Thread: General: - E46 Bi-Xenon (budget) retrofit
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Old Mar 6th, 2017, 14:26   #10
LizardOfBodom
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Last Online: Mar 26th, 2024 17:05
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Dublin/Meath
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Just a small update after month of driving on those and constant fiddling with adjustments, if anyone is interested. Also small tips&tricks for anyone attempting similar mod.

- I was able to finally get along with those damn projector shutters and understood what was going on. Messing with adjusting screw allows to sharpen the cutoff was trial of error, but I figured it out finally. You need a 12V power supply (old PC PSU will do perfectly) and long back garden. I adjusted the sharpness of cutout as much as possible over the distance of roughly 15 meters as it was a good balance between close and distance sharpness. That made a close-distance cutoff a bit blurry) but the pattern on the road and in far distance is as sharp as possible and allow good allignment.



There is no rule of thumb whether shutter should be close or far to the bulb - just try one way, than another and find the sweet spot.
Also - one of the bulb had hotspot in wrong way (fully visible) but it was the bulb issue - I managed to bend a bulb base tiny bit so the hotspot now is exactly where the stepped cutoff is (imagine a round light spot that have this stepped \_ part going trough centre of it so 60% of it is exposed, other 40% is covered by shutter and in use only when full beam).
-Adjusting the cutoffs also helped a bit with rainbow effect but it is still present - dont think I can do much with it, just optical distortion, visible probably more on cheap kits like mine.
- never managed to fix the slight off-rotation on d/s one. Will leave it as is and not worry about it anymore

Also did some tests with and without the long beam bulbs, just to see how bi-xenons alone are doing. It is for sure possible to drive just on them, but I would really miss the extra "straight into darkness" light source. As you can see on pics fully opened shutter does let enough light to allow driving in pitch-black, but it wouldn't suffice for me. I'm sure a proper OEM projector with good D2S bulb would work much better and single projectors like on A4 or Superb are well enough, but kit like this - its just moderately "ok".
Photos taken with -2 exposure to show the contrast better.

dip beam:



shutter fully opened:


shutter opened + long-beam HB3 bulbs on:


All along, very happy with the mod, my opinion have changed - definetely worth the effort and any time I see my (now perfectly alligned and sharp) cutoff on the back bumper of a car, It makes me happy.

Just when doing similar mod - make sure you go for D2S version, just to be able to use better and more powerful bulbs.
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2005 V50 T5AWD M66, Stage1 Hilton tune
E-focus torque mount, E46 bi-xenon retrofit v2 , (also available in PDF form), DTSC fully-off mod, Brembo discs+ATE ceramic pads
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