[jvidamins]

Originally Posted by Black_e90

Okay, so the thing that you broke... Was it the piece that adjusts the head light up and down?

Yep, that was the one. My guess is that a big pot hole caused the servo ball to pop out. Then someone tried to adjust it manually with the adjustment screw but came up against that servo ball and something had to give. The piece I glued looked like pretty weak-sauce plastic. Anyway, that's my theory. So if you're adjusting those screws and come up against ANY resistance, STOP or they'll probably break. They should adjust silky smooth.

[Velocity26]

My passenger side headlight started randomly pointing downward. The next time I started the car it would work correctly. After a few weeks of this behavior, it stopped correcting and was permanently downward. I checked the servo motor and the shaft is still firmly attached to the arm, it appears that the motor has simply died.

Someone mentioned replacing the motor, where were you able to get that?

For the time being, I was able to manually adjust the height so that it is even with the functioning side and that will work until I can find a fix.

[dauble2k5]

From what I gather, you'd be better off replacing the whole unit; I'm not sure you can buy just the little motor. I could be wrong, however. If you are able to replace it, maybe you can find one from a junk yard?

[abw335i]

Update: I took off the wheel well liner and wheel and opened the back of the headlight assembly. The servo seems to be attached. It wouldn't budge so I unscewed the 2 torx screws holding the servo in place and attempted to pull it out but it was connected to the headlight bulb unit and pivoted as i moved the servo. So i'm guessing the ball/socket was still in place and not the issue as I had originally thought as there was no warning or errors on the dash.

My passenger light still doesn't level/self check at start-up, and it pointing to the ground. The left and right adaptive movement is working fine, it's just the up and down autolevel that's not working. Everything on the driver side is fine and working so this problem is just limited to one side.

Any idea what the issue could be? Bad servo motor? Could this part be easily replaced? Visibility is really bad and I'm thinking of just manually adjusting the vertical aim screw to aim the beam higher...

[djh2]

I think you should remove it from the car to get a closer look. It really sounds like the same issues listed earlier in the thread. The headlight uses several ball pivots. Mine had the issue of the ball popped off, and broken vertical adjustment, however it appeared level and still was adaptive side to side. Now it auto levels with the startup test too.

[Velocity26]

I was able to find a new motor here on the forums. Someone had ordered one but never installed it. I was able to access the back of the headlight, through the fender well, without removing the headlight. I removed the two screws but the ball was firmly gripped in the socket. I was afraid to break the mechanism, but I had no other choice. I could see how the socket was shaped and I held the arm in place and pulled outward (and slightly downward) and the ball popped out of the socket. I lubed up the ball of the new motor and pressed it into the socket. Maybe it was a miracle, but I was able to remove and reinstall the motor without breaking anything, or removing the headlight. Not sure if that is how it is supposed to be done, but that is how I did it. Been 4 months now and all is still working.

[abw335i]

Originally Posted by Velocity26

I was able to find a new motor here on the forums. Someone had ordered one but never installed it. I was able to access the back of the headlight, through the fender well, without removing the headlight. I removed the two screws but the ball was firmly gripped in the socket. I was afraid to break the mechanism, but I had no other choice. I could see how the socket was shaped and I held the arm in place and pulled outward (and slightly downward) and the ball popped out of the socket. I lubed up the ball of the new motor and pressed it into the socket. Maybe it was a miracle, but I was able to remove and reinstall the motor without breaking anything, or removing the headlight. Not sure if that is how it is supposed to be done, but that is how I did it. Been 4 months now and all is still working.

Diagnosing this is tough. Did you have any error/malfunction warnings? I was almost 100% convinced it was something mechanical and not physical because I didn't have any warnings. But it appears we have the same issue. How hard was it to pull the motor out of the socket and reinsert it? Also how did you disconnect the wires from the motor? I think I'll have to give this another shot once I order the part. I think its the part no. below right?


67168352206
HEAD LIGHT VERTICAL AIM CONTROL

[Velocity26]

The motor is a servo motor and should communicate with the system, but I never received any errors or fault codes. My failure was similar to a starter failure, the motor simply does not respond to the power. If you tap on the motor, or tension the shaft, it is likely to work for a time or two, until it stops at the spot where the contacts are damaged.

The motor has a tiny plug-in power connector, just like every other electronic component on your BMW.

When I removed my motor, I plugged in the new one and had my wife press the start button and activate the lights. You could see, feel and hear the motor operating and going through the initialization sequence (fully retracting and then extending to the programmed point). The diagnosis was easy for me ... the right headlight was pointed at the ground, about 10 feet in front of the car. It would move from side to side, but not up and down as the left one did.

From my understanding, there are two common failure modes the headlight adjustment: Ball slipping out of the socket and the motor failing to actuate. The motor makes a fair amount of noise. If you remove the cover and touch the back of the motor, while someone starts the sequence, you will feel and hear the motor functioning (if it is functioning) and the ball has likely disconnected from the socket. If it is silent, the motor is likely malfunctioning. You may want to remove the power connector, and reconnect it to check for a bad connection. You can also tap on it and see if you can get it to function once for you, but that is usually a short lived solution.

For kicks, I connected the old motor and it worked for a time or two before failing. I installed the new motor and threw the old one in the junk pile.

[abw335i]

Originally Posted by Velocity26

The motor is a servo motor and should communicate with the system, but I never received any errors or fault codes. My failure was similar to a starter failure, the motor simply does not respond to the power. If you tap on the motor, or tension the shaft, it is likely to work for a time or two, until it stops at the spot where the contacts are damaged.

The motor has a tiny plug-in power connector, just like every other electronic component on your BMW.

When I removed my motor, I plugged in the new one and had my wife press the start button and activate the lights. You could see, feel and hear the motor operating and going through the initialization sequence (fully retracting and then extending to the programmed point). The diagnosis was easy for me ... the right headlight was pointed at the ground, about 10 feet in front of the car. It would move from side to side, but not up and down as the left one did.

From my understanding, there are two common failure modes the headlight adjustment: Ball slipping out of the socket and the motor failing to actuate. The motor makes a fair amount of noise. If you remove the cover and touch the back of the motor, while someone starts the sequence, you will feel and hear the motor functioning (if it is functioning) and the ball has likely disconnected from the socket. If it is silent, the motor is likely malfunctioning. You may want to remove the power connector, and reconnect it to check for a bad connection. You can also tap on it and see if you can get it to function once for you, but that is usually a short lived solution.

For kicks, I connected the old motor and it worked for a time or two before failing. I installed the new motor and threw the old one in the junk pile.

Thank you, your post was very helpful. I will give this a shot!

[abw335i]

Fixed! It was indeed the auto level motor.

Ordered the part on ebay for $65 and installation was pretty easy. Hardest part was probably disconnecting the old motor while the ball was still in the socket. I was really careful as I didn't want to break anything.

If one of your beams are pointing down and not leveling, it's probably a bad motor. The problem was intermittent at first until it stopped function altogether.

I believe if one of your beams is pointing up, it is probably a ball out of socket issue.

If both beams are down, your issue might be the leveling sensor.

[Velocity26]

As you can confirm, the "pucker factor" is pretty high we you are putting so much force into a delicate mechanism to remove the ball from the socket. While I have heard that it is possible, I cannot imagine how a ball could become dislodged by accident. Similarly, re-inserting the ball requires significant force for such a delicate mechanism.

[mex2309]

Link to ebay please!

Originally Posted by abw335i

Fixed! It was indeed the auto level motor.

Ordered the part on ebay for $65 and installation was pretty easy. Hardest part was probably disconnecting the old motor while the ball was still in the socket. I was really careful as I didn't want to break anything.

If one of your beams are pointing down and not leveling, it's probably a bad motor. The problem was intermittent at first until it stopped function altogether.

I believe if one of your beams is pointing up, it is probably a ball out of socket issue.

If both beams are down, your issue might be the leveling sensor.

[rothwem]

Hey, I'm glad you guys were able to fix yours with just the leveling motor. I had the same issue, and it turned out that one of the projector mounting points in my headlight was broken. I had to buy a new headlight, luckily rockauto had one for only $600 instead of the $1000+ that I was seeing elsewhere.

For the guy with that posted the videos, that's exactly what mine was doing. The projector was wiggling around in the housing.

[abw335i]

Originally Posted by mex2309

Link to ebay please!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291544989275...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

For some reason e9x is not listed as a compatible vehicle, but it's the same part and part #.

[90c4]

This post was very helpful to me - one of the balls had come out of the socket (the fixed socket though, not the servo one). I put it back together and it's working again. However, the reflector dish is too far forward and light seeps out of the side. I couldn't figure out how to adjust that. Is the reflector adjustable?

[Oilburnerfan]

So I have issues with both of my headlight.

1) The driver's side does not auto-level and is pointing up too high and blinding drivers in front of me.

2) The passenger side auto-levels, but is shaky when driving over bumps.

Going to pull the bumper to remove the headlights I think. I need to get into both and that seems the easiest.

[Velocity26]

Originally Posted by Oilburnerfan

So I have issues with both of my headlight.

1) The driver's side does not auto-level and is pointing up too high and blinding drivers in front of me.

2) The passenger side auto-levels, but is shaky when driving over bumps.

Going to pull the bumper to remove the headlights I think. I need to get into both and that seems the easiest.

Your car, your decision, but you can see/access everything without removing the front bumper. All that is required is to remove the front tire and the fender liner. Once the fender liner is out, you can climb into the wheel well and have access to everything you need. The headlight rear cover comes right out and you have access to all the internals. Maybe removing the bumper and headlight is easier than it looks, but I have done this a few times and can get to the light in 5 minutes. I replaced the motor and all remains perfect.

[rear_wheel_drive]

Lads,

First, a huge THANK YOU to all those who contributed information to this topic! You saved me a bundle of dough. Should you drive through Boston, the first round is on me.

Second, I'd like to give back by sharing my own experience. I'm sorry I'm doing this with text. I took a few pics, but they didn't seem to add any value over what's already here.

My 2011 335 sedan m-sport with the lights that swivel following the steering wheel failed the state inspection due to a passenger headlight pointing far too high. Obviously, the under-the-hood level adjuster wasn't working. The car mechanic showed me how the lamp was wobbly inside the headlight enclosure by tapping it with his fist, unlike the driver side that remained solid under similar treatment. He asked me if I got hit in the front end, which I hadn't been. But I did hit a monster pothole some months back that broke my front passenger side wheel and blew the tire.

After reading this forum, I jacked the car, removed the fender liner and the headlight cover and inspected the whole thing carefully. In my case, the lamp assembly itself was essentially loose inside the enclosure. It happened to be pointing up, but I think it could have been pointing anywhere. As others have explained, the ball and socket joint was dislocated. It took me shoving my head way up in the wheel well and judiciously positioning a work light to see that clearly. For some people, that might not be physically possible.

Moving the lamp so as to re-engage the ball of the arm of the "adjuster" motor was easy enough, but that didn't lead to a solid-feeling lamp. It remained wobbly and couldn't be adjusted for height still. That's when I took exploration to another level.

What I discovered is that the lamp is actually held on three points. Remember that I'm looking at the passenger headlight from the wheel well. On the outward-most side (aka passenger, aka right), there is a shaft/carrier pair. The shaft is dark gray and attached to the lamp. While the carrier is beige and attached to the headlight case. No force is required for those two parts to mate.

On the driver side, there are two points of attachments. First, there is the now well-known adjuster motor arm and ball that mate into the lamp's socket, which resides comparatively low on the lamp. What is less obvious, is that there is another hole/hub/socket/carrier further up on the lamp. That is meant to mate with the shaft that comes out of the level adjuster. The level adjuster is the thing you'd turn with an allen key from under the hood. This adjuster makes a 90 degree turn, and your turning action causes a shaft to move forward and backward. It was barely visible to me and I had my nose right against the lamp. I could feel it with my fingertip more than I could see it. Turning the allen key clockwise caused the shaft to extend, iirc. Gripping the back of the lamp, I was able to mate those two pieces easily. Not much force is required. About that of removing the cap from a dry erase pen.

Once that's done, the adjuster motor ball lined up with the middle of the lamp's socket. In order to re-engage them, I was thus unable to use the trick of moving the ball above the socket in order to drop it in (nor from below for that matter). I took the motor off and fiddled, but ended up putting it back in. Instead, I pursued pulling the lamp backward in the hope of re-seating the ball into the socket. That eventually worked, but it took quite a bit of muscle. The ball popped loudly when it finally inserted. I was unable to do it just by grabbing the back of the lamp by hand. I used a screwdriver-like tool that has a bent tip which allowed me to grab the bottom of the lamp, careful to avoid glass parts and electrical wires, and I kept a thumb behind the adjuster motor, and pulled pretty darn hard.

Once that third anchor point mated, the lamp stopped wobbling and the height adjuster became functional again. What had happened is that the adjuster shaft was always moving back and forth as a result of my turning the allen key, but it had nothing to push against.

I adjusted the beam height, buttoned up everything, drove over a few speed bumps to validate the solidity, and passed inspection the next day.

I had gotten a nearly $1,800 estimate for replacing the headlamp. It took me about 3 hours to fix it. Not a bad hourly wage if you ask me.

[bimspiration09]

Originally Posted by rear_wheel_drive

Lads,

First, a huge THANK YOU to all those who contributed information to this topic! You saved me a bundle of dough. Should you drive through Boston, the first round is on me.

Second, I'd like to give back by sharing my own experience. I'm sorry I'm doing this with text. I took a few pics, but they didn't seem to add any value over what's already here.

My 2011 335 sedan m-sport with the lights that swivel following the steering wheel failed the state inspection due to a passenger headlight pointing far too high. Obviously, the under-the-hood level adjuster wasn't working. The car mechanic showed me how the lamp was wobbly inside the headlight enclosure by tapping it with his fist, unlike the driver side that remained solid under similar treatment. He asked me if I got hit in the front end, which I hadn't been. But I did hit a monster pothole some months back that broke my front passenger side wheel and blew the tire.

After reading this forum, I jacked the car, removed the fender liner and the headlight cover and inspected the whole thing carefully. In my case, the lamp assembly itself was essentially loose inside the enclosure. It happened to be pointing up, but I think it could have been pointing anywhere. As others have explained, the ball and socket joint was dislocated. It took me shoving my head way up in the wheel well and judiciously positioning a work light to see that clearly. For some people, that might not be physically possible.

Moving the lamp so as to re-engage the ball of the arm of the "adjuster" motor was easy enough, but that didn't lead to a solid-feeling lamp. It remained wobbly and couldn't be adjusted for height still. That's when I took exploration to another level.

What I discovered is that the lamp is actually held on three points. Remember that I'm looking at the passenger headlight from the wheel well. On the outward-most side (aka passenger, aka right), there is a shaft/carrier pair. The shaft is dark gray and attached to the lamp. While the carrier is beige and attached to the headlight case. No force is required for those two parts to mate.

On the driver side, there are two points of attachments. First, there is the now well-known adjuster motor arm and ball that mate into the lamp's socket, which resides comparatively low on the lamp. What is less obvious, is that there is another hole/hub/socket/carrier further up on the lamp. That is meant to mate with the shaft that comes out of the level adjuster. The level adjuster is the thing you'd turn with an allen key from under the hood. This adjuster makes a 90 degree turn, and your turning action causes a shaft to move forward and backward. It was barely visible to me and I had my nose right against the lamp. I could feel it with my fingertip more than I could see it. Turning the allen key clockwise caused the shaft to extend, iirc. Gripping the back of the lamp, I was able to mate those two pieces easily. Not much force is required. About that of removing the cap from a dry erase pen.

Once that's done, the adjuster motor ball lined up with the middle of the lamp's socket. In order to re-engage them, I was thus unable to use the trick of moving the ball above the socket in order to drop it in (nor from below for that matter). I took the motor off and fiddled, but ended up putting it back in. Instead, I pursued pulling the lamp backward in the hope of re-seating the ball into the socket. That eventually worked, but it took quite a bit of muscle. The ball popped loudly when it finally inserted. I was unable to do it just by grabbing the back of the lamp by hand. I used a screwdriver-like tool that has a bent tip which allowed me to grab the bottom of the lamp, careful to avoid glass parts and electrical wires, and I kept a thumb behind the adjuster motor, and pulled pretty darn hard.

Once that third anchor point mated, the lamp stopped wobbling and the height adjuster became functional again. What had happened is that the adjuster shaft was always moving back and forth as a result of my turning the allen key, but it had nothing to push against.

I adjusted the beam height, buttoned up everything, drove over a few speed bumps to validate the solidity, and passed inspection the next day.

I had gotten a nearly $1,800 estimate for replacing the headlamp. It took me about 3 hours to fix it. Not a bad hourly wage if you ask me.

Thank you for this. This is my next project on my 09 335. Just fixed the stupid wiring harness in the shift assembly.

I'll report back and let you know how it works. Just the alan wrench didn't seem to do anything but I'll fiddle with it again, and then take these steps if that doesn't work.

Side question - has anyone just said screw the adaptive headlights and gone with an aftermarket set? I bought the car used, so didn't really have a choice with the adaptive lighting, and if it's going to cause me problems again I might get some different cat eyes to put on my baby.

[BKV122]

This same issue happened to me AGAIN! Hit a manhole that wasn't at grade to the road. Noticed immediately the headlight was point to far down and to the right. Took the headlight assembly out and this time I was lucky and had to pop the anchor points back in and the ball and socket back into place.

[hssidana]

Thanks to this forum! went over a pothole hard and same, the driver side light was aiming towards sky. Removed wheel liner, accessed the headlight without removing and it was the servo motor ball and socket joint that was out. popped it back in carefully by lifting the bulb up and voila! took like an hour after taking off the wheel. Thank You!

[GSTE34]

Sorry to bring back this old post but after I took off the air box and put it back in to replace spark plugs my adaptive head light warning came on with the two arrows left to right, is that even possible that I might have bumped something out of place?