headlight doing the jig - BMW Forum

fastshivy · 12-21-2006, 07:02 AM

My left front headlight is not aimed correctly and the beam it produces is bouncing around.When I grab the white connector in the photo the bulb moves around easily in the rubber diaphram.It sounds like there are some loose parts inside the headlight. Is there a fix for this or do I need a whole new headlight asssembly? I am not sure how to remove the whole assembly and the Bentley manual has no info. The car is a 1999 540i. Thanks for any help!

Teh Prof · 12-21-2006, 07:41 AM

You may in fact need a whole new headlight assembly. There's no way to tell exactly what's wrong, but what you refer to as loose should not be. The closest thing I can think of is that this reminds me of a friend with a 528 whose headlight aiming screws broke. He never touched them, they just broke. Lovely, right?

You have several headlight options. If you were going to keep the car, I would suggest you should pop over to jlevisw.com and buy a pair of DEPO projector headlights to update the look of the car and increase the accuracy of light concentration on the road while you're at it.

If you're not going to keep the car, then you may be in luck. I just changed my headlights on my 1999 540i/6, and I still have the old headlight assemblies. I like my new headlights, so I'm not going to need them. They're yours if you want them. If so, PM me your address and I will UPS them to you. I am leaving town Friday (tomorrow) at noontime, so you need to get me your address before then; I come back from London on January 7th. I will want you to reimburse me for shipping and shipping supplies, but other than that you can have them.

Swapping them out is actually quite easy. There are about four screws per headlight, two on top and two below/behind. The ones behind don't actually require very much dexterity to get to, although on the 540 they are more of a pain in the butt on the passenger's side because of the air box. Then they just pop out forwards with a little jiggling. Do remember to disconnect the turn signal wire too.

My suggestion would be to swap out both of the headlamps rather than just the one; otherwise, my housings are probably differently weathered than yours are and the car will look lopsided.

fastshivy · 12-21-2006, 01:49 PM

Thanks, yes I will definetly take them. I put a pm in ..let me know if it does not come through. I am still learning computer stuff. We used slide rules, pencils, and paper in my day.

sp0rky · 12-21-2006, 02:52 PM

It's the plastic adjusters on the inside.
There are 2 or 3 per headlight. Really really common on older e39s.

sp0rky · 12-21-2006, 03:18 PM

One other thing:

M3UOND, aren't your stock headlights for HID?
Because the ones pictured above are Halogen and won't work if they are for HID...

fastshivy · 12-21-2006, 04:58 PM

Thanks spOrky...can you get inside the headlights to fix the adjusters? Also what is HID?

sp0rky · 12-21-2006, 08:47 PM

You can get inside of them if you are comfortable working with fragile / aged plastic.

HID is just a different type of headlight used on the more modern / upper end cars. It consists of a high voltage ballast and a much brighter bulb. The difference is incredible and really worth upgrading to.

superdeadman · 12-22-2006, 12:03 PM

HIDs are the lights that pretty much all newer MB, BMWs, AUDIs, Lexuses have. That bright blueish color that illuminates the whole road.

Teh Prof · 12-23-2006, 12:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sp0rky

One other thing:

M3UOND, aren't your stock headlights for HID?
Because the ones pictured above are Halogen and won't work if they are for HID...

Nope...my stock headlights were halogens...that's why I recently bought the P39's from JLeviSW.com.