I had thought about the various other options - going back to the stock barndoors, rectangular low profiles, doing a repair, or just plain leaving-it-as-is. None of those options appealed to me. Despite the cost I went for the Moss Cobalt low profile kit from MiataRoadster.
I don't recall having seen any other writeups on this, so I'm throwing this into the ring.
The general consensus for the Moss kit is that it's expensive, but very high quality. From what I saw when going through the kit, I'd have to agree. The kit's main components are:
- 2 x buckets + attachment hardware
- 2 x bucket arm brackets
- 2 x low beam lamps
- 2 x high beam lamps
- 4 x adjuster kits
- wiring
The only letdown with this kit has to be the wiring. Instead of proper H9 pigtails and connectors that attach to the OEM harness, Moss only saw fit to put wires with female pin connectors at one end and spade terminals on the other. It works and will work fine, but they could easily have done better. Also, a feature I was expecting isn't present, but I'll get to that later.
So, the lights. Hella 90mm. Really nice:
Sitting them into the buckets:
The adjusters:
And the bucket arm, both detached and mounted. Two bolts and some thread lock mount this into place:
These adjusters were a bit of a pain to fit. In the end, a pair of pliers in the right spot followed by a solid grip + turn was all that was needed. They only things of note here were to a) put the adjusters in the correct holes, as each light uses three adjusters - and b) put the lights on their correct sides - low beams go on the outside, so low beams to the left in the left bucket, high beams to the right, and vice versa.
And then you fit the plastic ends onto the screwheads, push them into the cage. With this, fit the wires and the buckets are essentially complete:
The wiring is coloured to match that of the factory wiring - so match it up as per the instructions to make things easier for yourself.
Also, the arm needs to be put together and attached. It goes somewhat like this:
And here, the brand new Moss bucket next to the very used BSP bucket. This could very easily be cleaned up with some new lamps - it's just a matter of tracking some suitable replacements down.
Also, the BSP kit used a different motor pivot arm. Here is the BSP one compared to the factory one which the Moss uses.
Now, the hairiest part of the procedure is to drill out the spot welds holding the upper stop in place. The BSP kit didn't require this, but the Moss does. 6 spot welds to centre punch, prep and drill out. I then used touch up paint afterwards to protect any exposed metal.
And a test fit:
And a comparison shot before I fit the other side:
So yeah, pretty happy with the results. The light output is far superior, but I'm comparing a brand new kit with one which is probably around 15 years old. You could even say that the difference... is night and day...
Now as mentioned, there were a couple of shortcomings with the kit which I'm intending to rectify. The first is the wiring. You can't see the wiring at all, and the stock wiring will hold together perfectly fine, but I would really prefer some proper plugs in there - so I'm going to source some H9 pigtails and hook that up properly.
The second is that when the high beams are turned on, that the low beams turn off. With a relay and a diode for each side, I can make the low beams stay on when high beams are used. I've already figured out a schematic - I'm just yet to implement it.
