22/11/2022
𝐢𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏/𝟐 - "𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐡"
Another big project finally complete. It’s been many years since I’ve had the idea to “fix” the gen4 postFL headlight, by converting the parking light lens into a proper, evenly lit DRL.
… [𝟏𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐨] …
I remember my first experience with a cool gen4 Liberty. The year was 2011. A colleague at our office owned a black 2007 tbSti sedan. At the time, it was a very cool-looking car. There wasn’t really anything like it from other OEMs. And boy, did it present well. The Obsidian Black paint was still fresh and glossy. As were the charcoal, racecar-inspired 18" tbSti Enkeis. Quad exhaust and low front lip left no room for doubt in my just-out-of-highschool mind: this was basically the batmobile.
Once or twice, the planets aligned - we both left the office at the same time and commuted home from the city. Me on a brand new, red 250cc Hyosung GT-R, and him in the turbo Liberty. Picking apart the relatively light traffic on the Monash (“weather it was right or wrong” [sic]) I remember looking into my rearview mirror and seeing this dark car with two little ‘teeth' lit up in the headlights. DRLs in headlights were not yet a thing. Even at 2-300m away, as a tiny spec in my mirror, there was nothing quite like it.
The following year I bought my very own Newport Blue 2007 GT Premium, without even realising it was the same car as the “cool black car” from the office! The platform must have resonated with me on multiple different levels… but let’s stay on the topic of headlights 😁
Some of my first mods were LED parker bulbs. I absolutely loved the shape of the ‘tooth’, and the way it would light up. Changing it from yellow to white added at least 10 style points. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Automotive LEDs at the time were still underdeveloped (read: “rubbish”). The surface diodes on the bulbs I got from Leo Chu (the OG club.liberty light man) would frequently burn out, decreasing the light output, or outright killing the ‘tooth'. I tried buying some expensive JDM LEDs from Japanparts, but that style only had front-facing diodes - they just turned the ‘tooth' into a bright ‘dot’. The rest of the lens wasn’t even lit.
Luckily phone cameras were total potatoes at the time - and the light spread would always appear nice and even in photos. In reality the sensor was just washed out. 🙈 (attached a 2012 potato pic of my GT)
… [𝟓 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐨] ...
Let’s skip over the next 4-5 years, where I was busy blowing through 3-4 EJ25 head gaskets and 2 5EAT gearboxes. It was 2017 and I got in touch with an Adelaide-based custom headlight shop about “fixing” the postFL gen4 ‘tooth’. My idea was to create an evenly-lit lens, instead of having a hotspot in the centre, while the edges were poorly lit. The project never took off (the owner of the light shop rage-quit club.liberty.asn due to having some very strong personal opinions about coilover brands. And I wasn’t sure it was worth pursuing a potential dead-end project - we didn’t know whether there was enough room, how it would all work etc).
… [𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐨] …
It was time. The BORSCHE’s mismatched yellowing RH headlight was getting out of hand. The light output from the Xenon HIDs had started to feel inadequate. My ’teeth’ still weren't lit properly. 😅 After putting out the feelers with iilumo (they’d already been great to deal with in previous encounters), they agreed to take on the project - modernise the 15 year old light, while keeping it looking OEM.
Total work looked something like this:
- Brand new lenses, inner chrome and washer covers from Subaru
- New high-output LED projectors (more on this in Part 2)
- Convert the ’tooth’ to an evenly lit DRL, while retaining the factory look and lens
..
Very limited room meant this was a tough little project. Thank you for your patience Alex and Meng, and for the awesome result! I know it’s “my” car, but I consider this your achievement - it’s the best attempt at OEM+ that I’ve seen. ❤️
And the Liberty headlight finally gets to shine the way it was intended to.
