HELP - Sealed Beam to Euro Ellips conversion

[Grant]

I am currently in the middle of converting the sealed beams to the smileys and am unsure of which wires on the low beams are positive and which are useless. I know brown is negative. The other two on one side are purple/white and yellow/white; on the other they are blue/yellow and blue/white. If anyone knows of any other helpful articles, or anything else, please help me.

Thanks in advance.

[T.Dot E30]

Its easy, Get a test light.

And find the wire that gives you power when the low beam switch is on.
Bingo thats ur wire.

[Kruzen]

Hey grant, sorry again i couldnt' come help with this. Didn't finish my paper until 5am today! :shock:

Did everything work out alright for you?

[hamann318is]

I had to guess on one side, and we guessed wrong. The multimeter made the other side a breeze.

[Grant]

UPDATE
Okay, I need for my headlights to work. I am scared of driving at night with only one city driving light on. I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong, but high and low beams aren't working but one city driving light is. On the other side, the side marker is on but the city driving one is not. Gotta pull off everything and check to see if it's wiring, bulbs, fuses.... Any suggestions?

Kruzen, no problem about not making it out. I completely understand. How about tonight, though? I'll give you a call. Crivvy too.

Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody. Help! You know I need someone (named James). Heeeeelp!

[James Crivellone]

First things first.

Remove all teh wiring that you installed, and lets bring it back to stock.

Look at the rear of your headlight assembly. You should have 3 sets of connectors


2 wires for the Running Lights (top of the elip)
2 wires for the low beam
2 wires for the high beam.

Next lets look at your bmw stock wiring.

for your high beam you will have 2 wires, those two wires will be spliced into the connector for the new elip high beam.

Do that for each side. got it? okay high beams are done =)

Now lets look at the low beam connectors that are on the car. As you have a 91, you have sealed beams, so you should see a connector that looks like this.



You will see 3 wires that come into this connector, this is because a regular sealed beam low has 2 filaments and a common ground, when you turn on your highbeams the bump switches filaments. This is no longer needed as the H1 bulbs that are inside the euro elip are a single filament.

Looking at the front of the connector as seen above, you will have a brown/black ground wire (I forget the exact color) and 2 other wires. Using a 12V test light, or a voltmeter (if you don't have one...BUY ONE) you will need to determine when 12volts is being sent down this line.

Turn on your cars headlights, and make sure the high beams are OFF, using your test lamp, connect one end to the ground wire on teh connector (black or brown usually) and tap one of the other wires, find the one that turns the test light on, these are the two wires that you will connect to the new low beam elipsoid headlight, the 3rd wire you can simple tie off (make sure its nicely insulated away from anything metal)

Now for the driving lights, you simply splice into your sidemarkers, pretty simple, 2 wires, however lets worry about your low beams at least as I said above.

Now if you are not getting power, you screwed up somewhere, check your fuses, check your relays, and make sure you didn't pop anything, if you find a bad fuse...replace it.

Also remmeber that the headlights do not work unless the ignition is on, so make sure its set to ignition and not ACC.

any other questions?

[Grant]

Thanks again, James. I'm going home and will do as you say. If I have any more questions I'll let you know.

[royalflush313]

one more thing. Just common sense stuff, but make sure that your bulbs are good.

When I installed mine, my passenger side hi & lo were working fine, but for some reason I couldn't get the driver's side to come on at all.
I was tearing my hair out and checking the bulb itself never really occured to me for a good hour or so :oops:

You should start out with the city lighs as they are the easiest. Make sure that your sidemarkers are working to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the wiring itself, from there you really cannot go wrong unless the bulb is dead.

Seeing as you got one side of the city light to work, it's hard to believe that you screwed up on one side. It's just two wires to work with so swap the bulbs around and see if that works.

Other than the trivial stuff that I mentioned, James C has a good advice you can follow , so I hope you get it all working. G'luck.

[Grant]

make sure that your bulbs are good.

Haha, they are now up and running, but you pinpointed the problem. Oh my.