front parking lights on 2002 745i

[civilengineer]

I would like to know how to replace the front parking lights on a 2002 745 i .

[petecoyle]

I have just replaced one on my 2003 745i e65 car and the main dealers wanted £400 to change it. Oh and £20 for the bulb. They told me the front bumper needed to come off to get at it.

All I did was to remove the air box by disconnecting the small pipe off the side of the air inlet transfer pipe, and disconnecting it from the air intake system, you then undo two posidrive screws located under the air inlet transfer pipe and remove the top of the filter box and the filter. Now you can lift out the air collection box by waggling it, it's a bit tight but you can do it, it has a tang which locates in a slot to hold it in place.
Now remove the screws holding the headlight in place, 4 of them 2 on the top slamplate and 2 lower down inside the engine compartment.
Carefully ease the headlight forward as far as you can, you will be able to see the light bulb access near the top of the H/L housing behind the metalwork of the front slam plate supports. there is a round cap which you turn and bull to remove, it has an O ring as a seal so may be a little tight.
Once that is out you will see the connector, just pull that off carefully and then you can twist the bulb unit out ready for the new one. It is a bit fiddly to get the new one in (especially f you have arthritis like I have. But persevere and soon you will be re fitting everything in the reverse order.

Don't do what I did, I thought the plate at the bottom was the light, and I fiddled about to get the three screws out, it turned out to be the motor housing.

Now I could have said to the main Dealer, book it in and lets have it sorted, MOT was out and I just wanted it mending, the bulb is £18.47 plus Gat
They would have charged me £400 to do that job which I did in my lunch break.

The old bulb can easily be modified, either with an equivalent 12v 10w halogen bulb or I would think you could put some Hi Brightness LEDs in instead. that way you should never have to replace them again.... Just DONT throw the old one away, oh and you get a new cover for it too.

I hope this is of help to you
Let me know how you get on....

Pete

[Plyvince]

I found out today that it is possible to remove the headlight on an E65 without removing the bumper. However, I am not sure I would recommed it as I have a few scratches on the bumber for the effort. The whole experience took 5 hours and it didn't solve my problem, which is a failure of the left parking light (I believe these are also called angle eyes).

Can anyboy tell me what the parking light looks like and where it is located? I removed a h7 light, which is the full (high) beam, the HID-D2S low beam and the indicators (3457a) but none of these were blown. It looked like there were other lights in the head unit but it was impossible to separate the lens and get access to them.

Any advice?

[reino134]

Just had my front right side parking lights fail this morning on my 745i. Find it hard to believe that both of them burned out at the same time, must be some sort of module that failed. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what fails on these? Like I said before I find it hard to believe both bulbs failed at the same time....