Page 1: - Home PagePage 2: - Angel/Demon Eyes Omnitec Gen I
Page 3: - Angel/Demon Eyes Levi Gen II
Page 4: - Photos of Angel/Demon Eyes
Page 5: - 99-01 DIY headlight upgrade
Page 6: - Fender filler ideas
Page 7: - Rear powered sunshade retrofit
Page 8: - Exhaust tips project
Page 9: - M Parallel Wheels and Pole Positions added
Page 10: - DIY SilverVision bulbs
Page 11: - Adding the 99-01 Rocker Panel Covers Project
Page 13: - BMW Navigation Retrofit (retooling) for a virgin E38
Page 14: - Betties's Calipers get painted
Page 15: - DIY Shdowline Trim with Blackout Tape

DIY HID rebuild/Retool

Some of you may have read on the Roadfly e38 forum that I planned to buy the two passenger (Right Side) Xenon HID lights that James had laying around to retrofit "Bettie" for HID. One headlight is complete and I added my Demon/Angel eye rings mod from my halogen light to this one and installed it as is. The other one was in pieces because Roy Cya bought that housing from James at the same time I made my deal. I wanted to use these internal HID light parts to modify Bettie�s �98 driver's side headlight. This was the more complicated of the two headlight mods, so I started on this one first ...Here is the story of my Labor Day weekend.

First let�s start with some definitions of the terms I use to describe the inner pieces of the BMW E38 headlight assembly:

Housing : the black plastic housing that the lights are inside of. In some sense the housings are the headlights if you don�t take them apart!

Lamp frame: Is the plastic frame that the lamps and reflectors are mounted into. BMW refers to this part in the ETK as the �Lamp Insert� Ignore the labeling in this photo as this refers to my Angel Eye retrofit that is on page 2-4, but this is the lamp frame from a 98 with some of the plastic cut off the top of the frames for my angel eys fiber optical cables to pass above the lamps.

Lens Frame: Is the frame that holds the diffusion lenses that sit in front of the lamps and reflectors. The BMW ETK refers to these as the �Lamp Lens Support�

Lamps: The bulb itself
Capsule: An HID or Xenon lamp

I got the 99-01 HID lights pieces from James on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. After looking the HID light and the parts over, I began this project by removing my 98 driver�s side (Left) headlight and disassembling it. Once I had it apart, (as I have so many times now :), I noticed that the 95-98 model halogen low beam reflector mounting plate was not the same size, nor were the screws in the same location as the 99-01 model HID reflector. I couldn�t screw the HID reflector into the 98 lamp frame�s mounts as I had planned without modifying something to allow this to come together.

I started by making a pattern of the mounting holes of the 98 low beam reflector and the 99-01 HID reflector to see how far apart they were. Not one screw / mount lined up! And in fact the 99-01 mounts were inside (on a smaller dimension) than the 98s, so there was not even anything there where the HID mount screws were supposed to be!

Hmmm, this was getting interesting. Next I thought about installing the 99-01 lamp frame into the 98 housing, but this would not work at all. The mounting for the lamp frame snaps onto the headlight adjusters, and these were totally different design inside the 98 and 99-01 headlights.

I decided that the only way I could make this mod come together was to splice the 99-01 lamp frame or parts of it from the low beam into the 98 frame so that the headlight adjustments would continue to work. The solution did not present itself easily but it finally came as follows:

1. From the mount hole template I had made before, I cut out an adapter plate for the new HID reflector and 98 lamp frame mounting holes.

2. I first cut off the Low beam portion of the 99-01 lamp frame and tried to mount this to the 98 frame but it was too large and would force me to sacrifice too much of the old frame and the adjusters would no longer function. That�s no good, so I continued to look at what could be done from these parts I had.

3. Because the HID reflector in the 99-01 headlights was in two parts, one mounted from behind the lamp frame and one was captured from the front, I decided that I may be able to use the front half of the 99-01 reflector to create a mounting.

4. I cut, off the mount pins from the 99-01 lamp frame and epoxied them onto the front half of the reflector to fabricate the necessary mounts for the HID reflector.

5. I then had to line up the holes for the new hid and reflector front and back with the adapter plate, I used a file and course sanding drum to grind the old lamp frame to allow the new bits to be squeezed into the low beam area of the 98 lamp frame. This had to be done without cutting away the old mount holes or the adjuster mount points which are needed for the next step.

6. Once they would come together enough to give proper alignment and cosmetic appearance, I screwed the new HID reflector and lamp frame piece together through the adapter plate then screwed the plate into the 98 lamp frame mount holes.

What I have at this point was a cut up 98 lamp frame with a 99-01 low beam HID reflector cut off a 99-01 lamp. Looked really ugly but it worked! At least it looks like it will work but it was untested at this point. This concluded the Low Beam HID retro-fit of the 99-01 type HID into a 98 lamp frame.

This mod would be very much easier if I had bought HID pieces from a 98 light, but I did not know any better. As a side note: because I had bought two right side lights, the mounting holes were mirror imaged from what they should have been for the Left side light. Since I was fabricating my own mounts, I was able to epoxy them where they were needed for a right side light but in any normal situation, these mounts would not need to be modified.

Before I mounted this modified lamp frame back into the headlight, I looked at the high beams and realized that the 99-01 uses a 9005 lamp and the 98 uses an H7. This was not going to make me happy, nor would anyone that may own Bettie in the future ever be able to figure out what I had done here. I decided that while I had the whole thing apart, now was the time to see if I could remedy this high beam situation.

After a bit of measuring and comparing, I decided to cut off the lamp mount portion of the high beam reflector from the 99-01 lamp frame. It is plastic fortunately so this was very easy to do with a hacksaw.

Next I removed the lamp mount from the 98 high beam reflector, by bending the tabs up from inside to release the mount from the reflector. The 99-01 lamp mount was then epoxied to the back of the 98 high beam reflector. The 98 reflector is metal and the part I epoxied to it was plastic, but they stuck together really well with this two part stuff I had bought from Ace. After a few hours to set up, Voila! A 98 high beam reflector with a 99-01 high beam 9005 lamp mount on the back of it! Again it looked like it would work but was also untested as yet.

1. I mounted the new hybrid lamp frame into the 98 housing by snapping it back onto the 98 adjuster mounts.

2. I reinstalled the 99-01 lens frames that were already modified with the Angel/Demon eye rings from my previous work.

3. I installed the low beam HID capsule and the high beam lamp

4. I connected the power input to the HID ballast from the 98 Low beam wires using an 9005 replacement plug from Kragen Auto Parts and some wire splices from Radio Shack.

5. I connected the high beam lamp (9005 type) using the same technique a 9005 replacement plug and wire splices.

6. I reinstalled the headlight, assembled and powered up the lights��..

7. WORKED FIRST TRY!!!! The light is as I expected from the HID - White! Bright! Cool!!

Total time invested:
Saturday from 8:30AM to 6:00PM
Sunday from 12:00N to 6:00PM
Monday from 7:00PM � 9:00PM

Hardest part: creating the template for the two mounting locations and fabricating the adapter plate. But this is not necessary had I bought 98 Xenon parts instead of 99-01s. Learn from my mistakes guys!

There are a few gems that I learned in this project that I wanted to pass along as related to the DIY facelift. Most of you know, I was the guy who pioneered the DIY facelift headlight mod on Bettie where I turned the 98 style to the 01 style lights by changing the inner pieces instead of buying new headlights (to save $).

What I now know is that the housings between these two years changed quite a lot internally. Although you can fit the lens frames and covers in/on the 98 housings, the lamp frames, reflectors and adjusters are totally different in design and shape.

This mod was not for beginners and as you can tell from this write up, it took me a long time to figure out how to make it come together without giving up.