Lighting upgrade...

As winter is aproaching and bulb technology has greatly improved in recent years, i am going to buy some upgraded dipped and main beam bulbs. I have 2 problems however.

Firstly my current bulbs on my 1986 non highline 635csi are fused on. This means that i will have to take the entire light assemble off to get enough purchase to get the old bulbs off. (I am told this will be a two hour job)

Secondly as i can't see the bulbs i don't know which ones are the correct size. I now know that H1 bulbs are incorrect as these where the bulbs used on the eliptically lighted highlines. I think the correct bulbs are H4, but i am not completely sure.

Can someone confirm if i have got the size of bulb correctly, and recomend a bulb combination which will allow me to see the best from my old car?

Your help is most apreciated

James

Well all i wanted to do was change the bulbs, but it appears to be a much bigger job than originally planned. I may have to spend a day with my mechanic doing this job in order to get the bulbs off. I will have a look at my handbook and see what it says. I think i also have some bulbs in my toolkit so i can look those up whilst i am at it.

Highline headlights are very exspensive and difficult to get hold of. If i find some before i do the job, then I will put them on and then upgrade the bulbs. Cheers for the advice guys

If you come across any ellipsoids in your travels Horsetan, i would be most interested, as if i am going to take the entire lighting out of the car to change the bulbs it's not any more work to put the other light in. As for the rear high level brake light, i would like to take you up on that kind offer. When my car is functioning I can maybe come up and see you and we can spend some time doing things to our cars.

Spoke with Motormec yesterday as i had to order up some bits, and herd the price you got your head for. All i can say is Wow you did well there. The car gods were looking at you in a nicer frame of mind than they have been.

Well I did say might.

Bit of a bugger as BMW are usually so good at component sharing.

What we need is some enterprising soul to make up a conversion kit for all those old E34s & E32s!!!

I thought I'd fill you in with how things went.

 I Have finished fitting the lights and bulbs. Wow was it a fidley job. Intial indications were that it was going to be a 3 hour job. Fortunantly a friend of mine has a grip like a vice and so the back of the headlight could be removed without taking out the grills and light assemble. Took me 1 hour to fit 6 bulbs and the car now has new side, dipped and main beam bulbs. Powerbulbs came up trumps and there delivery arived in 24 hours. I had to clean out the back of the light assemble with a bit of wet and dry and then spread quite thickly some white slip (Basically the same as copper slip, but is able to deal with higher heat loads). Then everything went back together. My lights have gone from dim and difficults to see on dark roads to blindingly bright. I thouroghly recomend making a bulb change to these older cars. What a difference. I basically bought the most powerful bulbs i could whilst remaining within the legal requirements and so Zenon technology bulbs were aquired which offered 50% more light and 20-30 Metres more distance. On initial viewings these claims seem to be about right.