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Old 11-05-2012, 11:31 AM   #43
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But it seems as if they think its done correctly. They are using knock off parts as well. They advertise as using moritomo products but are using knock offs.
They are using knock off parts?!? so they are not even using real morimoto projectors like what TRS sells! How would one know? What really gets me is why they used the silicone. What if a bulb went out? what would u do then? Ive had my retrofit for a while now and not once has it had condensation issues. And i did not use any silicone, just put the bulb in and secure them with the clips.
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Old 11-05-2012, 12:05 PM   #44
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They are using knock off parts?!? so they are not even using real morimoto projectors like what TRS sells! How would one know? What really gets me is why they used the silicone. What if a bulb went out? what would u do then? Ive had my retrofit for a while now and not once has it had condensation issues. And i did not use any silicone, just put the bulb in and secure them with the clips.
Curious.....did you get your retrofit from AAC as well? I'm speaking with them via email now and I've been told AAC sends all their retrofits out with the silicone gunk on it. My concern as well is what happens if you need to remove the bulb? What I had to do with the faulty headlight/ballast was chip away the silicone and remove the bulb which was glued in...completely unacceptable.

Not to mention....this pic here shows no silicone

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Old 11-05-2012, 01:28 PM   #45
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Originally Posted by puertoricanfont View Post
They are using knock off parts?!? so they are not even using real morimoto projectors like what TRS sells! How would one know? What really gets me is why they used the silicone. What if a bulb went out? what would u do then? Ive had my retrofit for a while now and not once has it had condensation issues. And i did not use any silicone, just put the bulb in and secure them with the clips.
Because TRS themselves posted and said they are knockoffs. They are not moritomo authorized resellers so they have no business reselling true moritomo products. Ad obviously they don't have a clue how to do it correctly. They are probably getting the throwaways from TRS for 50% off under somebody's personal name or going through a junk eBay seller. If I was the OP I'd buy new lights and send the retros back to AAC for a full refund including buying new lights. If its such a great product they will have no problems selling them and making the money back right?? If they refuse call the BBB. But that's me personally. I would never bring myself to buy AAC knock off crap.
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Old 11-05-2012, 02:10 PM   #46
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Curious.....did you get your retrofit from AAC as well? I'm speaking with them via email now and I've been told AAC sends all their retrofits out with the silicone gunk on it. My concern as well is what happens if you need to remove the bulb? What I had to do with the faulty headlight/ballast was chip away the silicone and remove the bulb which was glued in...completely unacceptable.

Not to mention....this pic here shows no silicone
I did not get my retrofit from AAC. I did my own and ended up saving lots of cash along the way. I don't mind AAC its just their products are super expensive. and I do agree, that picture does not show silicone holding the bulb.
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Old 11-05-2012, 02:12 PM   #47
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Because TRS themselves posted and said they are knockoffs. They are not moritomo authorized resellers so they have no business reselling true moritomo products. Ad obviously they don't have a clue how to do it correctly. They are probably getting the throwaways from TRS for 50% off under somebody's personal name or going through a junk eBay seller. If I was the OP I'd buy new lights and send the retros back to AAC for a full refund including buying new lights. If its such a great product they will have no problems selling them and making the money back right?? If they refuse call the BBB. But that's me personally. I would never bring myself to buy AAC knock off crap.
how did i miss this ?
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Old 11-05-2012, 02:28 PM   #48
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how did i miss this ?
Miss what??
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Old 11-05-2012, 03:17 PM   #49
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Because TRS themselves posted and said they are knockoffs. They are not moritomo authorized resellers so they have no business reselling true moritomo products. Ad obviously they don't have a clue how to do it correctly. They are probably getting the throwaways from TRS for 50% off under somebody's personal name or going through a junk eBay seller. If I was the OP I'd buy new lights and send the retros back to AAC for a full refund including buying new lights. If its such a great product they will have no problems selling them and making the money back right?? If they refuse call the BBB. But that's me personally. I would never bring myself to buy AAC knock off crap.
Correct. AAC does not sell anything from TRS unless they are paying retail for it and reselling it, which I doubt they are!
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Old 11-05-2012, 08:18 PM   #50
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Miss what??
That AAC is selling knockoff. That's iffy stuff right there
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Old 11-06-2012, 07:20 PM   #51
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This is a post from BasAssBumbleBee when he unboxed his AAC installed HID retrofit. It's not the best pic, but if you look at the one that's of the back of the housing you can see that it doesn't look like what's in your OP. Did you say AAC installed them?
To Stig and anyone else that may be interested in the AAC Retrofit HID kit, here's my story.....

As you can see from my pictures, my lights arrive looking absolutely perfect. Unfortunately they arrived towards the end of November and I could not install them right away as my garage is not insulated. It gets a little chilly in Canada when you're trying to work on your car in the middle of winter.

Figuring it was the safest place to store them, I left my lights sitting in the original packaging sitting in the corner of my family room until this past spring. When I took them out to install them, the inside of both lenses had developed some nasty fogging/hazing and there were what looked like water marks and streaking from something not being dried properly.

When I contacted AAC (Jonathan) about this issue, he initially told me that in 10 years they have never encountered something like this and would look into it for me. A few days later I talked to Jonathan again and he basically told me I was SOL with a warranty claim as I should have taken the lights out of the box right away and installed them because the foam packing material caused a chemical reaction that caused the fogging and hazing.

After a few more e-mail back and forth, Jonathan did offer to "try and clean" the lenses for me but he wasn't sure if that would work. That option was going to cost me several hundred dollars in shipping charges as well as for their time to clean the lenses, so I opened the lights myself and cleaned them with some rubbing alcohol. A little fine rubbing compound later and my lights are almost crystal clear now. Total cost $2.99 for the bottle of rubbing alcohol and about two hours of my time on a Sunday morning!

By the way, the harness that AAC included with my Bi Xenon kit had no provision for the high beam function on the driver side!!!! They told me that I had to tap into the stock harness myself.....what a joke! You can pick up a proper H13 Bi Xenon harness on eBay for about $10.00 or you can contact The Retrofit Source and purchase one of their Bi-Xenon MotoControl harnesses for about $35.00.

One more thing to note, these lights and the supplied harness don't work properly with the DRL feature on Canadian cars. My lights only worked if it was dark out or if the dash switch was turned to the full on position, any other setting would cause the lights to flicker.

If it wasn't for the help I received from Ofer (2SSRS) and the custom harness he made to correct my problem, I would have ripped my lights out a long time ago and chalked up the $1300.00 loss as a very expensive lesson about what vendor (AAC) never to deal with again!


Steve

PS
As for the issue that Shazam613 is having with his bulbs being glued in, I think it's either POS quality control or someone at AAC trying to avoid a similar issue to mine coming back to them.
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Old 11-06-2012, 08:29 PM   #52
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Wow!
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Old 11-06-2012, 10:00 PM   #53
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1300??? Are you serious?? You can get a set of lights for 150 and the entire retrofit for under 300. What's the other 950 for??
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Old 11-06-2012, 10:03 PM   #54
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1300??? Are you serious?? You can get a set of lights for 150 and the entire retrofit for under 300. What's the other 950 for??
Probably another 300 if he added colorshift halos but that's still 650 for install and stuff. That's crazy!!!!!! I did the install overnight and it was rather easy. Heck, if you'd given them to me, I could have done them cheap for you! I'm sorry but 650 for install and misc. stuff is crazy
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Old 11-06-2012, 11:27 PM   #55
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1300??? Are you serious?? You can get a set of lights for 150 and the entire retrofit for under 300. What's the other 950 for??
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Originally Posted by lscamaro View Post
Probably another 300 if he added colorshift halos but that's still 650 for install and stuff. That's crazy!!!!!! I did the install overnight and it was rather easy. Heck, if you'd given them to me, I could have done them cheap for you! I'm sorry but 650 for install and misc. stuff is crazy
That price included shipping to Canada, import duties, brokerage fees and the conversion rate at the time. I also ordered two pairs of the 5202 plasma bulbs (one pair for the Camaro and one pair for my Jeep) which ended up being about 1/3 as bright as the 5202 bulbs I just got from Gen5DIY.

Like I said before, if I knew then what I know now...
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Old 11-07-2012, 01:42 AM   #56
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Currently in talks with AAC now to get call tags from them for shipping the lights back to them so they can be rechecked. Right now there seems to be some issue in receiving the call tags via email from them. Going on day 3 now.

Also requested the information for the manufacturer for the projectors. AAC won't provide their supplier but say they are from Morimoto.

(blinks)

I'm.........I'm just speechless at this. If anyone reading this thread knows of anyone looking into retrofits, by all means, forward this thread to them and advise them to stay far away from AAC
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