Headlight Adjuster Replacement

[tonyinbrighton]

My adjusters have finally given up - any recommendations for a workshop in Sussex/Surrey who can fix this for me?
TIA
Tony

[E-bmw]

A lot of places won't touch them as it is rather fiddly & time consuming but not difficult, plenty of youtube/t'interwebz guides out there did mine on a rainy sunday afternoon with nothing better to do.

[E24man]

If you're talking about E39's there are a couple of different and preferred methods depending upon the year of car manufacture. Neither are too tricky but it is worth getting all the tools and parts you need in advance and familiarising yourself with the method. I had both lights to do and chose aluminium threaded replacements and the bake in the oven method; the first took nearly an hour, the second barely 20 minutes.

[tonyinbrighton]

Thanks for that - I will look for the aluminium adjusters.

[d_a_n1979]

The ally adjusters are rare as hens teeth now and very hard to find

If your E39 is pre-facelift; you can open them up with very few issues; if facelift, it's an in the oven/bake them off job and even then, it doesn't always work and sealing them properly is nigh on impossible

I replaced both my 2002 530i headlights with brand new Hella units via eBay for £400; expensive, but very much worth it as I've shovel like hands and very little patience when it comes to stuff like this

Seems they've gone up in price; but this is where I sourced mine: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-Genuine-HELLA-Headl...

[E24man]

It was a good eight years ago when I bought my aluminium bits. Mine is a facelift car but I was able to bake them to split them; I believe the cut off date for the baking method is sometime in 2002 but there is a keyhole method you can use for later cars/lights and again, youtube is your friend.

Good luck.

[tonyinbrighton]

Thanks for that link to the Hella lights.
I’m going to talk to my pal who looks after my cars and I suspect complete new units might be the preferred option as the car is a keeper.
Cheers
Tony