04-11-2021, 09:15 PM | #1 |
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Headlights
So I have a 16 228ix and it really annoying that the headlights are halogens, you would think in 2016 bmw would make it that all their models would have LED headlights, but no we are left with horrible looking headlights.
anyways for my fellow 2-series connoisseurs have any of you guys gotten any good retrofit kits? If not I'll probably just end up replacing the bulbs |
04-12-2021, 03:08 AM | #2 |
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A lot of retrofit opens I had looked into where way too much money for me to justify being worth it, I ended up swapping all the lights to LEDs and it looks much better at night
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04-12-2021, 11:59 AM | #4 |
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04-13-2021, 07:00 PM | #6 |
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04-14-2021, 10:16 AM | #7 |
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I had a 2013 F30 328i with the stock halogen headlamps, and they were horrible too. The car’s stock 55W halogen bulbs were rated at 1,500 lumens. I replaced them with OSRAM H7 12v 65W halogen bulb, rated at 2,100 lumens (40% brighter). This inexpensive upgrade made a significant improvement illuminating the road at night.
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04-14-2021, 11:29 AM | #8 |
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They are great bulbs.
H9 burner on an H7 base. Osram stopped making them several years ago. After a long hiatus, Vosla began making an equivalent product. Scroll down to almost the bottom of this long page to find them here: https://www.danielsternlighting.com/.../products.html |
04-14-2021, 02:44 PM | #9 |
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04-14-2021, 03:03 PM | #10 |
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https://www.2addicts.com/forums/show....php?t=1811310
It's in that thread towards the end, it made a huge difference for night but you still of course have the ugly looking reflectors in the day |
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04-14-2021, 06:15 PM | #11 |
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Purchased rings from bavgruppe and baked the lights open myself. Replaced light housings with HID units from morimotto. A long, difficult job. Worth it.
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04-17-2021, 12:26 PM | #12 |
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04-17-2021, 05:04 PM | #13 |
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Am I misunderstanding most of the comments on this topic? They sound like they are more concerned with the appearance of the headlights , than their performance.
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04-17-2021, 07:29 PM | #14 | |
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I lived for twenty years in rural NH and it was the same: poor lighting = poor safety. Hitting a deer or, even worse, a moose, would be a very bad day behind the wheel. Moose, especially, tended to badly injure or kill the drivers who had hit them. Deer were no walk in the park, either. I've also lived for extended periods in major urban areas where headlight performance was relatively inconsequential. We live in a large country where exterior lighting requirements vary dramatically.
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04-22-2021, 04:29 PM | #17 |
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I mean it has been proven that LED headlights work better than halogens so I don't understand your comment about performance
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04-22-2021, 05:40 PM | #18 | |
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The diagram at the end shows that in two out of eight tests the halogens outperformed the LEDs. These tests used existing motor vehicle implementations (a Honda halogen and a Mercedes LED), which may have had something to do with the results(?). IIRC, the print article had more to say about the state of effectiveness of halogen vs. HID vs. LED in 2017. I have no idea if typical LED implementations have now moved to the fore and others are inferior in all cases, or if lasers are the latest flavor, or if NHTSA has caught up to the Europeans in terms of allowing cars sold in the US to produce state-of-the-art headlamp output. What I know as an older person is that I'm much more aware of my cars' headlamp output than I was when I was younger and driving with comparatively inferior lighting. I can say that improved automobile lighting hasn't kept up with the effects of aging on my eyesight. IIRC, the rule of thumb is that with every 20 years of age it takes 2X as much light to see as well. My experience bears that out, more or less.
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04-23-2021, 09:26 AM | #19 |
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04-25-2021, 05:43 PM | #20 | |
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As for replacing, the typical adhesive for light lenses is butyl rubber which Morimoto sells (I'm sure other suppliers do too) when you buy their kits. The butyl rubber comes in a coiled rope and the box has more than you'll need for doing a dozen lights. It can be rolled and stretched and placed in the gap between housing and lens and then heat gunned to soften and seal. Much easier closing than the BMW adhesive is getting open. As for some of the chatter I see about LED vs halogen - just my two cents here - LED is what our halo rings are made of and they look crisp and clean and they can be seen at a distance so they're great for DRLs. As for the actual bulb in a headlight housing, LED isn't really a great choice. The throw from the actual light beam on LEDs is not long and so replacing halogens (which do suck) with an HID housing is much better and gives the throw a headlight needs to see far in front of the car.
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04-26-2021, 09:21 PM | #21 |
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Replacing a halogen bulb with an LED bulb by no means guarantees better lighting performance. Headlamps designed for a halogen bulb in many cases will spray light everywhere except down the road when an LED is used. I can imagine that in some cases it may work well, but for me it never has.
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