Xenon self levelling
 

Hi,

I recently changed over my halogen lights for OEM xenon units.
It doesnt look like my self levelling is working.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Thanks

did you have OE self leveling on the halogens? or, was it manual?

I think it was manual. I have the height control unit next to the steering wheel which no longer works

wait, wait... the headlight self-leveling is a motor inside the headlight assemblies that modifies the direction of vertical direction of the beam based on the load of the car. On HID lights in Europe it is a requirement to have leveling, either manual, or preferrably automatic. On halogen it can be manual, or sometimes automatic.

the height control is a totally different animal... it regulates the vehicle's stance under various loads - and since you have posted in E53 forum, refer to a height button by the steering wheel and are in London, I can only speculate that you have a X5, model years 2004-2006, right hand drive...

in order to be more specific with an answer, please provide a description of your car AND what is wrong with it... right now you are mixing two issues (which can be interconnected), one is self leveling of headlights that is done via internal motors in the lights, and the other one is car leveling, which is a pneumatic system...

elaborate more, will you?

I have a 2002 3.0 sport. Before I got the xenons I had plain standard halogens. I dont know whether they levelled or what they were just standard not projectors.

I switched them for oem xenons oem ballasts and bulbs. Since fitting them the aim is off and I do not believe they are self levelling.

Another issue next to the wheel I have a height adjuster that is labelled 1,2,3 my understanding is that this changed the height of the lights? This does not do anything any more.

For the time being I have been adjusting the aim of the light manually with the white screws on top of the unit.

ok...
this additional information elilminates the EHCII problems, as your car is not fitted with air ride level adjustment.
the height knurled dial you are talking about is a manual headlight adjustment - the headlights must be first adjusted in place with the correct installation, further adjusted with white screws for proper alignment and the "0,1,2" (or 1,2,3) dial makes adjustments when you have additional people in the back seat or a load in the trunk, to account for the tilt.

the motors inside the headlight are controlled by the LCM. however, the xenon lights are provisioned for the automatic level adjustment...

there supposed to be a plug for the halogens - is it the same plug that can mate with the xenon plug? I am not sure if the manual adjustment can or can not move the xenon motors - can you check for those motor plugs by the headlight housings?

There were no wires left over when I swapped the units over. Every connection from the halogen unit plugged into the xenon unit.

Attachment 59829

i see that the leveling motors are plugged in too...

i will take a look at the WDS to see if the manual signal is the same as automatic but it will be much much later today or even tomorrow...

maybe somebody else can chime in meanwhile...

Thanks for your input so far

Could it be the motors have packed in?

chances that both motors are not good - slim... the little round knob at the end of the adjuster inside the assembly may have come off, but the motors shoudl be spinning... i suspect the signal...

Last time I looked into this the european lights had the same stepper motor set-up in the headlight and the control module responded to a simplified "rheostat" in the control in the dash.
The motors from the original headlights should fit into the xenon. They are a fiddle to remove/refit but I'm running on memory here as it has been about 8 years since I fiddled with them but it can be done.
I put a motor control module together that allows me to adjust the height of the lights in my ex-halogen retro-fitted xenon X5 via the stepper motors.

the xenon lights should have native motors already as part of the housing, as evidenced by the presense of the plug - if there were no motors, there would have been a blank plastic cover/plug. The US halogens do not have the adjuster stepper motors, the Euro manufacturers do not trust the driving knowledge of the US consumer - an average driver barely knows how to turn the turn signals on!!!!!:nanana:

your info is very useful, you say that is possible to use the stepper motors in either setup, automatic or manual... did i understand you correctly?

Running on memory:
I believe so as I checked out an imported headlight unit and everything was the same as local. Then I checked out the wiring diagram for the euro headlights and the only difference was the dash control and control module. It may not have been all that different as the auto-level does a comparison of readings between two rheostats to level the lights. If you put a fixed resistor that reflected the middle of the range for one rheostat then a switch with three fixed resistances would give you the three settings mentioned by the OP. That would be my take on it.
I intended to make a fully functional retrofit auto-leveling system working on different sensor system then life got in the way and I dropped the project after I completed the stepper motor driver section which I still use.

ok, i need the last 7 digits of VIN - you can post it here or PM me... seems that some rewiring needs to be done...