[doggy]

Just bought a 2007 E91 325i with reflector headlights only to discover previous owner fitted HID bulbs to the outer dip beams. To my surprise these actually have more or less the correct beam pattern and don't appear to antagonise other drivers. Still not happy with the situation but don't want to revert to halogen bulbs as the standard setup was pretty awful on my previous 2008 E91 330i.
Reading this forum, it looks like I need second hand OE projector headlights, but these may not be suitable for HID lamps?
Content to have halogen main beams if these can be aimed correctly. (My last car had the main beams no higher than the dips and I couldn't find a solution).
I would also like to have DRLs of some kind.

What do you guys think is the best approach?

[Rich_D]

The only E90/91 headlights with projector lenses are xenons, which are expensive to buy even used and not just a plug & play retrofit, to do it properly you need the self levelling system and washers too.

What halogen bulbs did you have in your previous E91 as my LCI 330d has halogen headlights and with upgraded bulbs they're pretty good?

The LCI halogen headlights have angel eye DRL's and are a common/easy/inexpensive retrofit for pre-LCI cars.

Some companies do an aftermarket projector insert, but it's not a common mod and you need to split the headlight, but paired with LCI headlights this could be what you want.

[doggy]

Thanks for the information.
My previous E91 had standard halogen bulbs as far as I know. In fairness the dip beams were reasonable but the mains were utterly useless - aimed in the same place or possibly lower than the dips and I could find no way of changing this. I could adjust the height of both beams together but could not correct the problem. I checked all the lamps were correctly seated and tried swapping them a round to no effect.
Son in law has an 08 pre LCI E90 with halogen/reflectors, they are pretty poor too.
I understand the legal requirements for self levelling, headlight washers and an approved headlight unit designed for xenons and realise the present arrangement is not acceptable but since it currently has xenons that work without any bulb failure alarms or other problems I wanted to at least explore the possibility of fitting projectors, then washers /self levelling if it's viable.
Have seen several threads about fitting LCI projector headlights, as you suggest - are they all 'adaptive', or is there a version with a conventional reflector main beam?

[Rich_D]

They're not all adaptive and both pre-LCI & LCI xenon headlights have angel eye / DRL's so you could go for either, it was only the LCI halogen headlights that got angel eyes though.

My main beam pattern is good, I have uprated bulbs in those too and they are aimed higher/further than the dipped beam, so give great visibility.

[doggy]

Thanks for clarifying the situation.
I've found a 'reasonably' priced set of pre LCI Xenon headlights which use a D1S xenon dip / H7 halogen main / H10W angel eye / PY12W indicator, guess that's the simplest option.