help!!is autol leveling necessary?

[bmw4life13]

hid autol leveling and "low beam failure"

i'm getting my xenon angel eye kit installed today but have come across a bump in the road. my mechanic said that installing the autoleveling portion is a major pain in the ass and would require a couple of hrs of labor to run the sensor from the trunk,etc,etc. i know that factory installation comes with autoleveling but is it necessary?

 

[codex57]

it helps prevent you from blinding people. If you adjust it low enough, it won't be a problem. I'm not positive, but I vaguely recall hearing about a law that says xenons need to have the autoleveling, but that might just be for factory installed ones.

How much is the labor? It's sorta a cool function b/c people always look when you start up the lights and the lights go up and down in their little adjustment routine.

 

[Tom]

Technically its not, the auto-leveling feature is there to prevent the lights from blinding oncoming traffic. If you decide not to install it, make sure you don't aim it too high.

 

[coyotefreek]

it helps prevent you from blinding people. If you adjust it low enough, it won't be a problem. I'm not positive, but I vaguely recall hearing about a law that says xenons need to have the autoleveling, but that might just be for factory installed ones.

How much is the labor? It's sorta a cool function b/c people always look when you start up the lights and the lights go up and down in their little adjustment routine.

The law does not say that aftermarket xeons have to be auto leveling but that is because aftermarket xeons are illegal all together. I would suggest getting the auto leveling to work.

 

[MrElussive]

Cars that come with Xenon headlights don't always have the auto-leveling function. Your best bet is to just have the mechanic point the Xenons downwards, for the default position. But then again, how much of the cost of the xenon kit goes into the auto-leveling function? If it is a significant part of the cost of the xenon kit, you may as well pay the extra loot and have your mechanic hook up the auto-leveling function.

 

[bmw4life13]

my mechanic has had the car all afternoon and he's still not done with it!!!! what gives? he told me that there is a lot of custom work that needed to be done running and securing the harnesses, etc......

 

[mikev]

my mechanic has had the car all afternoon and he's still not done with it!!!! what gives? he told me that there is a lot of custom work that needed to be done running and securing the harnesses, etc......

How long you been going to him?? do you trust him?? ever met his kids?? it sounds to me like he really doesn't want to do the work and is just padding it out to get the most out of you. but i'm probably wrong!

 

[PuShAkOv]

my mechanic has had the car all afternoon and he's still not done with it!!!! what gives? he told me that there is a lot of custom work that needed to be done running and securing the harnesses, etc......

Running and securing the harness? WTF. [???1]

There are only three bolts on there that secure the harness. Nothing else. I do not get why he needs to run anywhere and why he is sooo insecure or whatever... but there should be nothing special about putting in autoleveling.

In my opinion,.. dump those things and run. You can make running more customized by kicking the guy's ass.

 

[bmw4life13]

i finally got the car back from my mechanic and the lights look great except for a couple of problems. first, my obc reads a constant low beam failure because of the lower resistance provided by the xenon lights. i'm supposed to get the e39 resistance relay pack tomorrow so hopefully that will work. finally, my autoleveling does not work on the driver's side headlight. bekkers is blaming it on mechanic,while,my mechanic is saying the light was defective. ultimately, i have a bad feeling that i am going to get screwed on this.

 

[bmw4life13]

update on autoleveling and hella xenon

just installed the resistance relay pack and found out that it doesn't work for the e36. i'm still getting the low beam failure message from my obc....freakin annoying!!! i guess there's not enough resistance in the e39 relay pack. does anyone have a solution?? anyway bekkers told me that it would take at least a week to get another headlamp from germany. plus there's no guarantee that i won't have to pay for another headlamp!!!!! .............all i want for xmas this yr is headlamps that work right!!!![fake]

 

[MrElussive]

If the auto-leveling function wasn't working on the driver's side headlight, your mechanic should have told you when you picked up the car. There is no room in the whole car modding scene for mechanics OR a company's products to make mistakes like this.
I hope everything works out and let us know what happens.

 

[bmw4life13]

here's an update on the low beam failure message. apparently, ~80% of e36's will display this message when an hid kit is installed. also, the resistor pack relay solves the problem for only some e36's. i wish i could explain why their is such a discprepancy in the e36's. the only definite solution appears to be rewiring the obc so that the low beam detection is disabled or somehow getting bmw software to disable the low beam failure code.