One of the gems on my car, the RS Active headlights with their original piss-poor housings.
I’ve voiced my displeasure about the performance of the RS Active headlights. I knew going in that they performed poorly and were valued for their cosmetic features. But, I wanted them anyway. They are the only really good looking low profile kit available due to the shroud around the lens and housing. But the performance issue always bothered me, so I had an idea of how to improve them. I was aware that the PIAA 960 housing was constructed very similarly to the cheap housing in the RS Active kit, both of them are combination fog and driving lights. They use the fog light as a low beam and the driving light as a high beam. This was verified by comparing the dimensions that PIAA publish. In fact, when placed side to side it’s pretty obvious that the housing that RS Active used was a knockoff of the PIAA 960.
The internals of the PIAA with better wiring, silicone boots and heavy gauge stampings.
The internals of the RS Active with cheap wiring, fiberglass boots and light gauge stampings.
So, I tracked down a set of the PIAA 960 lights. They have been discontinued for years, but an ebay seller was closing out a truck accessory shop and had a few pair for sale, so I bought a few sets and set about modifying a set to work with the Miata wiring. Originally the RS Active headlights come with a wiring harness that adds another layer of relays in the system. The set of RS Active headlights I bought did not include the extra wiring, so they were spliced into male headlight plugs and plugged directly into the Miata headlight plugs. I spliced the same male headlight plugs into the PIAA wiring and slightly adjusted the RS Active bracket to receive the slightly deeper PIAA housing. The fiberglass shroud is slightly too tight to have the PIAA lens protrude through it as far as the original housings. But by moving the housing as far back in the bracket as possible, the shroud clears it without modification and when centered, it slightly sticks through the shroud like it was built for it. Luckily, there is a lot of adjustment in the parts, so it was easy to center the housing in the shroud.
The excellent quality PIAA housings.
The moment of truth, with the same wattage PIAA H3 bulbs that I had in the RS Active housings, the quality of the PIAA shown through. So much more light and in a better pattern. With the RS Active housings if I had the low beams aimed correctly, the high beams pointed in a cross-eyed pattern. With the PIAA housings, I was able to focus the high beams forward the slightly right and the low beams ended up perfectly usable without blinding oncoming traffic.