[Billfitz]

By having them aimed correctly. It's not the light intensity that blinds other drivers, it's having them aimed too high. It's also a necessity to use LED bulbs that place the LEDs in the same position as the filaments are in halogens, with no forward facing LEDs.

[shrubbery]

Do these look like the correct ones:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Loutsbe-800...eywords=h7+led

Cheers

[Billfitz]

Bad link.

[shrubbery]

Link updated as the other ones disappeared.

Have also spotted these alternatives:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NOVSIGHT-He...ct_top?ie=UTF8

[Billfitz]

I don't see LED drive ballasts, and I can't say if you can go without them. These look the same as what I have, even down to the Broview name on the ballasts.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Upgr...AbTest=ae803_4
Make sure you get H7 for headlights, H11 for fogs. I assume the link will show you pricing for UK, it shows US for me. I've used AliExpress before, the service is very good and surprisingly fast.

[Adam_F30]

Billfitz, thanks for the info in this post. The OSRAM Nightbreakers i installed 1.5 years ago died and I was reluctant to go with another set of halogens. I ordered these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They don't have the drive ballast that are found in other models but as you say, they might not be needed. Waiting for the weather to get above freezing to install. Will post an update shortly.

[waelaburezeq]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

I finished up my LED installation today, after over a month of experimentation to figure out what works, and what doesn't. First, the bulbs:


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These come in H7 base to fit the headlights, H8/9/11 to fit the fogs. No fans, so that's one less thing that can fail. They include a canbus harness, so they don't throw any warnings. You can find the exact same product sold under at least five different names, including Weisslicht, so shop for the best price. The H7 and H8/9/11 don't sell at the same price, so shop between those versions as well.

They're not plug and play. No LED is. You have to code out the cold and warm checks, whether you have canbus harnesses and/or resistors or not. The cold and warm checks will cause the LEDs to periodically blink. You don't see it with halogens, but with LEDs you do. But don't fear coding. I did, and put off learning how to code for a year until I had the LEDs and found out that coding isn't optional. But coding isn't difficult, it just looks that way, so go for it. And you can code other nice stuff, like getting rid of that stupid warning message every time you start the car.

Something happens with the fogs that doesn't with the high or low beams. As soon as you plug them in they flicker rapidly, at a very low intensity, even when the ignition is off. If this can be coded out I wasn't able to find the code location that would do it. A resistor does stop it. Don't buy the usual 6 ohm 50 watt resistors, though. I found that a 15 ohm resistor stopped the flickering, and 15 ohms burns up a lot less current and runs a lot cooler than a 6 ohm resistor. I used these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They install before the canbus, connecting the hot and ground leads. You can find plenty of instructions and videos on the subject.

The high and low beams don't have this flicker, so they don't need resistors.
There is an issue with the high beams, though. The mushroom shaped heat sink on the back of the assembly won't fit past one of the parts in the lamp. The fix is to cut away enough of the heat sink on one side so it will fit. The heat sink can be removed from the assembly (be sure to loosen the set screw first), and being aluminum it's reasonably easy to cut with a metal cutting abrasive blade, even a hacksaw. Put it back onto the assembly, lock it in the right position to fit into the socket with the set screw.

Installing the high beams is easy, there's an access under the hood. The fogs aren't bad, but it's best to jack the car, pull the wheel and remove the fender liner. The lows are a royal PITA. There's no access under the hood, and working though the access in the wheel well you can't see what you're doing. It's all by feel, and there's barely enough room to fit your hand inside the lamp housing. I love me bimmer, but they really screwed up here. I fixed it with a Dremel rotary tool equipped with an abrasive blade, which I used to put an access under the hood the way BMW should have. I cut off the top of the housing over the low beam, making it easy to get at things. You still insert the bulb from the wheel well, then finish installing it from under the hood.



The cover that's created by cutting the top off the lamp has to be sealed water tight when you put it back in place. That's a simple job using some vinyl mastic, the same stuff used for sound reduction on panels.



The metal brackets that hold the bulbs are flimsy, because the original halogens weigh practically nothing. LEDs are fairly heavy, so the LEDs will probably be loose in the brackets. I secured them to the brackets with some high temperature RTV, just enough to keep them from wriggling around.

How do they work? Great. I didn't take any pictures, you can find those all over the net. I did measure the light output with a meter. The headlights are about twice that of the stock halogens, the fog lights three times the halogens, and the color is pure white. No yellow, no blue. The beam pattern is the same.

Hi,

I am about changing my H8 Fog Lights and H8 Stand-by lights (the circle around the angle eye). Car is E93 07, what do you recommend? I don't want to have any error unless they can be solved with coding or Ohm.

I am interested to have 6000K lights.

[Billfitz]

Everything you need to know about the fog lights is in the post you quoted. I don't have angel eyes, so I can't help there.

[pcm77]

just installed my led h7s very very easy after following advice on here.
literally took 5 mins to do both sides.
however 1 of the led bulbs sat back in the hosing at a slight angle, so will be testing the light spread as soon as its dark.

[Billfitz]

That's caused by the high weight of LED, which the H7 brackets were not designed to handle. I addressed that in my original post.

[Littlebear]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

That's caused by the high weight of LED, which the H7 brackets were not designed to handle. I addressed that in my original post.

I've also seen a few little metal clips to be used when going from halogen to LED. Are these needed or can I just use a dab of "Liquid Nails" to hold the LED bulbs in like wot you did?

Murf

[pcm77]

yes certainly a lot heavier than what i took out...the yellow chips on the bulb were facing diagonally.
tested them last night and was lighting up the shops i was driving past.
changed over this morning now all is well what a difference led makes compared to the halogens.
time will tell if they last but very happy as of now

[Billfitz]

Originally Posted by Littlebear

I've also seen a few little metal clips to be used when going from halogen to LED. Are these needed or can I just use a dab of "Liquid Nails" to hold the LED bulbs in like wot you did?

I've seen those, which are usually tagged as used in Mercedes, and I don't think it has anything to do with LED anyway. Liquid Nails is meant for use with wood. It may or may not hold metal, and may degrade with heat. I used high temperature RTV silicone. It's meant for use with metal and will withstand the heat of LED bases that must be considerable, otherwise they wouldn't have heat sinks.

[reblok]

Newbie and just replaced my halogens with LEDs. They're great but I'm getting the error generated on the checks (interestingly, no errors are generated when the lights are on; only when they are off).

The light manufacturer and some non-bimmerpost sources are recommending adding resistors. Will that do the trick or will I need the next step of coding?

BTW, I've see references to an F30 "cheat sheet." Is there a link for that? I'm curious what I can actually do.

Thanks.

[Billfitz]

Coding is not optional, it's mandatory. Even if you add resistors to eliminate the error warnings the lights will still flash every few minutes, as the warm check constantly sends out a test pulse as long as the lights are off. It doesn't send a test pulse when the lights are on, because they're on. Beside that, resistors burn current, which puts an unnecessary load on the wiring. No doubt the light manufacturer says your bulbs are plug and play, but where BMW is concerned there's no such thing.

[reblok]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

Coding is not optional, it's mandatory. Even if you add resistors to eliminate the error warnings the lights will still flash every few minutes, as the warm check constantly sends out a test pulse as long as the lights are off. It doesn't send a test pulse when the lights are on, because they're on. Beside that, resistors burn current, which puts an unnecessary load on the wiring. No doubt the light manufacturer says your bulbs are plug and play, but where BMW is concerned there's no such thing.

Thank you. I've come to realize that. Even the manufacturer of the lights said so! "BMW is a special case."

I notice BimmerCode has a setting to choose LED as the light type. Does changing that do anything, or is disabling the warm and cold checks the way to go?

Thanks for the help. Great forum!

[Billfitz]

You need to code off the warm and cold checks and code on LED.

[reblok]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

You need to code off the warm and cold checks and code on LED.

Thank you.

[reblok]

Billfitz, than you so much for your help. I coded and the warnings went away. The new lights work great.

Let me ask you one more related question. The low beam replacements I have have resistors. I'm contemplating changing the high beams too.

You said

Beside that, resistors burn current, which puts an unnecessary load on the wiring

Does this mean, with the coding, I don't even need the resistors/allegedly BMW plug-n-play version? IOW does setting the bulb type to LED and deactivating the warm and cold checks solve the flashing and error problems all by themselves? Are there any other reasons for using the resistors?

[Billfitz]

Read Post#1 in this thread.

[reblok]

Originally Posted by Billfitz

Read Post#1 in this thread.

Yeah, I read it. I couldn't tell if it was light model specific. I sounds like some kind of decider/resistor is required. Even the product description on Amazon seems to say so.

Hope I understood that correctly.

[Billfitz]

Nope. To recap:
You have to code out the cold and warm checks... cold and warm checks will cause the LEDs to periodically blink. You don't see it with halogens, but with LEDs you do.

Something happens with the fogs that doesn't with the high or low beams. As soon as you plug them in they flicker rapidly, at a very low intensity... I found that a 15 ohm resistor stopped the flickering...The high and low beams don't have this flicker, so they don't need resistors.