This is the first guide posted on my blog so far so i'll start off with something simple. As many know Japanese cars differ quite a bit from the euro cars in some areas. There are many small differences which are sometimes quite annoying, such as the headlight bulbs for the quadlight ep82.

First of all get the right bulbs, the High Beam and the Driving Lights are both HB3 bulbs. I put a set of Ring Ultra Xenon bulbs in the High Beam and Ring Ice Blue in the Driving Beam to mix it up a little.

When you take out the original bulbs and compare them to the new bulbs you notice that the little clips are different and are required to be filed down to make them fit. The best way to do this is just using a small file and matching it up to the original bulbs, but making sure its fairly accurate otherwise it might disturb the light path from the lense.

The Driving Beam bulbs also need one other modification to fit correctly and thats filing the guiding pins inside where the plug goes. On the original bulb it only has one but on the HB3 it has 2, these need to be also filed totally flat or near enough in order for it to fit correctly, once that is done everything will work fine and you have an extra 5 watts of power now too.

Before & After


Finished Result

Long time no post huh, got a fair bit of progress done recently, most noticable is that i have a full cat-back exhuast system which was custom built for my car. I got the piping bore increased to 57mm for better flow and the boost has also increased with this so a nice noticable difference in power and an awesome sound to go with it too. I'm really impressed with the work carried out on the exhuast and i got the back box exactly how i wanted it to look too. This isn't a permanent mod as the original stock center pipe had a nasty hole just before the flexi-joint section so it had to be replaced, and with stainless systems coming with a liftime guarantee it seemed my money would be better spent on a custom system this time which has improved the sound, looks and power all at the same time.

Custom cat-back system


The other most noticable mod i've carried out is the stripping of the rear interior, i thought that making the car lighter improves all the characteristics, acceleration, braking, cornering and even fuel consumption. Once i had stripped the interior the noticed the ride height had raised up another inch or so, but the spare wheel and parcel shelf were both extremely heavy so this has made a big difference. With a FRP bonnet and tailgate this car will be extremely lightweight, these are both in the pipeline aswell as replacing the doors with the n/a non-electric model to save even more weight. So lightening the weight of a car is proven to improve all the above mentioned characteristics, it felt amazing driving it in the cold with the new exhuast and no rear interior.

Lightweight ep82


The Next Stage

After noticing the ride height and the structure of the car is obviously in need of support its time to order a coilover kit, i've been looking at TEIN's and TRD coilover kits, so hopefully a set of them will be on order along with a full set of Cusco front, rear and possibly lower strut braces. I've also been looking into the possibility of getting a C-Pillar bar custom made for the ep82, the company makes them for the ep91 so i need to confirm they fit or can be manufactured for the ep82. So thats the update, enjoy it. Peace.