only be tried by confident DIY'ers.