AceBMW5

ill keep it simple... i want the xenon lights that everyone else has... i dont care if they move or not, i just want the headlight assembly...because these halogen lamps really suck..... the only thing seperating my 525xi from looking like a 530 or a 550 are my headlamps... people know when they see those xenons that its a 5 series, where as mine look like any other car on the road... so help me out, where can i find thse lights for cheap, and can i upgrade them on my own?

Busta

It can be done. First you will need to find yourself a complete set of headlights with ballasts/ignitors/bulbs. The halogen wiring has to modified as do the headlights themselves as well. I have no experience with the adaptive feature (as I do not have adaptive) I bypassed/disabled the adaptive motor with my upgrade. A good starting point is ebay.de.

Kill 2 birds with one stone and get the Euro clear headlights

http://search.ebay.de/search/search.dll?cg...&category0=


It's not an easy DIY but with some work it can be done.

Here are the exact headlights that I used (thx rodybmw):

http://www.jupitergaming.com/gallery/view_...bumName=album05

It'll give you an idea of what to look for.

Dav530d

Busta,

Whens the big write up on the DIY modification to the wiring harness? Already have the complete headlights. My ballasts and ignitors look slightly different but I believe there was an update on later vehicles.

cheers

Georgos

If u want them so bad just go to your dealer and order it and let them install it aswell. Problem solved.

AceBMW5

how much do you think it will cost by the dealer, some say about 3000 bucks.... i dont think thats worth it, i rather just upgrade my bulbs to xenons for about $300, but i really want those cool lenses......

AceBMW5

busta i just saw your car from your gallery.... i absolutley love what you have done, thats exactly what i want my 525xi to look like.... if you dont mind me asking, how much did your whole procedure cost you? also does it void the warantee? and finally, how much modification did you have to do to the headlamp/wiring....

Busta

Thx for the compliments.

The whole retrofit came out to $750...not including the amount of time it took(an entire Saturday).

The warranty should be intact....I can easily remove the headlights and undo the wiring modifications to revert to halogens again.

IIRC half of the wiring modifications are on the headlights themselves the other half on the existing halogen harness. The issue you will run into is that xenon headlights do not have a compatible pin-out with the halogen connector/harness. For example the pin to apply power to the angel eye's will not have a connection.

I'm really trying hard to find the time to write an entire DIY.

Hopefully I can remember every detail by discussing it in this thread.

Another issue was the ballast. The halogen harness does not have a common/neutral for the ballast. The xenon ballast will not power up with out a neutral. IIRC correctly I found a number of screws near the headlights which have a direct neutral. That powered up the ballasts which in turn powered the xenon bulbs. That itself brought up another issue with the LCM.

Let me start by explaining the E60's LCM (light control module). I found out that day the E60's have 2 types of LCM's, a halogen LCM and a xenon LCM. The halogen LCM sends out pulses of power to the halogen bulbs, with halogen bulbs you can NOT see any pulsating...to the human eye you have a steady stream of light emitting from the halogen bulb. You can start to realize how pulsating power coming from the LCM effected the xenon bulb's.

The xenon bulb's are very sensitive, it created a strobing effect. I verified this with a oscilloscope. The xenon's require a steady stream of power that the LCM was not delivering. This was fixed by using a 64,000 uf capacitor for each headlight (inline with the nuetral and 12v power). The caps provided a steady stream of power that the xenon's required. In retrospect I could of gotten away with using smaller caps but that's all I had in hand at the time. It worked so I moved on to another issue.

Keep in mind, my headlight's are 05's DS1. I can not say if the 04's or 06's+ are similar.

FYI, I have a 04 E60 with 05 DS1 xenon - non-adaptive headlights.

I also want to add I had help from xrsxj ( http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=15517 ).

I used most of his DIY to get me started. I'll re-read his DIY and highlight/post the specific steps I used.
Off the top of my head I know I did not use any relays or tap into the fog lights at all. Those I know are the 2 major things I did not use from his DIY.

rodybmw

I'm happy that it worked out for you Busta. To clarify one thing....I think you mean that you bypassed/disabled the self-leveling motor, not the Adaptive motor, as your headlights did not have the adaptive motors to begin with.

For those who are not sure what the difference is......the self- leveling motors move the headlight beams up and down (vertically).....all Xenon headlights have this motor. The Adaptive motors move the beams right and left (horizontally), and only those Xenon headlights with the Adaptive option have this motor.

Busta

ahh you're correct..it was the self leveling motor.

dragan007

Nice work Busta.

Want to do the same thing, not so handy as you so Im waiting for your DIY