Panasonic PT-L795E retrofitting

[bunzenburner]

I got me one of those cheap, but it has a problem (hence cheap). The starter for the lamp seems to be broken. I think it needs new caps, but then i still have to buy those $$ lamps. It starts about once a day, runs till i shut it down, but it starts only once a day. (i am aware the lamp needs to cool before restart) The lamp has about 700 hours left.

I was looking into diy beamers for some time but no $ to buy all the stuff, so i thought this was a good opportunity te get going. Looks like an ideal retrofitting projector.

projector specs

Now for some questions;

1.) what lamp should i use. The standard lamp is a DC type 280 W metal halide lamp and the beamer is rated at 650 ansi lumen. if i stick one of these in there it think the image will be to bright. Maybe even damage the beamer.

2.) make the beamer think the lamp is on. How? It tries to start even without lamp in it. I tried to shine a light in there, no succes. i get a square light out of the lens, but when i turn it on all light is gone. I opened it up and found the following connectors from the starter board.

-B1;power to starter;

1 white wire, marked 370V
1 black wire, marked GND
1 red wire, marked 12V

since this is pretty obvious (and dangerous) i did'nt take the risk of measuring these

-B2;main board to starter;

1 blue wire, marked GND, connected to chassis on the mainboard connector
1 blue wire (yes there are two), marked ON/OFF, measures a 5V pulse when the starter needs to start (on power on, two pulses, 15 sec interval) from mainboard
1 white wire, marked DET (detection?), ALWAYS measures 5V on the mainboard connector, even when in standby

The wire marked DET has me puzzled, if it was a detection for the lamp it's supposed to receive a signal, not send one. maybe it needs to measure a certain resistance. I'm sure the circuits are ok because i powered it up after measuring and the beamer works 100%

3.) The beamer has a reddish glass right after the lamp. This is a UV filter, right? If so do i need another one?

4.) can i just use a normal mirror to reflect the lightbeam under a 45 degree angle?

5.) can i use a lens to make a nice, parallel, even bundle of light (to replace a mh lamp and a normal round reflector), and then make it go around the corner?

6.) can i damage the lcd in the beamer if i use a stronger light source?

Thanks for reading the long post.