Angel Eyes 451

Gen 1 – CCFL Angel Eyes

These were glass, fragile and not very bright. However, 15 years ago, that’s what was available. Thankfully LEDs caught up.

Gen 2 – LED Angel Eyes

This was the next style of angel eye sold by Smartmods.

The new design is better than the previous for many reasons:

Simple to fit,
No invertors required,
Very sturdy,
Won’t break during fitting,
Very bright,
More reliable,
Not prone to UV, heat or vibration,
Cheaper!

Gen 3 – COB Angel Eyes

These new angel eyes are brighter, thinner and have a much more even spread of light. Fitment is the same as below for the gen 2.

They were better as they had a voltage regulator in-line and the small LEDs meant you couldn’t see the separate points of light so you have a more even distribution of light.

Firstly!

Test them. I don’t mean plug them in for a few seconds, nod to yourself and then turn them off. Get them running for an hour. If you can use a bench power supply, Run it at 14.4 volts to be sure. It’s rare for them to be faulty or fail but the last thing you want to do is fit them all to have them fail shortly after.

Fitting The LED Angel Eyes

Remove the front panels, remove the headlights and take the headlights apart.

Put the ring in front of the indicator aperture and mark where the cables will go through the reflector using a permanent thin tipped marker pen. Using a rotary tool like a Dremmel and some small files, make the hole for the wires to pass through. If you plan to paint your front reflector, do it now.

Apply contact adhesive to the back of the ring and to the headlight reflector where the ring will touch it, wait 10 minutes and then push the ring in place. (The following pics are 451 headlights, 450 headlight pictures will come soon).

You have a red and a black wire coming from the ring, the red is the 12v positive, black is earth. I’ll leave it up to you how you connect them but the 2 main choices are coming out of the headlight and splicing into the side light wiring or connecting the black wire to an earth point, extending the red wire into the cabin and fitting a switch.

They are very hard to photograph since they are so bright and give off an aura that you don’t get when viewed with the naked eye.

Wipe everything down with a tack cloth to remove dust and fingerprints before reassembling. Refit to the car, wire up and enjoy.

Gen 1 CCFL Angel Eyes

This style of angel eye has now been discontinued by Smartmods and is no longer available. They had problems with the supplier and increasing costs.

Old Fitting Guide

Below is what you will be fitting, you will need 2 rings and 2 inverters for 1 car. To buy these angel eye kits…good luck finding them any more.

They’re not the crappy acrylic rings with an LED in each end, these are cold cathode fluorescent lamps. Thinner, brighter and have a much better colour than even the standard BMW halo lights.

Test that both angel eyes work before beginning this modification.
Remove the front panels, remove the headlights and take the headlights apart.

Put the ring in front of the indicator aperture and mark where the cables will go through the reflector using a permanent thin tipped marker pen.

Using a rotary tool like a Dremmel and some small files, make the hole for the wires to pass through. If you plan to paint your front reflector, do it now.

Mark all the way along one of the wires attached to the ring with the marker pen you used earlier, this will help you later on when you have to cut and reconnect the wires.

Cut both wires halfway in between the ring and the connector. This is necessary because the hole you make will be too small for the angel eye plastic connector to pass through. The mark you made on one of the wires will help you when you come to reattach these wires back together.

Apply a small line of contact adhesive to the back of the ring and to the headlight reflector where the ring will touch it.

Allow the glue to cure for about 10 minutes before pushing the wires through the holes and gently pressing the angel eye into place. Keep light pressure on the ring for about 5 minutes, try not to let the ring move as the glue dries.

Rejoin the wires you cut earlier and insulate properly, ideally with heat shrink tubing. You don’t want these wires shorting out as the inverter creates thousands of volts.

The inverter is glued at an angle against the side wall just underneath the full beam headlight bulb. Connect the inverter to the angel eye ring. A red and a black wire comes from the other end of the inverter, black is negative and red is positive. If you want the angel eyes to come on with your sidelights, you will need to splice into your side light wiring.  Brown is negative and grey is positive.

Test to ensure that it is functioning correctly, in other words, make sure it looks awesome. Reassemble the headlight and refit to the car.

Refit the panels to the car, wait until dark and then try them out.

They look superb and at time of writing it is still very rare to see a smart with angel eyes.