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My goal is to achieve the "Angel Eye" lighting effect and quality of the newer BMW E39. I think this is a great look on any late model BMW. I prefer the colorization of the E39 halos, but would also settle for a brighter white as long as I can achieve the same level of brightness and similar quality.

There are a lot of after-market suppliers of "Angel Eyes" these days. One of the first to serve the E38 owner was OmniTec MotorSports. Working with Bruce Bharat at OmniTec, I acquired one of the early "Demon Eye" Generation I kits for my E38 in January 2002. The buying experience with Bruce was very good and he responded quickly to all email and phone call questions I posed to him. Overall, my experience with OmniTec was very satisfactory.

I downloaded and read the Generation I E36, E46, and E38 install PDF files from the OmniTec site, read the instructions posted by John Carey, and reviewed the instructions posted by the �Demon Eye� originator, Jon Sibal (Jon Sibal's site), before attempting the install myself. Being prepared, my install went very smoothly and reasonably quickly. At least the second headlight went very quickly after I learned on the first one. The overall effect (lights off) was reasonably good. Turning the lights on turned out to be another story.

The OmniTec Generation I Demon Eyes just didn't do it for me. I'm not really sure why, because I've seen pics of other E38s that appear to look okay (most of them are night-time pics). Mine just didn't have nearly enough light intensity to look even close to the E39 5 series factory Angel Eyes (BMW doesn�t use this term, but to us it�s Angel Eyes or Demon Eyes � I prefer Angel Eyes). The E39 factory setup is the effect I wanted.

My experience with the OmniTec Generation I Demon Eyes:

I saw NO effect from the halos during daylight hours (it's starting to get dark in this pic - you can tell the parking lights are on by the corners - they're clear when turned off). Might be trivial to some folks, but you can very clearly see the E39 5 series halos during daylight hours when they have their parking lights or low-beams on. If you look closely you'll notice that I used aluminum tape at the top of the halos to cover the LED and wires for a cleaner look, rather than using black tape.

My low-beams completely washed out the effect of the halos when turned on at dusk or at night. You really couldn't even tell they were there at all except for a general glow across the lens on the high-beam side, but no distinguishable halo. It seams that the halos did more back-lighting into the reflector than projecting forward.

Even the parking lights washed out the effect (headlights off). You could see the halos light up with parking lights on - no significant brightness intensity, but you could see them.

When I purchased the Generation I Demon Eyes, Bruce told me that he was trying to come up with a fiber optic solution to his Generation I Demon Eyes, knowing that the LED solution had some deficiencies. However, being a Type A, I lost patience after my Generation I install and looked for my own solution, thinking I might be able to find one on my own.

More to come ... :-)

Page 1: Cool Pic and E38 General Info (for all 1995 E38 models)
Page 2: The "Ultimate Driving Machine" (new interior pics - 22-Jun-2002)
Page 3: The "Ultimate Driving Machine" (Continued)
Page 4: The "Angel Eye" Chronicles Phase I: OmniTec Gen I Demon Eyes (LED)
Page 5: The "Angel Eye" Chronicles Phase II: Schott OEM Fiber Optics
Page 6: The "Angel Eye" Chronicles Phase III: OmniTec Gen II Demon Eyes - FINAL CHAPTER
Page 7: Headlight Removal and Disassembly
Page 8: Curry�s Meet on 13-Jul-2002 and Simeon�s Dyno Run

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