DIY: Depo Headlight Install with Angel Eyes for BMW E36 sedan

[Gary328i]

I thought I'd take some photos and quickly detail how to install halogen Depo headlights with Angel eyes into a 1996 328i. Mine came with zero instructions, and I figure this can hopefully help some people out who don't understand relays and maybe wiring in general.

Parts List:

Headlight kit: (I got mine from ECS tuning for ~$250)
1) 2 Halogen Depo Angel Eye Headlights
2) 2 short wiring harnesses with 4 wires (brown, yellow, white and grey) and a funky connector boot
3) 1 long wiring harness with a red and black wiring setup including a fuse box and relay, and some grey wires too. The fuse box will open and you can see the fuse in there. It only has 2 red wires attached. The relay is like a cube with the red and grey wires coming out of one end of it. It acts like a switch when you put current to it. In this case we'll be applying 12V current to it from the parking light.

Voltmeter
Level
8mm socket, 10 mm socket, extensions, socket driver
Phillips screwdriver
Medium sized set of pliers
drill, drill bit, #8 sheet metal screw for ground point or a screw that fits one of the unused threaded hgoles in the engine bay near the positive battery terminal
Blue vampire tap
Zip ties

Optional:
Clear Corner lenses for turn signals/parking lights
Yellow light bulbs (1157 is what I used)


20170412_121744

[Gary328i]

Remove all the old stuff:
Detach the cooling vent from the panel above the kidney grills that leads to the alternator
Take the panel just above the kidney grills off using the phillips screwdriver for the plastic expanding anchors and a 10mm socket for the rest
Pop out the corner lights by depressing the plastic tab that keeps them clipped to the headlight body and pull them forward. If you're reusing them be careful not to snap the peg that the rear part of the corner light uses to align to a hole in the sheet metal. On my car, these pegs were already snapped, so it was an easy choice to get clear corners. Detach the wiring harness from the corner lens and remove the bulbs.
Remove the headlights - unplug the grey and black wire harness, and then remove the 5 screws the hold it to the car (3 across the top and 1 on each side of the headlight (near kidney grill and corner light, respectively). The 8 mm socket with extensions works great for this. When you're done you get a car that looks like this:
20170412_145119

[Gary328i]

1- Disconnect the battery
2- Get a power and ground hook up for the long wire harness for the fuse and relay.

In the photo below, you can see I simply removed the nut on the positive terminal (the one just below the top), and attached the positive lead there. You need to pop the protective cover off with a tiny flat screwdriver (some tabs lock it in place), but it's pretty straightforward. That red wire leads to the fuse, and after that, to the relay.

Finding a good ground for the relay was a little more challenging. I had a spare parts bin of metric screws and found one that fit an existing threaded hole in the engine bay and used that (look below the hose to see the grind off paint, black screw and shiny terminal that I used). Make sure you scratch/sand/grind the paint away if you go this route, as paint is a great insulator and your lights probably won't work with a poor ground. You can make your own ground point with a drill and a sheet metal screw just as easily - just don't hit anything important!

Angel eye power and ground for relay

[Gary328i]

The relay is switched on by getting a 12V current applied to it. We steal that tiny bit of current from the parking lights via the grey wire and a vampire tap. On this car the constant 12V parking light (battery connected, parking lights turned on) was on the yellow/orange wire. The brown wire is the ground wire and the blue/green wire is the turn signal. I used a voltmeter to figure out which one it was. Be careful if you take this route to not short the terminals inside the light bulb socket by being clumsy with the voltmeter probe, as you'll blow the 10amp fuse #25 like I did.
Vampire tap of left turn signal to activate relay12v continuous for vampire tap

You may ask, "Why would you run the parking light feed into the headlight itself and not just wire it directly to the relay?" And you'd have a great question. But the way this set of Depo's was made was that the red wire on the headlight itself simply connects internally to the grey wire from the 4 wire harness. The Angel Eyes use the same grounding wires as the headlights themselves (brown wire on the 4 wire harness), and the power to the Angel Eyes comes from the blue wires on the headlight via the relay. Long story short, when you flip on the parking lights, some small amount of that current triggers the relay via the vampire tap/grey wire/red wire/relay path. This opens the relay to allow power directly from the positive terminal to "turn on" power to the grey harness wires (on the relay/fuse harness) which attach to the blue wires on the headlights. So the Angel Eyes get current from there and then return it using the headlight ground path, if that helps you think of it as a flow of electricity. And since you only need to trigger the relay from one of the headlights, you don't need to connect the other grey wire (4 wire harness) on the driver's side to anything. Same goes for the red wire on the driver's headlight, as it can just be ignored. You can see the whole system wired up in a test setup below.

20170415_104321

[Gary328i]

Beware - the 4 wire harnesses may not attach the same way on the headlights for Depo's. My passenger side headlight connector is rotated 90 degrees compared to the driver's side. Looking at the back of the headlight, the normal config I think most of the brands go with is:
top=brown (ground)
bottom=yellow (power)
left= white (power)
right = grey (discussed above)

Driver's side headlight wiring (normal or expected wiring orientation) (Notice the grey wire is not attached, nor is the red one)
20170415_104301

Passenger's side headlight wiring (rotated 90 degrees from normal/expected wiring oreintation) (grey wire goes to vampire tap, red wire to switch on relay)
Passenger side headlight wiring is turned 90 degrees

I took the back covers off of both headlights and then also disconnected the wiring bulkhead to get a look at where the wires were oriented. Once I confirmed the wiring pattern was correct, I then marked the ground wire prong with a black permanent marker. That way when I put the bulkhead back, I knew which one was ground and could work the pattern from there. Good thing I did that too, as there was no way to make the passenger light turn to the regular configuration since the bulkhead is keyed.

One other thing I thought worked out well: rolling back the wiring harness boot. This helps with getting the boot close to the ends of the wires, since the last thing you want is to pull the wires off of the bulkhead connector when you go to get the boot in place. I also zip-tied mine down to make sure they wouldn't come off easy.
20170415_13580420170415_135926

Another photo of the whole setup/practice mess:
20170415_111854

[Gary328i]

I used a very flat piece of wood cut to length with a level on top so I could get a look at how the mounts were leveled relative to one another. My car had some unrepaired accident damage from a 1998 bumper incident, and I had to do some sheet metal mods to get the mounts to a) thread and b) be close to level while fitting the headlight mounts. Hopefully there are no such issues for you.

20170415_133621

Obviously, you need to disconnect some wires to start working on installing the headlights, but you should have confidence things will work now.

After getting the mounts adjusted level and high enough and so the headlight top mounts reach as well, you can fasten them in at the four mounting points (two top, one each side)
20170415_133628

It's rinse and repeat for the driver's side and then you can carefully install the corners once again (click the harness on to the plastic corner and then slide them in making sure the peg is aligned with the sheet metal).
And just like that you have your lights installed:
20170415_152534
20170415_180249

[Siberian]

I've had a set of these Depo headlights sitting in a box for over a year and didn't install them simply because the "instructions" were so bad. Finally installed them this past weekend, as I had the car in my "garage" doing some repairs and I was waiting on other parts. Mine did come with a wiring diagram: I used the pictures and disregarded the writing.

The Depo headlight cases seem to be a bit larger than the OEM, as they went in a lot tighter than the old ones that came out. The drivers side on mine would not go in at all as it was hitting on something: an oversized bolt someone had used to replace the one that holds one of the horn brackets to the sheet metal. I ended up just welding the horn bracket in place and removing the bolt.

As for the wiring, I'm not sure that I did it EXACTLY as you described. Yes, on the + and - power connections to the Battery post and ground; yes, to the connections to L&R parking light wires; yes to the 4 wires going to the headlight case. I also connected both pigtails on the passenger side and the 1 pigtail on the drivers side, running the wire through the area in front of the radiator, since the cover had already been removed.

When I turn on the parking lights, the angel eyes light up, but not at full power. When headlights are lit, the angel eyes are lit at full brightness. I hope this is the way it is supposed to be. These companies really should hire linguists to review their instructions.

[OptionlessM]

Are there any headlights that come with a more yellow angel eye? I want it to look natural on a 90's car. The blue-ish xenon color angel eye looks like rice.

[Tstubbe1]

I've had a set of these Depo headlights sitting in a box for over a year and didn't install them simply because the "instructions" were so bad. Finally installed them this past weekend, as I had the car in my "garage" doing some repairs and I was waiting on other parts. Mine did come with a wiring diagram: I used the pictures and disregarded the writing.

The Depo headlight cases seem to be a bit larger than the OEM, as they went in a lot tighter than the old ones that came out. The drivers side on mine would not go in at all as it was hitting on something: an oversized bolt someone had used to replace the one that holds one of the horn brackets to the sheet metal. I ended up just welding the horn bracket in place and removing the bolt.

As for the wiring, I'm not sure that I did it EXACTLY as you described. Yes, on the + and - power connections to the Battery post and ground; yes, to the connections to L&R parking light wires; yes to the 4 wires going to the headlight case. I also connected both pigtails on the passenger side and the 1 pigtail on the drivers side, running the wire through the area in front of the radiator, since the cover had already been removed.

When I turn on the parking lights, the angel eyes light up, but not at full power. When headlights are lit, the angel eyes are lit at full brightness. I hope this is the way it is supposed to be. These companies really should hire linguists to review their instructions.

I agree with what was posted above but what do you do with the other pigtail connector on the drivers side, there is only one connector on the harness for drivers side.

[Pfrederi]

Hello Gary328i
I got this headlight from Bimmer Motor World but it does not have the wiring harness described in your post (1 long wiring harness with a red and black wiring setup including a fuse box and relay). described I called them back and they said that it does not come with one. Is this part needed and if so what is it used for exactly or can it be installed and work as prescribed without it?? Ill need to know before i tell the shop to start the install. i dnt wnat to mess it up if i have to return it.

If anyone else knows as well please chime in.

Thanks in Advance

[Nick91303]

So I was reading this DIY install and btw great detail car looks great. So the other day i noticed my passenger side parking lamp stopped working. The turn signal works but no parking light. I have also noticed there is a wire disconnect from the main plug for the corner light. I was planning this weekend taking the front end apart and rewiring some things as it looks like a total disaster in there lol. Plus one of my halos is out and i have blue ones i would like to install. But has anyone run into this issue with parking light not working but turn signal working? And the wire that is disconnected has been disconnected since i purchased the car early September and everything worked just as it should...

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

[Gary328i]

Hey Nick - I reread my old posts and there's two separate feeds of 12V to the turn signal/parking light (see post #4). It sounds like 1 of 2 things: 1) your constant 12V feed on the non-functional side is either disconnected/broken or shorted (wiring problem); 2) the other option is that if it's a 2 element bulb (one element for parking lights, other for turn signal), maybe that one element is burned out and you just need a new bulb. Easy to check - pull the light bulb out and look at it. It'd have 2 elements and 1 of them would be broken. Or just replace them and see. If the bulb is okay, then I'd look harder at using a voltmeter to figure out what's happening with the 12V wiring feed. Good luck!

[Gary328i]

Hello Gary328i
I got this headlight from Bimmer Motor World but it does not have the wiring harness described in your post (1 long wiring harness with a red and black wiring setup including a fuse box and relay). described I called them back and they said that it does not come with one. Is this part needed and if so what is it used for exactly or can it be installed and work as prescribed without it?? Ill need to know before i tell the shop to start the install. i dnt wnat to mess it up if i have to return it.

If anyone else knows as well please chime in.

Thanks in Advance

Hey Pfrederi - Sorry I missed your response to this thread a while back there - hopefully you got this figured out. But I thought answering your question would be at least nice.

The relay is required to wire them up. If you wired the headlight up to hot 12V feed, they'd be on all the time. The fuse you can get away with not using, but that's a terrible idea. The fuse protects from current overload (e.g., short circuit, defective wiring...) and costs about a buck. So while this probably isn't helpful now, it might help someone else who doesn't have that harness and now knows they absolutely need it.

[Dandy Dan]

Just installed the DEPO headlights & corner lights on my 1995 E36 M3 coupe, just as you outlined here 3-years ago. You saved me a huge amount of time and lots of headaches regarding the install with your superb instructions, comments and pictures. I followed your tutorial and you were right on with it all from beginning to end. Additional comments and/or suggestions: 1) I used a dental mirror (yes, I'm a dentist) to verify the wire insertion position of the 5-wires (2 are gound) on the backside of the harness attachment block. Both my R & L lights were the same, but rotated counterclockwise by 45 degrees. 2) I would recommend using a heat gun to soften the black corner lock on the sides of the headlight boxes and the grey retention tabs on the sides of the DEPO corner lights prior to insertion. That way you can avoid breaking off the black corner tab on the headlight box like I did (silly me). (JB Weld epoxy for plastics bailed me out of that problem.) 3) DEPO should be sending you a big fat check from their Taiwan HQ for doing their work for them....the sorry info sheet (called a manual, ha!) that comes with the headlights and the all-too-brief info/pictures on their websites are both really sad and grossly inadequate to say the least. Again, thanks to you there in MN from this ND transplant to AZ!!!

[joxified]

Ok so i have tried for an hour to see the pics you posted for this but in flickr the picture is marked private or something please can someone help me out!!!!

I thought I'd take some photos and quickly detail how to install halogen Depo headlights with Angel eyes into a 1996 328i. Mine came with zero instructions, and I figure this can hopefully help some people out who don't understand relays and maybe wiring in general.

Parts List:

Headlight kit: (I got mine from ECS tuning for ~$250)
1) 2 Halogen Depo Angel Eye Headlights
2) 2 short wiring harnesses with 4 wires (brown, yellow, white and grey) and a funky connector boot
3) 1 long wiring harness with a red and black wiring setup including a fuse box and relay, and some grey wires too. The fuse box will open and you can see the fuse in there. It only has 2 red wires attached. The relay is like a cube with the red and grey wires coming out of one end of it. It acts like a switch when you put current to it. In this case we'll be applying 12V current to it from the parking light.

Voltmeter
Level
8mm socket, 10 mm socket, extensions, socket driver
Phillips screwdriver
Medium sized set of pliers
drill, drill bit, #8 sheet metal screw for ground point or a screw that fits one of the unused threaded hgoles in the engine bay near the positive battery terminal
Blue vampire tap
Zip ties

Optional:
Clear Corner lenses for turn signals/parking lights
Yellow light bulbs (1157 is what I used)


20170412_121744

[MParallel]

The only help I can give you is don't fit Depo's with/and AE's.

[Veleno]

The only help I can give you is don't fit Depo's with/and AE's.

I agree.

Plus, I think some DEPO lights come with AE already installed, so I'd go that route if needed.

[IMSARS69]

Ok so i have tried for an hour to see the pics you posted for this but in flickr the picture is marked private or something please can someone help me out!!!!

Got the same problem here...

Clicking Image Links yield...

'This photo is private. Oops! You don't have permission to view this photo.'

Any help to work around this would be appreciated as it'd make understanding the instructions a tad easier...

TIA...

db

IMSA RS 69
'ol corps rac'r
Rac'n Class of '69
Car #69