BMW xenon headlights - too low or too high

[Goatex]

Just want to share something which I'm sure to many of you will be common knowledge but hopefully there's at least someone who can benefit from this. Both myself and my folks have BMWs fitted with xenon headlights - I have an E39, the folks an E92. Drivers would often flash the E92 (the first car they had with xenons) when the headlights were on as they were pointing higher than they should. Car was taken to the dealer and said there was nothing that could be done as the lights were self adjusting and that they were OK.
Conversely when I got my E39 I was surprised at how bad the lights were as they were pointing pretty much down at the ground. Searching forums seemed to indicate that the adjusting mechanism was brittle and would frequently break causing the lights to drop. I then found that there is a way of manually adjusting them with a screw on each headlight unit, E39 photo below but very similar on E92 and presumably all other xenon equipped cars. Result: both cars now have perfectly adjusted headlights.

[Jimmy No Hands]

My xenons stopped self levelling so I had to manually adjust them as they were aiming too low.

Literally the second time starting up after adjusting they sprang back into life and work perfectly fine now.



Now If only my faulty parking sensor would fix itself..