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Jim Powell Daytime Demon Eyes

Abstract - While driving home at dusk one day, I noticed four round circles in my rearview. It was approaching very quickly behind me. For some reason, I couldn't get my eyes off the rearview. I was so intrigued on what it could be. As it got closer and to my surprise, it was a BMW. The 5er switched lanes and passed me up, from that moment I knew I wanted the same look on my car.

So I did a lot of research on which model year of the 5er had the rings and searched every internet junk yard I could find. I came up with only one housing that had two rings. They wanted something like $400; completely out of the question.

Here is my Angel Eye saga. Some of my facts might be wrong, but this is how I remember them. Thanks to Jim Powell for providing amazing customer service, probably the best I've experienced with a single product.

Below is a picture of several versions of demon eyes made by Jim Powell. The left to right: DDE Gen IV, DDE Gen III, and DE. DDE Gen II (or just DDE) is not pictured, at the time it was currently installed in my car.

Demon Eyes (DE)

Story: A BMW enthusiast, Jim Powell, created the first copy of OEM halos and called Demon Eyes.

Parts: 4x DE rings, 9x LEDs, electrical materials.

Material Quality: Most rings were perfect. Some rings had little air bubbles and off center drilling of the LED sockets.

Design: Instead of using fiber optics like BMW OEM, the light source was provided by LEDs wired through by DRLs, fogs, or custom switches.

Install: LEDs needed to be glued to the rings. Then, the rings needed to be glued to the headlight housing. Finally, the electric source needed to be tapped.

Fitment: Due to the significant different number of Bosch headlight housing revisions, DE fitment was very poor. A significant amount of epoxy was needed and the rings would often pop out. My xenon based housing finally accepted the rings after using half a tube of high strength epoxy. Even then the rings popped out after a month of driving.

Brightness: Marginally visible at night. Dim compared to OEM rings. Due to the lack of light from the LEDs, the light output was unbalanced especially at the bottom of the rings.

Personal Modification: I had to cut a portion of my headlight trim to fit the rings in. Also, etching the rings with a nail file helped balance out the output, but made the rings even darker. I even tried installing special 10,000mcd bright white LEDs, but the improvement was minor. I concluded that either due to the focal pattern of the LEDs or just the material of the rings, that DE would never reach OEM brightness.

Install Time: 5-6 hours, much faster if installed a 2nd time due to learning curve.

Price: ~$250, DE was meant to be a DIY kit, a significant drop compared to $800 OEM. People mistook it as an easy modification that they could do in a short amount of time.

Daytime Demon Eyes (DDE)

Story: DE was more or less a disaster. Jim Powell basically started the project over from scratch. The new idea was fiber optics. BMW/HELLA had used fiber optics all along and it was obviously more superior. He called this new kit DDE, for its ability to be seen during the day.

Parts: 4x DDE rings, 8x fiber optic holders, 8x ring clips, 8x fiber optic cables, 2x light boxes, electrical materials.

Material Quality: Rings were pretty much perfect in terms of quality. Fiber optical cables were also good. Light boxes are small and sturdy.

Design: Ditching the old idea of LEDs, DDE uses fiber optics similar to OEM. The rings and the fiber optic cables are joined via fiber optic holders. Then the fiber optic cables from each headlamp are grouped together and routed to designated light boxes. The ring design was also updated from DE specifications. The new rings had sharper edges that helped light escape.

Install: This new design eliminated epoxy from the installation because everything was friction fit. However, the friction wasn't enough to hold the rings in. Again, I had to use lots of epoxy to hold them down. Because DDE uses fiber optics, cutting the ends with a sharp knife is important to maintain a low loss rate at the junctions.

Try to get the end as even as possible. Cut the fiber optic cable in one stroke.

Fitment: Again, due to the significant different number of Bosch headlight housing revisions, DDE fitment was very poor. A significant amount of epoxy was needed and the rings would often pop out. My xenon based housing finally accepted the rings, this time I had to epoxy the whole ring to the outer perimeter of the reflectors. I had to use a whole tube of epoxy. Notice the yellowish areas around the ring. Those are all the places I had to apply epoxy to secure the ring.

The xenon ring popped out after a month of driving...

...and it occurred on other side as well.

The light boxes were the easiest part to assemble. However, there was really no good place to mount the light boxes. Also, the light boxes got really hot because of the halogen bulbs. Some people had problems with their fibers melting because the cable ends got too close to the bulb.

Brightness: DDE was a significant improvement over DE. Fiber optics proved to flood more light into the rings than LEDs. However, DDE was still dim compared to OEM and was not visible during the day.

Personal Modification: I had to ditch the supplied clips completely because they would not fit. As mentioned above, I had to epoxy the whole ring down. Also, a dedicated power source with a relay is recommended. This is because the current draw of halogens are orders of magnitude greater than the current draw of LEDs.

Install Time: 5-6 hours, much faster if installed a 2nd time due to learning curve.

Price: ~$50, Jim offered an upgrade program for previous DE customers to upgrade to DDE at a very attractive price. At this time, DDEs had to be bought and upgraded directly from one of his distributors, Omnitech Motorsports.

Daytime Angle Eyes (DAE)

Story: Sometime in the middle of all this Demonic Eyeballing, a guy known as "Herb" created his kit and called it Daytime Angle Eyes. I personally do not have his kit, nor have I seen the kit outside of pictures online. From what I hear the kit is great and is closest  to DDE Gen IV. To this day, people are still arguing over which kit is best. I think both kits must be pretty darn good. There seems to be two different types of halo kit owners.

1. DE -> DDE upgrade -> DDE Gen III upgrade  -> DDE Gen IV upgrade. These are people like me.

2. DE -> DAE. The other half of halo fanatics.

Honestly, given the circumstances, if I had waited instead of upgrading directly to DDE, I am pretty sure I would have purchased DAE simply because everyone else was going that direction. Either way, I would have the same result today.

Parts: Not sure.

Material Quality: Not sure, but I hear it is good.

Design: Same optical design.

Install: Same general installation.

Fitment: Not sure, but I hear it is good.

Brightness: Not sure, but I hear it is good.

Personal Modification: Not sure.

Install Time: Not sure.

Price: ~$250

Daytime Demon Eyes Gen III (DDE Gen III)

Story: Things with DDE also did not go so well. Most people were turned off by DE that they waited for the results of DDE before purchasing. In addition, around this time, there was this huge controversy where Jim accused Herb for copying his clip design. Whether or not that was true, I never found out. But more importantly, people were more appalled by how Jim handled the situation. Anyway, too much politics and to little research on how to make halos better. This died down after a couple of weeks, but I certainly think the controversy strayed many potential buyers away from the halo kits.

But anyway, all of a sudden people started calling halo kits by generation numbers. I think this version is called DDE Gen III because DDE was actually Gen II. Again, I could be wrong. Out of Jim's generous heart, he upgraded me to Gen III for free due to all my problems with xenon headlamps.

Parts: 4x DDE rings w/ preassembled optic holders and ring clips, 8x fiber optic cables, 2x light boxes, electrical materials.

Material Quality: Rings were pretty much perfect in terms of quality. Fiber optical cables were also good. Light boxes are small and sturdy. The preassembled holders and clips seemed to be glued on very tightly.

Design: Same optical design as DDE.

Install: Same installation design as DDE.

Fitment: DDE Gen III was primarily released to fix all the fitment problems of DE and DDE. The preassembled rings eliminated the possibility of the rings rotating in the holder. But again, DDE Gen III did not fit my xenon housing. The clips were too long causing the rings to stick out too far. However, the preassembled holders and clips helped the fiber cable from popping out as often.

Brightness: I could tell no difference between DDE and DDE Gen III in terms of brightness. So again, DDE Gen III was still dim compared to OEM and was not visible during the day.

Personal Modification: I had to remove all the excess epoxy from my headlamps. The epoxy was very hard to remove and left scratches all along the inside of the housing. I also had to saw the clips so that they were shorter and fit inside my housing. Even with all the modifications, DDE Gen III simply did not fit. Also, instead of routing the fiber optic cable in through a drilled hole in the center, I routed it directly through small hole cut in the dust boot. This way there are less bends in the fibers and a shorter overall length.

Install Time: 2-3 hours, just had to change the rings, the light boxes were already installed.

Price: Free, I had emailed Jim many times about my problems and he always responded quickly. I offered to pay for some of the shipping expenses. He quickly sent me the updated Gen III rings because I didn't need more light boxes.

Daytime Demon Eyes Gen IV (DDE Gen IV)

Story: DDE Gen IV was the kit to change around the reputation of DDE. In all the pictures DDE Gen IV seem just as bright if not brighter than OEM. More people seemed to be buying DDE now that Gen IV was released. After a whole other load of emails to Jim, he decided to upgrade me for free to Gen IV for all my problems. I received the kit promptly and inspected the components.

Parts: 4x clear DDE rings w/ integrated optic holders and ring clips, 4x HID DDE rings w/ integrated optic holders and ring clips, 8x fiber optic cables, 2x light boxes w/ cooler operating halogen bulbs, electrical materials.

Material Quality: Both clear and HID rings were pretty much perfect in terms of quality.

 The added length of Fiber optical cables were a definite plus.

The integrated holders and clips seemed far superior than any previous DDE revision.

Design: Same optical design as DDE.

Install: Same installation design as DDE.

Fitment: DDE Gen IV came with different types of preassembled clips depending on which headlamps you had. As far as I know there three versions: halogen, xenon, and bi-xenon. I could be wrong here. Anyway, I received a xenon version for my xenon headlamps.

To my disbelief, the high beam rings did not fit my high beams. The left clip was too long so I could not seat the ring properly. I was beginning to wonder if my headlamps were unique.

It ended up that the xenon ring fit both my xenon and high beam sides. So I ended up using 2 xenon rings from both the clear and the HID set that I received. I installed the clear ones over the high beams and the HID over the xenons.

As you can see the HID ring is darker and does not match obviously.

It looked weird so I wrote more emails and sent more pictures to Jim. Then, Jim sent out another two xenon rings for my high beams. That's pretty good customer service! I received the new rings in a couple days and now all four rings fit perfectly. No gluing, no mess. Clips in and out easily and sturdily. My fitment problems are over.

Brightness: Gen IV was actually brighter than Gen III although they look the same. Perhaps its different materials? I do not know.

Personal Modification: The modifications I made to this kit are just on the light box mounting. As you may know, there isn't much room to mount the light boxes. It is also best to keep the length and number of bends of the fiber optic cable equal for both sides to achieve the equal brightness. So what I did was relocate the light boxes so they are underneath the headlamp housing.

There are four advantages in this design. First, there is really only one bend in the cable. Second, all the cables are short and similar in length. Third, since the light box is further away from the engine bay, it does not get as hot and it can be more easily cooled by the outside air. Finally, since the light box is not visible from the top view, BMW will not note that you have performed aftermarket modifications to the headlight assembly. Too bad they already noted that for me when I had DDE installed.

Install Time: 2-3 hours, including time to design a new location for the light boxes. I pretty much know all the details about mounting these things. Even then, I took my time insuring a good install.

Price: Free, again I can't express enough how much Jim stands behind his products.

Impressions - Although I ran into all these problems during installations, it may very well be that my headlights are unique. I haven't heard anyone else having as bad fitment problems as me. So some of the things on this page may not apply in all cases.

Forum developments since DDE Gen IV

-Brighter halogen bulbs gives more output, can be bought at any hardware store.

-DDE GEN V is being released. Offering LumenX technology???

-Fiber optic cable length can be much longer without really affecting brightness, Herb has installed many DAE with super long fiber optic cables that run around the whole engine bay. He claims that the loss is not noticeable.