Headlight Housing - Xenon/Halogen, Advice Needed

[10Terp]

Hi everybody,

I've been working on my 2003 Z4 I got from a friend that's in need of some serious attention to get it through state safety inspection. One of the things that needed addressing was the left side HID bulb would go in and out intermittently. I ran across a great deal for a 2003-2005 complete xenon housing on eBay and got it for $100. Today I went about swapping it out and immediately noticed some difference:

1. The existing headlight housing had a 6-pin connector on it.
1. The new (used) headlight housing from eBay had a 7-pin connector with a separate small harness that was blanked off on my existing housing.

I knew something was up, because the existing headlights had HID (xenon) bulbs in them. So, I opened up the existing headlight housing and found this mess:




For comparison, here's how the inside of the headlight housing I ordered off eBay looks:



So basically, I thought this car had stock Xenon headlights. However, I believe it's a stock halogen car that had cheap aftermarket Innovited HID kit retrofitted. Additionally, I don't have it pictured but the HID lense has the part number P6125M on it; if you google that part number some Mitsubishi lenses come up on a Russian forum (that look identical to these), and there was a link to some other Ukrainian retailer as well.

I'm looking for advice on how to proceed. I hooked up the eBay true OEM-Xenon housing and it seems to *mostly* work (see YouTube video of its behavior here:

). The turn signals (*cough*indicators*cough*) flash fast because the LED lights on the outside of the housing are not powered, and I believe the 7th pin powers them (which my stock harness only has 6). Pulling the stalk flashes the halogens, and pushing it leaves the halogens on. This car also doesn't have the harness for the headlight position motor (see first pic); so I'm not sure how that affects the performance.

I'd love to find a way to make this new housing work, and source another from eBay for the other side. I've seen a few posts about Xenon conversions, but they typically wind up in people arguing about PFL cars being bi-xenon/single xenon/etc. Otherwise I may just find a way to convert the whole setup back to stock halogen. Ideally I'd like a stock system and not have to deal with aftermarket HID kits.

Thank you! I'll probably be editing this post as I think of more things to add.

[pungo]

WOW! Sad to see such a bad hack job. I assume your vehicle was equipped with stock H7 Halogen headlights. If so, you're better off ripping out the illegal excessively glaring with poor light output cheap Chinese HIDs and replace them with Halogen Ultra High Output Vosla (H9 burner on H7 base) from here. These are 2100 lumens vs the stock ~1300 lumens.

If you want to use stock Xenon headlight assemblies you'll need to figure out the wiring and will probably need to do some coding to make them work properly since there are several references to Xenon in the parameters, also not sure if the LSZ is different for halogen vs Xenon
As well the leveling motors work off suspension sensors in the front and rear which are not on cars with Halogens headlights.

[wdb]

^^^^^ what pungo said. Go back to halogen and beef up the bulbs.

[10Terp]

Originally Posted by pungo

WOW! Sad to see such a bad hack job. I assume your vehicle was equipped with stock H7 Halogen headlights. If so, you're better off ripping out the illegal excessively glaring with poor light output cheap Chinese HIDs and replace them with Halogen Ultra High Output Vosla (H9 burner on H7 base) from here. These are 2100 lumens vs the stock ~1300 lumens.

If you want to use stock Xenon headlight assemblies you'll need to figure out the wiring and will probably need to do some coding to make them work properly since there are several references to Xenon in the parameters, also not sure if the LSZ is different for halogen vs Xenon
As well the leveling motors work off suspension sensors in the front and rear which are not on cars with Halogens headlights.

Ideally I'd like to return it to Halogen. My current challenge with that is the bulb housing (where the black plug is in the first pic) was swapped out for some sort of Xenon one and I'd need to find the housing 'cone' again for halogen bulbs. I've been looking though.

I appreciate the feedback!

[XMetal]

Originally Posted by 10Terp

Ideally I'd like to return it to Halogen. My current challenge with that is the bulb housing (where the black plug is in the first pic) was swapped out for some sort of Xenon one and I'd need to find the housing 'cone' again for halogen bulbs. I've been looking though.

I appreciate the feedback!

My guess is that aftermarket HID bulb is just an H7 from factor - that's what most aftermarket HID conversion kit do. The bulb housing should be original H7. I don't know of any aftermarket kit that would customize the bulb housing to fit their HID bulb.

[pungo]

Originally Posted by XMetal

My guess is that aftermarket HID bulb is just an H7 from factor - that's what most aftermarket HID conversion kit do. The bulb housing should be original H7. I don't know of any aftermarket kit that would customize the bulb housing to fit their HID bulb.

IDK, it looks like a D2S bulb connector in the pic so I'm assuming there's a D2S bulb behind it

10Terp , is there D2S bulbs installed?
Can you take a pic with the black connector and bulb removed, maybe it has some sort of H7 to D2S adapter installed?
Actually, it kinda looks like it has a projector instead of a typical H7 reflector, are they projectors?

If it does in fact have decent Xenon projectors, it might be worth fixing the intermittent issue. Where in VA are you located?

[10Terp]

Originally Posted by pungo

IDK, it looks like a D2S bulb connector in the pic so I'm assuming there's a D2S bulb behind it

10Terp , is there D2S bulbs installed?
Can you take a pic with the black connector and bulb removed, maybe it has some sort of H7 to D2S adapter installed?
Actually, it kinda looks like it has a projector instead of a typical H7 reflector, are they projectors?

If it does in fact have decent Xenon projectors, it might be worth fixing the intermittent issue. Where in VA are you located?

I'm in NoVA (Loudoun County), but an MD native.

Decoded the mystery some more. I took the projectors out to get a closer look, and they're definitely Xenon projectors (I tried an H7 bulb and the base of it is too wide to fit).







Somebody on the Z4 forums found that these are a knock-off copy of the Hella 4 D2S projector. Right now I'm thinking my best course of action is to keep the Xenon system but get it up to better operating standards. Does anybody know if Innovited is a good brand?