Walk Through: Building High-end Headlights

[TwinTurboWagon]

SpoolStreeters,

I wanted to share the process of building these custom headlights for this single turbo E90.

At first glance it may just appear that some paint was applied and the angel eyes were removed but internally there were some major changes made and this thread will cover all of those changes.

The "paint + LED angel eyes" is the all-too-common recipe for BMW headlights, yes it can look cool but it doesn't address the purpose of the headlight: light output. Many BMWs are equipped with underwhelming headlights and my goal is to address that by retrofitting quality HID projectors and components to improve light output, intensity, and control.

This headlight build was particularly challenging due the the enormous size of the Porsche 997/Murano projectors used; securely mounting it while making sure aim and rotation were correct, all while confirming that clearances front and rear were acceptable along with up/down movement for the factory auto-leveling system. It really is a dance and all of these clearances came down to a few millimeters.

Sit back, grab a drink, and see what is involved with a high end headlight build!

Evan


Build Specs
- Angel Eye Delete
- Tuned Porsche 997/Murano Bi-Xenon Projectors
- Passive White Demon Eyes
- Universal LED Fog Corner Light
- Molded Shrouds
- Low Gloss Black Bezel and Trim
- New oem Lenses
- Apollo 3 Shrouds
- D1S-D2S Igniters
- Mori xb 5,500k
- OEM Bosch 35w Ballasts
- New OEM Lenses


Let's go....

Yoink!

Headlights were previously modded with the standard BMW cocktail which is paint + LED angel eyes and doesn't address output ....silly headlight "builders" you're doing it wrong!

Lenses were in pretty poor condition with the clear coat shot by the previous shop chipping off.

Get in

Original LED angel eye wire soldering. No bueno

The original "angel eye installer" didn't remove all the oem permaseal before he resealed with butyl. He and I have different ideas of what a "clean" channel looks like

His idea of clean

My idea of clean

Much better

Quads were attempted and it would have looked sooooooo good.

oem angel eye ring + centric ring + H1 7.0 fits like a glove

The problem would be accessing the bulb if anything happened, the housing car was very small ~2" and you would need to reach over 5" through that hole to reach the the bulb. H1s are already annoying to change so changing this bulb would require needle nose pliers and some skill. Didn't seem worth it from a practical stand point.

One difficult bulb change...

Murano with oem gimbal ....NOPE!

Much cutting

Much better

Murano sat in front of the gimbal instead of behind

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

Murano fitted to gimbal or gimbal fitted to Murano?

Test fitting shroud clearance, TIGHT!

Looks good though, I like how protrusion of the lens and rake of the shroud match up with the rest of the housing

Trimmed part of the brow to upper shroud clearance

With quads not in the cards the next best option was a Morimoto universal fog

Trimming up some of the left over plastic from the injection molding

Graphite shrouds and xb fogs are a good match, I have used the combo before

Trimming some of the oem angel eye diffuser

Taping the graphite shroud before sanding down the ridges.

Test fitting

More Murano trimming

Not much left to hold the solenoid to the projector!

OEM screws are deleted for a bolt pass through, had to convert it for mounting purposes

Murano shields sanded to remove any imperfections

White Demon Eye

STI-R Clear Lens

OEM

Passenger

Driver

More porn

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

OEM projector beam pattern: Streaky, narrow, excessive foreground, no real hot spot.

Murano beam pattern: limited foreground, smoother light output, much wider.

OEM projector beam developed a bit

Murano

Mounting holes drilled in oem gimbal

To better disperse load on the gimbal I added some spacers to fill the pockets in the oem gimbal

Nut added

After projector rotation was established I needed to fill the extra space in the slots I made

Added another lower mounting point for stability

Lower mount added, these were also instrumental in aiming the projector upwards

With all the tension on the gimbal from the mounting points the oem ball joint wanted to wander inward and out of the adjuster which made the gimbal a little sloppy, I added a screw and washers to firmly hold the ball joint in position.

Projectors mounted!

Once the projectors were locked in it was time to trim the shrouds, top was cut

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

Bottom was ground down

Lower trim was cut and sanded to accommodate some adjustment if needed (in case lights are sold and mounted on a non-lowered vehicle).

Oem trim which surrounds the shroud was also cut and trimmed on all 3 sides

Shroud was prepped for wires to add security

Shrouds painted and mounted with steel epoxy + wires, you can also see the hardware I added to stabilize the headlight adjuster (white plastic arm).

My solution for mounting the fog to the graphite shroud.

fog was mounted perpendicular to the shroud so the hardware could mount on the flush surface.

angel eye diffuser had cracked

So I gave it some steel stitches

Figuring out fog rotation

Made some access ports so that the fog could be easily mounted after the graphite shroud and oem angel eye diffuser were joined.

Graphite shrouds flush- mounted to the oem angel eye diffuser with hardware

Clean! Took a bit of time but offers much more peace of mind and security than a sea of JB Weld

Shrouds + JB Weld

JB sanded

Spot putty

Round 1

Round 2

Shrouds painted. Before and After

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

Had top trim down some of the hardware so it sat flush in the larger oem shroud

The oem angel eye reflector bow came in handy as once mounted it pinches the molded shrouds inside the larger shroud which made mounting easy.

Unfortunately I accidently discarded one of the bowls earlier in the build and was kicking myself for doing so. This forced me to come up with another mounting solution for one shroud, this included some JB Weld and another bolt + nut.

With the fogs all mounted up time to connect them. Fog is wired into oem cornering light so it is more for looks than function.

High beam inputs were soldered (and shrink wrapped of course)

OEM projector had AFS incorporated into the lens holder which sucks. So on this build AFS was deleted.

Modules were removed

To keep the CANBUS system without any coding the modules were deconstructed to save room

Mounted safely out of the way with some 3M VHB

The OEM D1S cable was also deconstructed to save space and keep it from hitting the housing during downward projector adjustment

Igniters had to be mounted sideways to keep from hitting the rear housing panel once installed.

Lenses were in poor condition inside and out even after some cleaning attempts so new lenses were ordered from Europe.

BOOM

Some glamour shots with the lens off

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

...and of course some photos of the end product!

 

[Jeffman]

That's pretty cool! Now only if you can sell them $700/pair!

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

That's pretty cool! Now only if you can sell them $700/pair!

Unfortunately that isn't going to happen, components alone for this build were more than that.

 

[doublespaces]

Man, this is really involved, good work!

 

[Kervio]

turned out amazing! A lot of janky stuff needs to be done behind the scenes to get everything to work but the end product is beautiful

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

turned out amazing! A lot of janky stuff needs to be done behind the scenes to get everything to work but the end product is beautiful

Such is good ol fashioned "retrofitting."

 

[Kervio]

Such is good ol fashioned "retrofitting."

Absolutely! Didn't mean to come off like I was insulting your work, they turned out great

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

Absolutely! Didn't mean to come off like I was insulting your work, they turned out great

I didn't take it that way. We are all good. I was simply stating all the stuff behind the scenes that you don't see if common for retrofitting since it looks so simple when viewed from the front but little do most people know all the creative solutions that went into it.

Evan

 

[rebo0t]

Man these things look badass

 

[mmm335]

was painful doing mine, these look awesome but, couldnt imagine doing again with such detail.

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

Man these things look badass

Thanks! I think so too!

was painful doing mine, these look awesome but, couldnt imagine doing again with such detail.

Retrofitting Murano projectors are no joke, I have a lot of headlight builds under my belt but these really tested my skills!
Evan

 

[Jsherry20]

With having an extra set of headlights layin around I really need to test my skills at building headlights

 

[TwinTurboWagon]

With having an extra set of headlights layin around I really need to test my skills at building headlights

An extra set is the best set to practice on!

 

[Jsherry20]

An extra set is the best set to practice on!

That's what I thought too, I got backed into and the headlights had a broken tab but it really didn't bother me, however the insurance agency let me keep them lol. So I'll give it a shot. I dabbled with my cobalt SS headlights a bit and I just get scared trying to seal the lenses to the housing. Hopefully it's pretty easy with these.

 

[rebo0t]

I just received my Morimoto Mini 4.0's today, going to try something soon