BMW 1 Series

With Xenon lights - what's the big bulb behind the projector lens in the 'inner' headlight for? No matter what lights I have on (sides, DRL, main, dipped, parking), this bulb never seems to be on, it's only ever the ring round the outside that lights up at varying degrees of brightness depending on what lights you're using.

Its used if you have adaptive lighting, an additional bulb illuminates when the steering is past 90 degrees below 50 mph

Ahh I see. Shame it's sitting there not doing anything on non-adaptive models. Wonder if it's possible to wire it up so that it comes on with the main beam?

In war time a radio signal is transmitted to BMWs and the bulb activates as a high powered lazer. Use the horn to fire.







I'll leave now..

It emits an aura of fear, causing lesser vehicles to move out of the fast lane and let you past.

RPG player

I presume you have a facelift car? On pre FL it is a halogen main beam to supplement the bi-xenon main beam.

I have a 135i/N55 (Apr 2010) and had wondered about that myself.

Nearly went back to the dealer and asked as I thought I had a couple of dead bulbs from new. It wasn't until I met another owner in Le Mans this year and asked him and learnt that they weren't opertional.

Wasn't aware of the adaptive headlights connection though.

If anyone knows how you could get them to light up as well I'd certainly be interested.

Yep, it's a 2009 model. What the pre-FL has sounds ideal as having it there but completely disconnected seems to be a backwards step. Question is, how to get it wired back up in pre-FL mode?

Our 130i LE (post Facelift) finally arrived on Saturday, as it has Xenons this post prompted an immediate look!

On reading the handbook and taking a closer look, it would appear that the inner set of lights do light up, but it is only a 35w bulb that runs the daytime running lights. As far as I can make out, there is some sort of reflector setup in the light unit that enables this 35w bulb to iluminate the corona rings.

But I may be wrong.

You could be right, it's very difficult to tell with all the reflections you get when the rings are lit. That said, looking at the diagram on realoem, there's another bulb (labeled '12') that may be something to do with the rings. Thinking about it, sidelights might be just bulb 12 lit, and DRLs could be bulbs 1 and 12 lit (as the inner ring is definitely brighter when the DRLs are on).

There's also some reference to bulb '7' for the adaptive lighting that tminal mentioned, so whether bulbs '1' and '7' work in tandem for cars with adaptive lighting, who knows. Makes me think the idea of getting bulb '1' changed from a 35W to a 55W one and wired into the main beam would just mess up the ring lighting.

Be happy with what I got I guess

Very funny.

Yep, the 35w H8 is purely for the Corona rings and has nothing to do with the adaptive lighting option at all.