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� Page 7 - XENON (HID) RETROFIT

XENON (HID) RETROFIT

The Kit: Purchased the kit from www.xenonfactory.com -- This uses a genuine hella ballast with integrated ignitor and Philips D2S bulbs (H1 rebased). Very complete with nice harness if you wish to power the ballast directly from a power source such as the battery. I chose not to use the harness as you will see.

It all starts with taking out the headlight assembly. Mark Caldwell has the best (IMHO) how to for doing this. It's just the best. It's part of his chromlining upgrade. You'll want to bookmark this.

I totally broke down the headlight assembly as far as I could go. This wasn't necessary and I didn't do it on the 2nd headlight. Hence the 5 hours spent on the first assembly took 1.5 hours on the 2nd!!! I was adding city lights at the same time and I didn't know what I was in for. These pictures show the bare pieces.

WHY CITY LIGHTS??

The hella ballast when turned off creates an open in the system. BMW senses this as a burned out bulb. By putting in a bulb in parallel on the low voltage side (before the ballast), the car thinks that there is a healthy headlight there all the time. Now, BMW put a city light hole on the highbeam side that isn't used in the USA for anything. Here was my chance to make use of it. See the little hole on the left here?

The first challenge for me was to figure out where I wanted to mount the ballast. I wanted it real close to the lowbeam connector. I went to visit Eric's 2001 740i Sport w/Factory Xenon's and I noticed that the ballast was tucked under the highbeam compartment. So that's where I mounted this one!

OH NO! Have a look here! What you're looking at is front to back where the highbeam assembly goes! Almost a tragedy! The bolts that came with the kit stick up into the area where the high beam assembly goes. Luckily it all fit with about 1/4" clearance from the back of the assembly and these two screws. Phew! I guess this is what happens when you drill first and ask questions later!

Moving on.....

Next I installed the H1 rebased D2S bulb. Fit was perfect but the base was slightly thicker than the metal one that comes on the halogen bulb. The wire clamp that closes down on the bulb adjusted to this without me having to bend or loosen it. Sorry so fuzzy here -- crappy camera.

Back to drilling -- this was tricky. I had to drill a 25mm hole (just barely under 1") in the back plastic cover behind the h1 lowbeam bulb. This will allow for the wires to pass 12v over to the ballast and the high voltage wires going from the ballast back to the HID bulb. My next door neighbor Danny had a 25.4mm drill bit exactly designed for this type of job. I just borrowed his and ka-blam. Done deal. The grommet that came with the kit took up the .4mm slack!

Installing the City Light on the High Beam Opening

I went up to the auto parts store and I purchased this cheap mini socket (2 in the box) for $2.99. I then took it apart and yanked out the metal framework and then fitted it into the hole in the headlight assembly. Ut-oh -- My $2.99 city light was really loose!

I had to wrap it in electrical tape a couple times until the diameter made it snug in the hole. Phew!

Wiring This is my favorite -- NOT!!! I didn't want to use the wiring harness that came with the kit. It had a relay and it required it's own power source and ground. That's a good thing -- it protects the e38's wiring from the juice and just uses the light terminal pos and neg as a trigger for the relay. But I didn't want to do all that wiring (hunting to find a good pos source) because from what everyone I spoke with said, the e38 has ample wiring. I chose not to butcher the harness that came with the kit and I made my own. The connector in this box (9006 headlight plug $4.99) plugs into the ballast and delivers it 12v pos and neg. I pulled the low voltage 12v power wires that came ith the kit through the grommet, pushed the wires on this plug through the grommet in the same two holes, soldered two connectors and then plugged them into the terminal inside the lowbeam housing. At the same time, I spliced in the city light in parallel. All this is done INSIDE the housing. Very clean.

Installed Very Clean. The low beam is on the left and the big round grommet is filling the 25.4mm hole nicely. The blue and red wires are connected to the bulb in the housing on the left, come out and go through connectors and then over the ballast which is neatly tucked under the highbeam side on the right in this picture. The two black wires coming out of the same grommet on the left are going over to the ballast through the blue plug on the lower right. Internally, the city light is wired in in parallel.

Here is a picture of the job 1/2 way done. The drivers side headlight is complete. The picture does not do it justice.

Completed shots. Again, the pics don't do these bulbs justice. For some reason, my camera makes these look WAY more yellow than they are. Note the city light glowing in the high beam light area in the picture below right.

I hope this page helps anyone looking to do the same or gives them stepping stones to ideas for creative things to do for their car.

MY THANKS TO:

To Roy Cya, Eric W, my neighbor Danny and Alex at the Xenon Factory for all the help. The kit was first rate and Alex answered questions very fast. Much appreciated!

UPDATE:

Not too pleased with the yellow stray light that was emitting from the headlight assembly after the HID retrofit, I diagnosted the problem. The plastic lenses that BMW uses on these lowbeam lights AROUND the projectors are designed to diffuse the stray lighting coming from the unshielded projector. This is a fancy way of stating that the important light comes from the little circle in the little of the lowbeam assembly. The light around it is scatter or stray and isn't not projected forward or used to illuminate the roadway.

What I did was paint this lens with primer and then Duplicolor DH1602 paint for a matted OEM look. The results are outstanding. The beam is just as good as it ever was but now looks pure white.

The image below left shows the yellow diffused light caused by the plastic lens. Remember, this light is not used for illumination -- it's just cosmetic. The image on the right is with the light only emitting from the projector.

I hope this helps others with late model BMW's who have unshielded projectors that allow light to yellow their look after doing a HID retrofit.

More Pictures:

CITY LIGHT UPGRADE

I went with these blue xenon bulbs from www.xenonfactory.com to make the glowing high beam area, aka "city lights" brighter. The results are quite nice.

� Page 1 - WELCOME
� Page 2 - BEFORE MODS
� Page 3 - INTERIOR
� Page 4 - UPDATED W/NEW LENSES
� Page 5 - WHEELS
� Page 6 - SEAT REFINISHING
� Page 7 - XENON (HID) RETROFIT