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Headlight upgrade

Discuss the problems with your X5 (E53).
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Rick G
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Headlight upgrade

Post by Rick G » Wed Nov 20, 2019 3:41 am

Here I am again with this heap. It has to be a Friday car before a long weekend or it could just be a normal 21st century piece of junk! Hoonose,
I opened the back of the lights to get at the park light and indicator to tap into them for lights on a bull bar I built and found a heap of crumbling plastic and discolored copper wire. Strangely enough they were still working.
Has anyone found an economical replacement or fix for this problem. I can replace the wires etc. but would like to take the opportunity to upgrade the high beam to maybe LED.
The best price I can find for a straight out replacement is about $900 AU and my wallet did a back flip out of my pocket and hid in the corner when I saw the price. Yeah I'm a scrooge but then who wants to spend money when it's not really necessary.

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X5Sport
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Re: Headlight upgrade

Post by X5Sport » Wed Nov 20, 2019 6:26 pm

That’s cheap. I wanted to upgrade my X6 lights and the OEM kit was £6,000! Your wallet would have emigrated :D

High power LEDs need special cooling and control units which actually pulse the lights at high speed to reduce heat. A hot LED is a broken LED!

The trouble with most kits is they aren’t E-approved for use in road in Europe and most of the manufacturers claims are dubious at best. I do have OEM LED on the 2-series and they are superb so I can see why people want them.
:ant: Never anthropomorphise computers. They hate that.

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Rick G
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Re: Headlight upgrade

Post by Rick G » Thu Nov 21, 2019 12:44 am

I have found some that are cheap and for a very good reason so steered well clear of them. The HID lights for the low beam are good but the high beam QI are yellow in comparison and have been considering the LED H1 bulb but they do make a lot of heat and would contribute to the already far too hot headlight cases. Might just put a light bar across the front in keeping with the bullbar on a beemer theme. :evil:

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