[amullo]

Hey Guys

Ive been looking for a way to increase the highbeam range of the factory Xenon headlamps on my E91LCi. This car only uses the outside lens for illumination and retrofitting the inside to work seems a HUGE undertaking. So this is what I came up with instead. I fitted two Hella FF 200 auxillary highbeam lamps inside the kidneys. The Hella FF200 are great and small auxillary highbeam lights that you normally see mounted as styling on Mini´s or Beetles. Cost for this whole thing was ~$100 including lights, bulbs, wiring and tiewraps. Took about 4hours to do.


I decided on Hella FF200 BLUE lights, since the colour of light matches my Xenons. Granted, Hella makes a FF200 Xenon, but its costly.
Here is how it turned out.




Lit

[amullo]

Mounting took some time, but I didnt need and special tools except for he little U-shaped screwdriver to get the grills out. A relay supplies the power and signal was taken from PIN 5 on the multicontact for the right side headlamp (brown/yellow thin wire)

Mounted the lights in the stock holes for the intake


Had to shave of some plastic for adjustment


No grill



Results?
Well, the FF200 lights coupled with 100W Osram Rally H3 bulbs Really get a shine on.

To put in in perspective.
The stock xenon highbeams has been independently tested to a range of 182meters/~200 yards with a width of 19meters/23 yards at 150m distance/160 yards at 3LUX (the illumination level where a normal sighted person can barely read a newspaper, glare in the eyes of animals is just starteing to reflect back)

The Hella FF 200 auxillary lights are tested to 3LUX at 281 meters/300 yards and is 24 meters/28 yards wide at 150meters/160 yards.
PER SINGLE LAMP! I put two on there. That means I increased the range by roughly 30% and the width by about the same, depending on adjustment.

Needless to say, My highbeam went from "Ok, but abit underpowered" to "Now we are talking!!". I realize that my mod may not be for everyone and Im sure that some posters will start screaming about engine heat.. But i cant easily remove them during summer and up here in Sweden, it rarely gets above 28C/90F even in the hottest months.

I hopw to provide a side by side comparison between "only" the stock bulbs and with the adition of these soon.

[udm328i]

nice job, I like it.

[Taran.J]

Haha that's awesome! I'd like to install some cop lights in my grills.

[roadkillrob]

It is my understanding that most of the airflow comes form the bottom grills and the kidneys add some airflow but are sized based on looks not how much air the flow, betting it doesn't make a huge difference on cooling.

[headhunterz]

Those belong on a jeep.

[amullo]

Originally Posted by roadkillrob

It is my understanding that most of the airflow comes form the bottom grills and the kidneys add some airflow but are sized based on looks not how much air the flow, betting it doesn't make a huge difference on cooling.

I didnt know that. Thanks! That makes me feel better abouit the engineheat issue.

Originally Posted by van

Those belong on a jeep.

Like I said.. The mod isnt for everyone. Some people are happy spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on visual upgrades like LED´s, rims, Spoilers and stuff like that that dont make a diffrence. This mod makes a huge diffrence when driving at night. Its like choosing Lasic over a boobjob. One makes you look good, the other makes you see good.
But thanks for your opinion!

[SCMalum]

Hey! This is great! I've driven on some unlit highways late at night - was OK with the highbeams but something like this would've been great. Good job!

[e90Cam]

It looks nice, but I personally wouldn't spend the time to do it.

[dragazn]

Check to see if these fit better, maybe can be avoided without trimming, some LED projector should be brighter and better:
http://www.theretrofitsource.com/led...l#.VAXX-vldWVM

Also here are the review and comparison against OEM Toyota Camry, just incase you want more specs and dimension. Hopefully we have someone take apart their foglight and try to fit these in:

Review:
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/31...ht-review.html

Specs and Dimension:
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/31...guide-trs.html

[amullo]

Those are foglights, fundamentally diffrent application.
The foglights are mounted low on a car and designed to throw a wide and short beam for use in fog or snowstorm conditions when even the lowbeam throws the light to high. I essence, they illuminate closest to the car, then comes the lowbeam and finally the high beam.

Those small led projectors will not come near the range of any cars stock highbeam, let alone the purpose built auxillary highbeam Hella FF200 lamps mounted above.

They have their place, to be sure! But its as wide and close superillumination of the area within 50yards of the car at the outside. The hellas throe their beam 6 times that range.

The best LED auxillary light on the market is probably Hellas Luminator LED auxillary light. But its big, heavy and very expensive. Its tested to a range off 254meters and 19meters@150meters and a draw of only 18w. Also has a very cold 6000K colour.
But good luck fitting them anywhere inside a grill.. You will find them on Baja and offroad racers or maybr bigrig trucks.

[dragazn]

Originally Posted by amullo

Those are foglights, fundamentally diffrent application.
The foglights are mounted low on a car and designed to throw a wide and short beam for use in fog or snowstorm conditions when even the lowbeam throws the light to high. I essence, they illuminate closest to the car, then comes the lowbeam and finally the high beam.

Those small led projectors will not come near the range of any cars stock highbeam, let alone the purpose built auxillary highbeam Hella FF200 lamps mounted above.

They have their place, to be sure! But its as wide and close superillumination of the area within 50yards of the car at the outside. The hellas throe their beam 6 times that range.

The best LED auxillary light on the market is probably Hellas Luminator LED auxillary light. But its big, heavy and very expensive. Its tested to a range off 254meters and 19meters@150meters and a draw of only 18w. Also has a very cold 6000K colour.
But good luck fitting them anywhere inside a grill.. You will find them on Baja and offroad racers or maybr bigrig trucks.

good point, forgot you are doing AUX light

[Reckless335]

They look ridiculous. Look like the should be on a rally car or something, but I realize this is one of those times of function over form. I'd be interested to see the actual benefit of these. Do a comparison at night of just the headlights, headlights and highbeams, and finally headlights, highbeams, and aux lights. I'd like to see how much additional light is gained.

Also, factory xenon ballasts are 35watt. Couldn't you have just upgraded the ballasts? 55watt or even opt of the off-road 75watt or 100watt ballasts?

[amullo]

Im planning on taking some pictures at night with my Nikon D90 on manual with set ISO/shutterspeed.

Its indeed a mod with function in mind. Sweden lies along the same latitude as northern Canada, so winter darkness is between september to april. I usually drive roads with little traffic, I can stay on highbeam for 20-30 minutes at a time with no oncoming traffic. Closest thing Ive seen to this area in the US is northern Maine.

But I digress.
Upgrading the oem ballasts didnt occur to me. Is that a real option? Any side by side tests on what it does? Being as the headlights are bixenon, Im not sure its the best option.

Thanks for the opinion guys, I like the feedback. Side by side pics coming. Its easy enough to take pics on highbeam vs highbeam with auxlights. Just pull the fuse!

[Dylanize]

Really cool! Love homebrew shit like this!

[Pauloxxi]

It looks nice and somehow discrete. I wonder if the light heat will not damage the plastic grill.

[amullo]

Originally Posted by Dylanize

Really cool! Love homebrew shit like this!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by pauloxxi

It looks nice and somehow discrete. I wonder if the light heat will not damage the plastic grill.

That was a concern, since Im using 100w Halogen bulbs. No problems with this yet, but Im keeping my eye on it.

The space is abit hard to see, but there is ~1-1.5 inches of clearence from the front of the light to the back of the grill (depending on top or bottom of the light/grill). Since Im using the headlights at Fall, Winter and Spring the temps are lower, generally from a high of 15C/ 60F down to below -30C/-25F the air rushing over the lamps should be enough to supress any melting.

But if it occurs, I have the option to downgrade the halogen bulbs to 55W Osram Nightbreaker unlimited bulbs or do a xenon conversion.

[Lotus99]

Awesome idea. I've been thinking of doing the same on our 5 series wagon.

This is where I was going with the project:

During the winters, we go up the mountains for skiing, and it's usually when it's dark out. The HID high beams are already pretty good I have to say, but I would still like to have more light farther down the road if possible.

Does anyone know the high beams' specs? Aux lights seem to be rated by 1 LUX at a certain distance, like the chart below shows. How would I find that out for our high beams?


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I'm toying with getting a pair of discreet LED lights, but I'm wondering if they're too small to really achieve anything more than I already have. Their specs sound good, but in reality, I don't know, and they don't say the 600 m of distance is at 1 Lux or not, to be apples to apples with other ones I've looked at.

They supposedly put out 3300 lumens per pod! Was going to get the Spot Hyper version of these, based on this lighting map:


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Fenix F4



Or maybe from these guys:

Optimus Series - LED Lighting

But I wonder if these little 3" lights can realistically put out more light than our larger reflectors? I'm having doubts... 6" rally lights would work better I'm sure, but not the right look for the car!

And then, I wonder if I could simply tap into the high beam wires, so they fire up when I use the high beams, or if the fancy electronics of the car and CANBUS would have issues with that? They only draw 1.5 amps each.

I was going to mount them above the license plate, using this Rigid Industries mount:

[Reckless335]

Where are the pictures?

[amullo]

Originally Posted by Lotus99

Awesome idea. I've been thinking of doing the same on our 5 series wagon.

But I wonder if these little 3" lights can realistically put out more light than our larger reflectors? I'm having doubts... 6" rally lights would work better I'm sure, but not the right look for the car!

And then, I wonder if I could simply tap into the high beam wires, so they fire up when I use the high beams, or if the fancy electronics of the car and CANBUS would have issues with that? They only draw 1.5 amps each.

I was going to mount them above the license plate, using this Rigid Industries mount:

Thanks for replying!
Its intresting that when the Swedish automagazine (ViBilägare - famous for first rolling the Mercedes A-classe way back in the day) tested the lights on the new 5-series F10, the lowbeam received top marks 5 out of 5 for length and width of the Xenon lowbeam, but the highbeam only got a 2 out of 5. So I can see that you really want some more range if your driving alot on unlit roads with not alot of traffic.

The test came out to 178 meters@3lux on highbeam. 3 lux is the cutoff for lighttests in the magazine, since less then 3 lux doesnt give you usable light (IE: Animals eyes dont glimmer/reflect less then 3 lux)

Thoise LED pods look nice, but as you say, they dont even come close to throwing the light the same distance as a larger reflector or purposebuilt solution. Just look at how big your headlights are, and they only throw the light 178 meters/195 yards. Those LED pods at 1.5w will not even get close to that range. The best LED Auxlight on the market is probably the 18W Hella Luminator LED. A full 6" reflector. Huge and expensive. That puts out a range of 280 meters and 24 meters wide 150. About the same as my small FF200 halogens.

The mountingplate your looking at works well. Im using one like that on my Golf that also has 2x FF200. Just make sure you mount it very solidly, not like the two screws in the pic above. Bolts, wide washers and washers + nuts on the back, or else it will vibrate and the lights will too = Not very relaxing. Doing the electrical will require a relay. The Xenons dont actually light up on highbeam like the old halogens, the shield just moves and tha ballast is alwys powered up. The lead that provides the signal to go to highbeam is only 0.35mm2 big, about the size of a single cable in a cluster of 8 in your average UTP/Internet cable.

If your looking for smaller lights that WILL increase the range I would recommend
Hella FF200 - (like I have) availble in clear, blue and Xenon.

Hella FF50 - smaller, but shaped the same. Clear or blue

Bosch Compact 100 - round small auxlight, perfect for hiding away behind a screen. Had some like these mounted instead of foglights on my old Honda



Its not uncommon to see modern BMW´s in Sweden with a couple of auxlights to help the highbeam

Originally Posted by latino1ny

Where are the pictures?

I can see my pics fine.. Any issues? I see several other posts indicating that they see them.

[Lotus99]

After my post, I looked up how our lights work, and noticed as you point out that the high beam is merely from a shield that moves up. So it sounds like how you connected your lights would be how I have to do mine? You said for yours: signal was taken from PIN 5 on the multicontact for the right side headlamp (brown/yellow thin wire)

So you tapped a wire to get the signal to your relay that fires up your lights, when you activate your high beams if I got it right. Do you think an audio shop could find the wire and put in a relay for me? I'm guessing it should be easy for them? (I've got a 535 wagon the lights would be going on).

The lights I'm looking at are not 10W total BTW. They're 10W per LED, so 40W total, and supposedly put out 3300 lumens per pod.

Assuming then that the light specs you posted are the same as mine (180 meters at 3 Lux for the high beams), then something like the BajaDesigns Squadron XL Spots (which are like the Fenix ones above, except I can't find a light chart for them) seem to go about 240 meters at 2 lux (so around 200 at 3 lux?), based on this chart.

Which wouldn't be a huge improvement over my high beams, or would it be?
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[amullo]

I´m sure any competent stereo place could handle a relay installation. Its definatly not rocket science! I did mine myself and it took 30-40 minutes to do it, most of the time waiting for the soldering iron to get hot or the solder to get cold (more time for beer).

Installation is easy, you need to find a place to mount the relay and then run 4 leads as shown

1. Signal to turn on -> point 86 on relay
This one you splice into the brown/yellow wire on pin 5 off the headlights connector, any side. The wire is thin, only 0.35mm2/22 gauge. I stripped the insulation with a sharp knife and soldered the lead into place. Unsure of if the 5-series has the same wiring, but the Germans (being Germans) like their stuff "In Ordnüng" so it probably is. PIN 5 on the connector (Top right or bottom left, depends how you hold the connector)

2. Ground -> Point 85 on the relay
Just run this to any grounding point in the chassies. I found a nice one on the left side where a ton of BMW´s own brown groundwires where attached.

3. Positive feed -> Point 30 on the relay
This will feed your lights with power. I attaced mine in the junctionbox just below the "jump start - hot positive" terminal in the engine bay. Where BMWs manual says to place the jumpercables. just below that point is a hot positive terminal. Just undo the nut, sip the wire with O-holder in and retighten. Make sure to fuse this wire at betweeen 10 and 20 amps, depending on your need.

4. From the lights -> Post 87 on the relay
The positive lead running to your mounted auxillary lights. Why you did this whole thing to begin with!

The light diagrams you put up seem pretty good!
I´d definatly go for the longest throw among them if your like me and want primarily extended range, but also being able to angle the lights out slightly to illuminate the side of the road to catch animals/moose/deer and other critters wanting to cross.

But I have say that those LED pods look pretty big and chunky. If I went for something like a numberplate mount on my BMW, I´d probably opt for smaller round lights like the Hella compact 100 or similar. Maybe the Australian Lightforce 140 lance could work aswell (those are really good). Then again, Once you have the wiring done and the mount in place, its easy enough to fool around with diffrent lights and such. Maybe even install some quick connects for the electrics so you can take the lights off during the summer.

I also have to share this.. A fellow BMW owner in Sweden saw my installation and felt he could do better. I guess if its worth doing, its worth OVERdoing, right?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ex8za3qf4c...2018.22.17.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fcf9uyghev...2023.43.18.jpg