I'm looking to give my 2001 330i a facelift. The only thing is I was trying to figure what would be the best choice. I'm looking forward in purchasing a pair of headlights with a silver/chrome base. Anyone has some suggestions of stylish designs or high quality pieces to recommend?
Does anyone know what is the difference between Halogen, Xenon, BiXenon, and Adaptive Xenon headlights?
Just get some new OE lenses and call it a day. If you want to retrofit xenons, the proper route would be full OE. When it comes to headlights I wouldn't mess around with any aftermarket stuff.
Xenon: Projector style, brighter, crisp beam cutoff. Slight blue tint. High beams are separate halogen lights. Require expensive xenon bulbs. More complicated system that involves an ignitor and ballast. Last much longer than halogen bulbs, but tend to "color-shift" to 4800K throughout their life. Generally not a bad thing, as 4800K is a good color temperature to be at.
Bi-xenon: Same as Xenon, but high beams are built into the xenon housing. Upon brights activation, the internal cutoff flap slides down to allow full light exposure. In this way, xenons are technically always running a "high beam," and a simple flap controls the light cutoff level.
Adaptive Xenon: Same as Bi-xenon, but headlights turn with the steering wheel to help light curves more effectively. The degree to which they turn is based upon an algorithm that takes into account speed, steering angle, and if the car is in reverse.
My personal recommendation is to find a pair of used OE BMW headlights. I do not recommend going aftermarket in this case, as people here have had many mixed results, mostly bad. If you do want to try something different, you can get the OE brand of other vehicles and retrofit them into the existing housing. Just be sure to aim them properly. That is the biggest key.
I don't really like any model after e46, but the new 2014 3 series body. And that is clearly out of the money range. I'm also looking to spend about $10,000 to make this car more unique to my liking.
I went w some retrofits w built in halos which utilizes factors bulbs, used ncs expert to turn off dlr's, and wired the halos to come on w ign and I love the look...and they were relatively inexpensive...under $200.
Search seller. Topline_autopart. On eBay...where I got mine.
So basically I realized my 2001 330i has Xeon projector lights (as seen in the pic). But the original owner for some reason put two different colors, maybe a 6,000 bulb and a 5,0000 bulb.
Now what should I do now? Should I buy New bulbs only to plug and play or a whole unit with the ballast? How much does the cost range from?
I would definitely start by getting new d2s bulbs.
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