Headlight Mod Sneak Peak!

[Jamos]

Ordered some 3/8" acrylic pipes. Did some test beds (turns out 250°c takes too long to heat it up, and 300+ just melts/bubbles it. So 275°c is the perfect sweet spot for this size!) and some refraction/diffuse tests and voila:

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That's with just a halogen lamp, with an LED it looks fantastic - I used the led light on my phone, but can't take a picture of it at the same time haha!

Here is the test piece fit inside the glass. The outside of the shape and all other surfaces will just be sprayed flat/satin black. The light will come from an LED on the inside of the black trim piece, and it will terminate at the top of the lense with just a black cap.


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Now I'm just going to CNC out a jig so that they all turn out the same shape and size annnnnd yup! Custom angle-eyes to give it that modern BMW eye look.

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FWIW the length of the tubes are 12" and when bent to shape are ~9.5" (9.68504") incase anyone ever wants to replicate them

[SEVEN40iL]

Very interesting!

[Alpine 7even]

I did this awhile back and wasn’t a fan. Curious to see how your turn out.

[Sabreslight]

I like it, I would go with a frosted rod. Am subscribed for more.

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[Jamos]

Alpine, do you have any pics left over?

[RSharma]

This is some creative use of acrylic tubing and it looks pretty cool.

It definitely makes the E38 look more like the modern cars though I do prefer a more classic look for this car.

[racer2086]

Wow really want to see light up pics of it installed. Pretty cool with interesting potential! Next, I'm going to be asking you to buy a set!

[haynes740]

I like this.


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[Jamos]

Haha thanks guys! I'm just about to CNC out a jig for them, I spent a good couple hours last night refining the angles to be EXACTLY covering the circular lenses, but not be so big they look goofy.

The line between goofy and aggressive is... very thin!

I have 3/8" tubing as I said earlier, and I just found my 3/8" grommets to finish the interface to the lense plate to give it that professional look. I'm doing a final once-over on the concept/design annnd putting the cnc file to work. It's annoying, I spent $20 to get six 12" tubes, so I only have 2 to do all the tests on before I commit to the four pieces I'll need. Fingers crossed no mistakes! Again for anyone in the future wanting to do this themselves, I've lowered the airgun temp to 225°c and I can keep the rod infront of the heat for 2 minutes before it bubbles, hotter of course bends quicker, but at the risk of ruing the rod!

Rod.. not tubing. Rod.

[Jamos]

Well I guess I'm calling it a day. 30 minutes ago everything was going GREAT!

Then.... I couldn't find my drill - one of three. Then I couldn't find the right drill bit.... THEN I came back to turn on the soldering iron, but it fell backwards and started heating up on my desk AND the sponge fell behind the desk, THEN I dropped a head light as I moved to grab the soldering iron THEN I DROPPED WATER ON MY DESK I HAD READY TO WET THE SPONGE........ crisis averted. Then I found my drill bit, started drilling annnnnnnnd presto:

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Turns out the plastic in the housing is some sort of fibrous material, it doesn't like to be changed and sounds like fiberglass when it has. WELL then, that sucks. Oh my computer just crashed, oh great now it won't reboot, GREAT now it's doing stupid Windows update GREAT now it says it can't do it, again, AGAIN, AAGAAIN JUST START UP GAT DAMN! ...... *sigh, so as I said, I guess it's time to call it a day hahahaha.

Here's what I DID manage to get done though:

Cutout some "mounts" for the rods, they also served as a template to bend the rods:
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Illuminated goodness:
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Here's how it looks unlit, quite fancy:
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So that's that for now. I'll probably just repair the headlight housing instead of getting a new one - so I can move forward with getting the car on the road for crying out loud haha.

Regardless, I'll update tomorrow when I get back to it. Big party here the next few days so unlikely it'll be done before that, but fingers crossed!

[Jamos]

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The whole set, mounts, caps, bent. Bloody time consuming!

I'll most likely end up with LED's on either end, the photo in the previous post shows it illuminated by only one end (my phone) and not mounted INSIDE the end which would help tremendously. The camera didn't like the exposure that's why it looks so uneven, but in person it's not very noticeable. Still would prefer to have it illuminated from both ends though.

[RVAE34]

I was just going to suggest that you light both ends. I would buy these if you made more!

[TurnerMS]

At first I was like ehhhh but the more I think about this the more I can't wait to see them installed.

-James

[RVAE34]

Same here.

[Jamos]

Prefacelift headlights ... for now though!

[RVAE34]

Ah yeah, bummer.

[Jamos]

Well today went for another 10 hours! These things are LABOUR intensive, who the hell would have thought!? "Bend some pipe, solder some wires.. drill some holes.. c'mon what can take so long?"

How about searching through LED's from all of your previous projects, and finding NINE when you need eight, talk about luck!

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So I then carefully predrilled each rod in the center to let the LED sit down inside:
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This is the size of the LED vs the ROD
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Then it comes down to... how do I wire them up? I want low profile, something like this:
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So after a few designs and tests I came up with what you see here wired! Wires out the "top" and very thin, two piece part that locks together and is press fit. No glue, no mess!

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[Jamos]

So uhhh, yeah! Wired them up, and presto!

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I have partially wired up the left headlight as well, but for now I'm calling it a night. Hopefully this work desk - the disaster that it is - survives this weekend's festivities haha.

I'm pretty damn satisfied with how this has all worked out, one hell of an effort and learning experience though let me tell ya!

Here's how the second set looks wired ready to go:

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[MMMMM5]

wow that looks really good!!!

[RVAE34]

So cool!!

[NordmanMg]

Oh wow

[Jamos]

Haha glad you guys like it!

[SEVEN40iL]

Excellent work!

[Staszek]

Looks awesome!! Could you make them so they look more like the E39 halo's? I would be very interested in making those. Fantastic work!

[racer2086]

Looks awesome! Great work!