[xthewhitekingx]

Okay so to start this off, I'm going to explain why I even started this project. The reason is fairly simple actually. One of my angel eye bulbs died out....lol So instead of replacing the bulb, I decided to go with with some nice sexy Led rings! Go big or go home right? lol Big jump? Maybe. Worth it? Very. Now, I suppose I could have sent my headlights to some of the well known companies to do this for me such as OSS and LS3, but what fun would that be? Don't get me wrong, both of them do some awesome work, but the only thing that prevented me from going that route is the cost of it all. I actually prefer OSS due to the rings they used from Umnitza, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend $800 at the moment. So! I did some research about the process and decided to give it a shot on my own. 3Times3 has DIY of his process and that helped a lot, but I thought to post up mine because I did it a bit differently amd it might come in use for others who want to try it. And to be honest, there aren't many DIYs of the process. Especially for the Pre-lci E90s. Enjoy! (Also, please excuse how my DIY is done with the process in words on top and the pictures of it all below. Too lazy to add pics in the middle of all the texts. This way you can follow the DIY by reading or scroll down and the pics tell the same story)

Selecting the Rings
Naturally, the first thing I did was purchase the LED rings! Like I said earlier, I really liked the work of OSS and the rings they used, so I went straight to Umnitza for the rings. Deciding whether to use the V2s or the V4s was a back and forth decision, but it pretty much came down to my liking of the beaded look with the V2s. Although the V4s are brighter and aren't as spaced out between each LED, I just liked the spaced out beaded look of the V2s. In my opinion it stands out more and looks a bit more mechanical if that makes any sense. Anyways! Umnitza offers different sizing of rings to choose from. I went with the 8x rings and the 9x rings. I suppose I could have gone with the bigger 10x sized rings, but I am not a fan of the horseshoe look and wanted to keep it OEM styled. And just a heads up, the 8x and 9x rings are smaller than the OEM plastic rings that the car comes with, but I was alright with that. I placed my order and a couple days later it arrived. First thing I did, was test them. I hooked them up to a 12 volt battery and made sure they all worked before I did anything.

As you can see below, they checked out perfectly. (Image 1)

The first thing that has to be done is to get the headlights off the car! So, Remove the bumper and remove the headlights from the car.

Opening the Headlights
3Times3 had a very good process of opening the headlights, so I went ahead and tried his way out. I used a Heat gun and a flat head screwdriver to get them open. I must say, it's such a pain to do this. The first headlight took me a little over two hours to open. This is mainly because I went slow and tried really hard not to murder it with the heat gun. It took a lot of patience but I managed to open it up. How I did this was to heat up a small section of the housing (about 2 or 3 inches at a time) and heated it enough until I was able to peel the housing portion up and back. Stick the flat head in between the housing and the lens cover and pry upwards. It's important to do this parallel to the seal because if you choose to go straight into the groove, you will break through the plastic and create holes. (Which I did many times on my first headlight). It's not the end of the world when this happens, but it makes it easier down the road if you simply work parallel and fold the plastic back. So don't worry if you break through the groove. The outer corner where the turn signal bulb is at, is the toughest part. Mangling it can't be avoided really. Like I said earlier, you can always fix the parts by heating the plastic up and reshaping it later. Go all the way around the headlight until the plastic housing is pulled back. I stuck a thinner flat head screwdriver underneath the clear plastic lens cover to slowly break away the housing and the lens cover. Once you go all the way around, you're almost ready to remove it. Make sure to unclip the plastic oem angel eyes from it's natural position before pulling the lens cover off the housing or you will risk breaking the rings. (Located in the area where the actual angel eye bulb is at). The second headlight I did was much faster as I got the hang of it. It took me half the time and I didn't punch through the groove not even once. As frustrating as it can get, just be patient and you'll get some good results even though its such a pain.

Image 2 shows what I meant by working parallel and Image 3 shows the housing's grooves peeled away. As you can see, yes, there were areas I murdered the plastic and punched through, but I fixed it all later.

Removing all of the Interior Pieces
This is actually pretty straight forward. To remove the rings and all; of the components from the clear plastic cover, there are just 4 screws (2 up top and 2 on the bottom) to undo and then everything else is held together by clips. Be gentle with it though so you don't break the fragile plastic oem angel eyes. Image 4 shows the backside of the cover and the screws involved. The projector housing pieces and the signal indicator housing are all held together by clips. I ran a long flat head through the back of the headlight where the wiring is at and unclipped them, since they can be seen from the back. The round piece in front of the projector is held by 2 clips, the piece under that around the projector held on by 3 clips, and the corner piece is just a few small clips where the bulb is located once removed. They all popped off and that's that!

Painting the Pieces!
After much research and ideas, I decided to do a full blackout on my headlights. However! Then I had to decide which blacks. Satin, gloss, flat, etc. I decided to be a little different and do a mix of both. And it looked amazing. I ordered some BMW Jet Black spray paint and clear coat from automotivetouchup.com. The same color as my car, and bought some flat black spray paint at home depot. I decided to do the projector housings jet black and the surrounding areas flat black. Brings a little bit of uniqueness to it and the go very well together. I sanded down all the chrome and grey off the pieces and used a primer on all of the pieces I was going to use the Jet Black paint on. The orange reflector I did flat black. I masked off the clear piece and painted both sides of the reflector with flat black. Making sure to put enough coats that light doesn't pass through it and show orange. Image 5 shows all the pieces laid out. Some primed and others already painted flat black. Next came the Jet Black paint job. I then masked off one piece of the projector housing to put in some flat black into the mix, which can be seen later. Now that the pieces are all painted and ready, the next part was fitting the rings.

Fitting the Rings!
Okay this was quite the test. I tried searching for ways to do this, but unfortunately there weren't many results that popped up. In 3Times3's DIY he also went with the full rings, but he mounted them in his own way. It was hard to follow along or see what exactly he did to make his work so it didn't really help me at all. Also, he chose to do two of the same sized rings, while I stuck to the OEM style of one smaller and one bigger. With that said, I thought of different ways to mount these things, but not much came to mind. They are decently smaller then the OEM ones so I couldn't simply glue them over the old ones. After much thought, I had an idea and this is where my way is different than you're average joe. Since the new rings were a bit smaller, I decided to use a dremel on the OEM plastic rings. Carefully, i dremelled the insides of the rings to make them open up more. I opened them up enough to the point where I could fit the new rings inside of them. I was unsure at the time if it would look decent, but it turned out really well. I was able to fit the new rings inside the OEM ones, which are perfect mounts. OEMs were stable and secure so why not use those supports? I used some Gorilla Epoxy to secure the new rings inside the OEM rings. Making sure to do a couple layers of epoxy to get a nice bond. Image 7 shows how it would look from the front, while Image 6 shows the epoxy process. The rings bonded well and were all done. Note: I also painted the cables coming off the new rings black, so as to not see them when installed.

Cleaning and Reshaping!
Okay this part was pretty tedious and slow, but necessary. I first cleaned out all the old glue using a flat head screwdriver. I just scraped it all off so that the new sealant will seal better and it would all be clean. I cleaned the old glue off the housing and the clear plastic lens cover. I then reshaped the headlight's housing back to it's original form. Since I mangled the first headlight, it took me awhile to get that one back to normal. Just use the heat gun and slowly fold the plastic back to it's original shape. That took awhile, but the more time you spend on it, the better your seal will be.

Putting it all back Together!
So all the pieces were sanded, primed, and painted. Rings secured and everything was ready to be installed. I started with placing the projector housing pieces back onto the projector. And the mix of the flat black and Jet black looked amazing on the projector pieces. Image 8 Once I clipped in all the pieces of the housing, I moved onto the clear plastic cover portion. Clipped in all the pieces and screwed in those 4 screws. Make sure everything is properly snapped into place.

Wiring!
Okay so the rings I got from Umnitza came with a wiring harness, 4 rings, and 4 junction boxes that the rings plug into and then the box goes to the harness. I did not use the harness as it's not needed. I wired the 2 cables coming out of the junction box directly to the two cables that use to be attached to the angel eyes bulb. Brown to Brown and Green to White. Image 9 I tested the led rings before going further to make sure everything worked. And it did. I decided to position the rings with the wires coming out of the top so that they wouldn't be seen. I ran the led ring wires over the top of the projector housing and connected them to the junction box. There's an area just above the location of the old angel eye bulb that it can fit into. In Image 9 you can see it.

Resealing!
Once it's all wired up and tested. It was time to reseal. I took the advice of 3Times3 and bought some Permatex Ultra Black RTV Silicone. It worked perfectly. I squeezed some inside the groove and closed up the headlights. Waited till the next day and put a second layer over the outside just to make sure I didn't have an holes or leaks in the seal. The last thing I wanted was condensation with the crappy seal. Wait 24 hours as per the instructions and its ready to be installed.

Extra Notes!
1. OEM rings are very fragile, so be careful.
2. Blow out the housing and the lens cover with canned air before putting all back together to get any debris out.
3. Wipe down and clean the inside of the lens cover.
4. BE PATIENT! lol


That's pretty much the whole process in a nut shell. I might have forgotten a couple things here and there, but I think I got the main points out. Image 10 shows the completed headlights all sealed and ready to be installed.

[xthewhitekingx]

Here's the final product on the car. Please excuse the crappy picture quality. Pictures taken with an iPhone 4s...lol least no editing was done. Enjoy! :]

[SaviorXi]

Wow. Great work!!!. I am going to use some of your ideas when I do this to my E92 lights this weekend. I may use the original AE's as the mounting location but I will attempt to paint the original rings flat black to avoid light reflection providing a sharp contrast with the new halos. I also agree with you about the V2 separation of individual LED's. In my opinion it looks better. Thanks for taking the time to document your process in a clear and well organized way.

[xthewhitekingx]

Originally Posted by SaviorXi

Wow. Great work!!!. I am going to use some of your ideas when I do this to my E92 lights this weekend. I may use the original AE's as the mounting location but I will attempt to paint the original rings flat black to avoid light reflection providing a sharp contrast with the new halos. I also agree with you about the V2 separation of individual LED's. In my opinion it looks better. Thanks for taking the time to document your process in a clear and well organized way.

Thanks! You know I actually did test that look as well. I painted one of the original rings black thinking the same things, but it didn't look as appealing to me. It actually made the led rings appear smaller and since the outer original rings were blacked out, no light would be seen from the sides. Which just looked pretty weird in my opinion. Having the clear original rings looked cleaner because the light from the led ones also illuminated the outer rings a bit. I took some pictures of that contrast when the rings are lit and not lit if you want me to upload them? Pretty sure we are talking about the same thing lol