Angel Eyes, or halo light rings around the headlights were a very popular upgrade for many BMW enthusiasts 5-6 years ago. I’ve not actually heard much talk of them in recent years but I thought it may be worth a post about them as they are definitely one of the more tasteful mods that can be done to an older car. If done right it can really look OEM rather than cheap aftermarket. It’s also worthwhile on safety grounds as CCFL’s emit much more light than halogen daytime running lights. There are still various different kits available so I’ll just talk about some general points rather than any one kit.
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Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (CCFL)
The best kits generally use CCFL to emit light - the older/cheaper kits tend to use a single LED with the light dispersed via a plastic tube - optical fibre style. Although LEDs run at low voltage, CCFL is a high voltage technology so they need an inverter/ballast to work with a 12V car supply. The problem is that the inverters supplied with most kits are actually fairly cheaply made - heat tends to make them fail after time. Inverters can also come in different sizes - if you get small ones you can generally mount them inside the headlight unit - however heat can build up here when the low or high beams are on. Large inverters need to be mounted outside the unit - but then the heat of the engine becomes a factor. The reality of this situation is you should just expect an inverter or two to fail every couple of years. They are cheap enough that you should just buy a few spares ahead of time and then you can quickly swap a replacement in when needed.
The rings themselves are best mounted via clear silicone to the inside of the plastic insert - this looks more OEM as the rings are effectively hidden when not turned on. The most common cars modded tend to be E46, E39 and E38 and you’ll see kits for all of these, including some claiming to universal. Well.. some sellers are playing with the truth a little there because in fact the inner light radius of all those models is different. E38 owners should aim for the E46 size which is a much better match than E39. I’ve seen several kits claiming to be for E38 that clearly weren’t - rings that did not fit at all.
Angel eyes generally wire to what are calling the daytime running lights in the US, or sidelights or parking lights in Europe. There’s an interesting detail here - on a US E38 for example the indicators double up as daytime running lights via dual-filament bulb. Many European countries do not follow this setup - instead there is a completely separate bulb next to the hi-beam for parking lights. So on a European E38 headlight you can wire angel eyes completely internally to the headlight assembly keeping completely stock wire externally. For the US one you have to run a wire from the separate indicator unit into the main headlight as the parking light voltage is often missing on the US headlight wiring loom.
Wiring is also related to the last part of the post - most (all?) BMW’s of this period track the electrical resistance at each bulb - so that if a bulb blows and goes open circuit the driver is alerted via a fault message. Older ballasts could trigger this warning because the resistance at the ballast is very far from the resistance the computer expects from an average halogen bulb. You can buy a resistor pack to fix this but most newer ballasts were built with this problem in mind and offer an appropriate resistance purely to satisfy the computer. In either case it’s less of an issue for US cars rather then Euro because if you wire the invertors in parallel with the DRL bulb then the bulb resistance will still be reported correctly. Just be aware the computer won’t report if an invertor fails in this case.
CCFL Angel eyes on left, stock Euro sidelight on right
About the Author: Bryan McPhail
Bryan is a longtime BMW enthusiast in Florida.
