Regulatory reflektorów w BMW E39.pdf

FABRICATING HEADLIGHT ADJUSTERS

for 2001 BMW E39 Xenon AE’s

By Ross Leidy (e39@blueheronkayaks.com)

If you suffer from bobbling headlights, chances are the fragile plastic adjusters

inside have shattered. I have no clue why Hella chose to use such weak plastic,

but they did, and consequently, tearing apart your headlight assemblies to make

repairs is a common DIY project for BMW owners. Prior to 2001, this was a

straightforward task – buy the $11 adjusters, pop the clear cover from the

headlights, remove the broken adjuster pieces, install the new adjusters. It’s

easily less than an hour’s work. That all changed with the 2001 xenons.

Anyone who has managed to remove the clear cover from the 2001-on OE

(Hella) xenon headlights knows that it’s not an easy task. If that weren’t bad

enough, once the cover is removed, you find that your BMW dealer doesn’t sell

the adjusters for this year headlight. The adjusters from earlier years are not the

same size/shape, so they cannot be used to make the repairs. It turns out, if you

have access to some shop tools, you can make your own, and they will outlast

the headlights.

Removing the Clear Cover

I understand there are two different adhesives that were used to attach the

covers – mine was the soft, extremely sticky, black, tar-like adhesive. After hours

of careful application of a wide screwdriver and putty knife, I finally managed to

remove the cover. One huge pain. I then found some RoadFly posting by others

who had gone before me, and they recommended a heat gun or a short bake in

the oven to soften the adhesive. I took the low-impact approach and used a

simple hair dryer. It worked just fine. I played the heat over a small section of

the joint, and used the same screwdriver and putty knife to separate the cover.

The heat was the key – it probably took about ½ hour to work around the

perimeter twice and pop the cover. I definitely recommend this technique. The

hair dryer provides enough heat and there’s no chance of doing any damage to

the plastic. Once the cover was removed, and the xenon bulb assembly

extracted, I continued to use the hair dryer to soften and remove the adhesive in

the channel. (see picture below)

Once the inner bulb assembly is exposed, and presuming that both of the

adjusters are broken (mine were), the only thing left holding the bulb assembly in

place is the ball/socket of the self-leveling servo. (I don’t know if all headlight

assemblies of from 2001 have this, but if not, it will be something similar.) This

part is well-constructed, and should not be broken. There’s no need to muscle

this joint apart. The plastic socket flexes sideways – I just pushed it to the side

and slid the ball out the end.

The Broken Adjusters

Once inside, I realized that the broken adjusters didn’t look like the ones from my

halogens. Actually, one looked pretty close (maybe identical, I’m not certain), but

the other one was very different from the either of the adjusters used in the

halogens. (And this was when I discovered I couldn’t buy replacements.) The

failure pattern was the same for all of the adjusters:

Tennis-ball sized lump of adhesive

Materials for New Adjusters

I bought a bag of assorted UHMW plastic pieces (ultra-high molecular weight)

from my local Woodcraft store for around $12. This is the same type of plastic

used for kitchen cutting boards. A cutting board would even work for this

purpose for the shallow adjusters (on the right), but the bulkier adjusters are

around ¾” thick, and I didn’t want to try to piece them together. The assorted

bag had some pieces that were just the right thickness. Also, buy a few 2-1/2”

#10 machine screws with matching acorn nuts – these will be used for the pin

and knob of the new adjusters. I bought mine at Home Depot in the small bags

($1 per bag). If I had a marine store nearby, I would have opted for stainless

steel, but zinc coated should be fine.

Construction

After selecting pieces that were roughly the same thickness as the adjusters, I

cut pieces to the same width using a tablesaw. You do not want to try to cut this

stuff by hand. I started to cut a small piece with a Japanese pullsaw (very

sharp), and I could tell I would dull the saw before I got too far. A cheap saw

blade in the tablesaw was the best way to go. Now, cutting the notch (rabbet) on

each piece can be done two ways – either on the tablesaw (which I did) or on a

router table (which I didn’t try). Essentally, you want to end up with a couple of

longer pieces (at least enough for 2 adjusters each) with the following profiles.

Take your dimensions from the broken adjusters.

Once you’ve duplicated the cross section as closely as possible, cut the pieces to

length. The length should match the length of the main body of the original

adjuster (not including the pin and knob). I cut the slope on the left adjuster on

the tablesaw. Watch your fingers – I used a wood clamp to hold the small piece

and just eye-balled the cut on the tablesaw.

Transfer the locations of the holes in the broken adjusters to the new ones, and

drill them out. A drill press would be great, but I did it with a hand drill. Clamp

the new adjuster to the edge of the workbench and carefully drill, checking

alignment to keep the bit going straight. I used an 11/64” bit (I think – it was hard

to read), but start small and move up slowly if you are unsure of the size. If the

bit slips easily into the hole in the old adjuster, you know it won’t be too big. If you

use #10 machine screws, the same diameter bit will work for that, too.

The acorn nut should match the size/shape of the knob on the old adjusters. I

knocked-off the corners of the nut to make it a closer match. This can be done

easily by threading an acorn nut onto a screw, chucking it into a hand drill, and

running it at low speed while applying a file to the spinning nut.

Once shaped, cut a length of the machine screw so that once threaded into the

new adjuster, it will be the same length as the original.

I used a drop of loc-tite on the threads to hold the acorn nut in place. I did not

bother using any of it where the screw threaded into the plastic – that was tight

enough that there was no chance of the screw loosening.

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