[Beygan]

Hi all,

I have the lighting package on my 3 and like the way the footwell lights light up; I would like them to be on when city lights or headlights are switched on during night driving.

Is this a possibility?

Thinking of how the lighting and electronics are all put together and made to work with preprogramming of the stock components, it should be a possibility to code or hack the car's system to make this work, no?

Has anyone tried or done this?

I would love to know and would love to make this happen. Those Lexus' are almost making me jealous!

[Bavarian Tech]

Are you referring to the ambient lighting, far as i know e9x never came with any lighting package

[Beygan]

I believe so.

[Ali-E90]

Sounds like OP would like to use his footwell lighting as ambient lighting. I'd be curious too if this was possible via coding.

[acmf]

You can replace stock footwell lights with F-series lights that have white/amber mood lighting leds (63319242161) and connect amber or white leds to pin 48 in X14261 FRM socket to have them light up together with your lights.

You'll also need new 4-pin sockets and pins (61132359994) to use with the new lights. Plain wiring job, no coding required. Did this in my E87, too lazy to do it again in E92, although I expect the mod to be more rewarding with tan interior the E92 has.

[Beygan]

Originally Posted by acmf

You can replace stock footwell lights with F-series lights that have white/amber mood lighting leds (63319242161) and connect amber or white leds to pin 48 in X14261 FRM socket to have them light up together with your lights.

You'll also need new 4-pin sockets and pins (61132359994) to use with the new lights. Plain wiring job, no coding required. Did this in my E87, too lazy to do it again in E92, although I expect the mod to be more rewarding with tan interior the E92 has.

Question: Does pin 48 have a previous connection or does it simply have vacancy for pinning?

Additionally, can existing ambient lighting be used if the F-series lights are not?

Thanks a lot for your input. It's great to know of contribution from those of us who've paved ways.

[acmf]

Happy to help

It depends on the model/options I guess.

The 48 pin socket was vacant in the E87, but the car was pretty stock without the lighting package at all. Haven't checked in the E92 yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is used for something like ambient light strips in door cards/rear panels.

I'm not sure I understand your second question though. These new modules are direct replacement for your old footwell lights - they are the same size and fit the same openings in footwell panels.

The new modules have three leds: brighter white for illuminating footwells when the doors are opened/overhead light is switched on and two dimmer leds, white and amber, for ambient lighting.

It was years ago, but if I remember the pinout correctly, old positive and negative wires for brighter illumination connect to pins 1 and 4, and pin 2/3 connects to pin 48, depending on your ambient lighting color choice.

[acmf]

On a second thought, it should be possible to splice the ambient lighting wire into any backlight wire. The cig lighter or center console storage backlight for cars with no cig lighter may be an option.

Although connecting to FRM feels cleaner to me.

[Beygan]

Nice!

I'll try to look into this sometime. I'll report back what I find.

[vaporCRO]

BUMPing this thread, but something struck me.

I have no light package at all in my e90 LCI and I wanted to add footwell lights to come on with lock/unlock/open door action, possibly under door lights.

As FRMs are pretty sensitive and I have no big coding experience I factored out this retrofit option as I wouldn't want to fry anything.

My plan was to tap into the dome light and bring wires to footwell ligths to have them light up when door is opened/unlocked.

Seeing F30 4 pin multi color footwell lights, I can probably obtain them for around 10 dollars each, would the following be possible:

1. Door Opening - Tap dome light wire and connect it to pins 1 and 4 on drivers and passengers side
2. Ambient lighting - Tap into ashtray led wire and connect it to pins 2 or 3 for amber ambient lighting,
maybe even swap white ambient diode with another amber one for higher amber ambient brightness.

And because all the wires will meet behind the HU, I can possibly bring two more wires through center console to under the front seats and mount two more lights behind both front seats
so the back seats also have the door opened/ambient lightning.


Thoughts on this?

[Beygan]

Originally Posted by vaporCRO

BUMPing this thread, but something struck me.

I have no light package at all in my e90 LCI and I wanted to add footwell lights to come on with lock/unlock/open door action, possibly under door lights.

As FRMs are pretty sensitive and I have no big coding experience I factored out this retrofit option as I wouldn't want to fry anything.

My plan was to tap into the dome light and bring wires to footwell ligths to have them light up when door is opened/unlocked.

Seeing F30 4 pin multi color footwell lights, I can probably obtain them for around 10 dollars each, would the following be possible:

1. Door Opening - Tap dome light wire and connect it to pins 1 and 4 on drivers and passengers side
2. Ambient lighting - Tap into ashtray led wire and connect it to pins 2 or 3 for amber ambient lighting,
maybe even swap white ambient diode with another amber one for higher amber ambient brightness.

And because all the wires will meet behind the HU, I can possibly bring two more wires through center console to under the front seats and mount two more lights behind both front seats
so the back seats also have the door opened/ambient lightning.


Thoughts on this?

It's a good idea and not very difficult to do. I've done the same on my previous car (a Honda) before I upgraded. It felt like a new Lexus afterwards.

What I'd recommend is that you research is retrofitting the light package. This is a more professional approach.

To give you an idea, at least from my perspective, the retrofitting of some electronics are simple, but with detailed steps.

For example your lighting, and the respective retrofit package, you would do three steps,

1. Install the components (lamps in your case)
2. Run wires to respective connectors on boards (CAS, FRM, etc.)
3. Code

In conclusion, the retrofitting way is more challenging and difficult for those who lack the experience. However, once experienced with the job and learned the capability of coding, things become pretty logical.

I hope this helps.


——-


And for my research, I found that the lighting package contains lighting elements that do operate during driving. So, I have not a thing to do.

[vaporCRO]

Thank you!

If only E90 had ambient lighting door strip like e92 did haha.

I actually agree with you, keep it classy, keep it OEM. I'll do a deeper dive for the light package as there was never an official retrofit available but some diagram diving could bring up some answers to my questions.

I will make a trip to BMW scrapyard and see if I can obtain all the cables needed for this. And then, to have amber orange ambient lights, I could just install pre wired Amber led into the existing footwell light enclosure. Since I have no ashtray, I can actually use original ashtray harness to wire those ambers and also extract 2 amber leds from the ashtray and install them to light up the storage cubby under climate controls.


This way everything would basically be plugged jnstead of tapped and if any electrical issues arise, it's easy to reverse.

[KKevin]

I think I saw a video on YT of a guy retro fitting lights into his E90

[vaporCRO]

Managed to source all the parts needed on the scrapyard.

Door handles with lights and complete door wiring
Door Puddle Lights
FRM to Footwell lights wiring
F30 4 pin multi color footwell lights

Will probably post a tutorial once I get to it, I was planning on doing it next month alongside EL wire in doors(I know it's tacky haha, but the BMW Orange one looks stock to me and it's a great accent during the day in all black interior)