Headlight removal and angel eye replacement advice
12-27-2014, 05:19 AM
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My Ride: 2006 530xi loaded
Headlight removal and angel eye replacement advice
2006 530 xi
One of my stock angle eye bulbs burned out and I decided to upgrade with LED's. Used the Ziza bulbs from ECS Tuning BMW E60 530xi N52 3.0L Search SiteSearch Angel Eye Led - 003585ZIZ01A - LED Angel Eye Bulb Set - ES#2718025
These lights appear to be fantastic. They are white instead of yellow and very noticeably brighter than the stock bulbs. There were a few non-standard procedures that made it substantially easier to get the headlight assemblies in and out and to get the bulbs to work without problems.
1. The bolts you will be removing for this job are not all the same length! You should carefully keep track of which bolt goes where because the long bolts fit nicely in the holes requiring shorter bolts. It's not until you have a bunch of the bolts in and realize the shorter bolts are not fitting into the longer slots that you realize your mistake. And then, it's a total pain sifting through a dozen different bolts to find the right one!
2. The Bentley manual and several online videos suggest loosening only the two deep screws holding holding a couple of tongs at the base of the headlights to the body and removing the 6 bolts that hold the metal cross member housing the hood latch. In fact, if you also remove the 6 bolts holding the top edge of the front fascia to the frame, it is SUBSTANTIALLY easier to remove and replace the headlights assemblies. In particular, there is a clear plastic piece that must fit underneath the front fascia in order for the rubber sealing material to mate nicely with the car when you replace the bulbs. You have to pull very hard on the front fascia to allow you to get this plastic piece underneath the fascia. Loosening the extra bolts makes this job a snap. If you do decide to remove these extra bolts, you should mark the bolt holes with tape or a pen as you remove the bolts. If not, there will be many empty holes and it's easy to reassemble the car at the end to find out that you've covered a hole that needed to receive a bolt before you place cross member back on.
3. After you've removed the headlight assembly, unscrew those two lower screws all the way and then thread them back in just a turn or two. There are captured washers on these screws and the tines on the bottom of the headlight assembly have to slide underneath the washers for reassembly. Making these washer stick up as high as possible makes this job much easier.
4. The angel eye bulbs have a rubber O-ring that seats tightly against the plastic tube it inserts into. This is nice to prevent wiggling and perhaps water entry as well. However, it makes it a total bear to insert the bulb. The space is very small to put your hands in and unless you have small hands or a wife to help you out, you really can't get much leverage during this process. You need to slide the bulb in first (toward the front of the car), and the rotate about 15 degrees. If you don't have the bulb slid in all the way, when you rotate the bulb will not lock in place. It takes a lot of force to twist and so pushing hard and twisting only to have nothing happen results in bruised knuckles and multiple beer rests. A good way to avoid this problem is to mark the car housing and the stock bulb before removing it. I used white nail polish for this. You can then compare the stock bulb to the new one, mark the new bulb in the equivalent place, and then you'll have good idea of just where in rotational space to put the bulb upon insertion before twisting it. This whole procedure is much more important with the Ziza bulbs because they are ~2X longer than stock bulbs making it even more difficult to insert them than the stock bulbs.
5. Finally, the Ziza bulbs have metal spade connectors that are slightly thinner than the stock bulbs. The result is that the stock connector in the headlight package does fit very snugly on the bulb. You put everything back together, drive around happy for a few days, and then get a warning signal that your parking light is burned out. You lift up the head, remove the plastic access cover on the back of the headlight package, wiggle the cable, and drive around happy for a few more days. Eventually, this bugs you enough that you decide to do something about it! Ziza provides an adaptor for their bulbs for connectors different than the one found in my BMW. The end of the connector that fits onto the back of their bulbs fits great. But the other end is useless. I tried to make and adaptor. However, the metal spades on the bulbs are smaller than any sold in hardware or auto parts stores (I think they are ~1/8"). I tried NAPA, Autozone, Advance Autoparts, Home Depot and Loews! In the end, I took a pair of small hemostats and crimped the stock connectors a bit so that they grabbed more tightly onto they bulb. If somebody decides to go back to the stock bulbs at a later date, it should be relatively easy to spread the connector apart again to its stock position.
Well….that's the whole saga. I hope it helps save somebody a little aggravation!
One of my stock angle eye bulbs burned out and I decided to upgrade with LED's. Used the Ziza bulbs from ECS Tuning BMW E60 530xi N52 3.0L Search SiteSearch Angel Eye Led - 003585ZIZ01A - LED Angel Eye Bulb Set - ES#2718025
These lights appear to be fantastic. They are white instead of yellow and very noticeably brighter than the stock bulbs. There were a few non-standard procedures that made it substantially easier to get the headlight assemblies in and out and to get the bulbs to work without problems.
1. The bolts you will be removing for this job are not all the same length! You should carefully keep track of which bolt goes where because the long bolts fit nicely in the holes requiring shorter bolts. It's not until you have a bunch of the bolts in and realize the shorter bolts are not fitting into the longer slots that you realize your mistake. And then, it's a total pain sifting through a dozen different bolts to find the right one!
2. The Bentley manual and several online videos suggest loosening only the two deep screws holding holding a couple of tongs at the base of the headlights to the body and removing the 6 bolts that hold the metal cross member housing the hood latch. In fact, if you also remove the 6 bolts holding the top edge of the front fascia to the frame, it is SUBSTANTIALLY easier to remove and replace the headlights assemblies. In particular, there is a clear plastic piece that must fit underneath the front fascia in order for the rubber sealing material to mate nicely with the car when you replace the bulbs. You have to pull very hard on the front fascia to allow you to get this plastic piece underneath the fascia. Loosening the extra bolts makes this job a snap. If you do decide to remove these extra bolts, you should mark the bolt holes with tape or a pen as you remove the bolts. If not, there will be many empty holes and it's easy to reassemble the car at the end to find out that you've covered a hole that needed to receive a bolt before you place cross member back on.
3. After you've removed the headlight assembly, unscrew those two lower screws all the way and then thread them back in just a turn or two. There are captured washers on these screws and the tines on the bottom of the headlight assembly have to slide underneath the washers for reassembly. Making these washer stick up as high as possible makes this job much easier.
4. The angel eye bulbs have a rubber O-ring that seats tightly against the plastic tube it inserts into. This is nice to prevent wiggling and perhaps water entry as well. However, it makes it a total bear to insert the bulb. The space is very small to put your hands in and unless you have small hands or a wife to help you out, you really can't get much leverage during this process. You need to slide the bulb in first (toward the front of the car), and the rotate about 15 degrees. If you don't have the bulb slid in all the way, when you rotate the bulb will not lock in place. It takes a lot of force to twist and so pushing hard and twisting only to have nothing happen results in bruised knuckles and multiple beer rests. A good way to avoid this problem is to mark the car housing and the stock bulb before removing it. I used white nail polish for this. You can then compare the stock bulb to the new one, mark the new bulb in the equivalent place, and then you'll have good idea of just where in rotational space to put the bulb upon insertion before twisting it. This whole procedure is much more important with the Ziza bulbs because they are ~2X longer than stock bulbs making it even more difficult to insert them than the stock bulbs.
5. Finally, the Ziza bulbs have metal spade connectors that are slightly thinner than the stock bulbs. The result is that the stock connector in the headlight package does fit very snugly on the bulb. You put everything back together, drive around happy for a few days, and then get a warning signal that your parking light is burned out. You lift up the head, remove the plastic access cover on the back of the headlight package, wiggle the cable, and drive around happy for a few more days. Eventually, this bugs you enough that you decide to do something about it! Ziza provides an adaptor for their bulbs for connectors different than the one found in my BMW. The end of the connector that fits onto the back of their bulbs fits great. But the other end is useless. I tried to make and adaptor. However, the metal spades on the bulbs are smaller than any sold in hardware or auto parts stores (I think they are ~1/8"). I tried NAPA, Autozone, Advance Autoparts, Home Depot and Loews! In the end, I took a pair of small hemostats and crimped the stock connectors a bit so that they grabbed more tightly onto they bulb. If somebody decides to go back to the stock bulbs at a later date, it should be relatively easy to spread the connector apart again to its stock position.
Well….that's the whole saga. I hope it helps save somebody a little aggravation!
01-06-2015, 05:26 PM
#3
sjeppell : I'm in the same boat with a dead right side angel and I'm on the market for the best drama free brightest LED upgrade. Can you post some day time pics of the ziza?
Last edited by dixon_coxon; 01-06-2015 at 05:28 PM. Reason: more words
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