I know there were several of you that wanted to find out how HIDs would look in the fog lamps. Let's go ahead and answer that, as well as throw up some pictures that might help you all with the installation of either HID fog lights, or LED running lights.

For the running light swap, I used some "Audi-white" color 15-SMD wedge bulbs after ordering from six different companies until I found the color I liked. I chose to go with Yellow (3000 Kelvin) HID bulbs for the fog lights, as I've always been a fan of using yellow HIDs in lower lamps.

The size of the bulbs is H8, with a connector on the bulb that looks like this:



The female connector on the vehicle looks similar to this:



Here's what you'll see from behind the lights when you remove the wheel, or have very small hands and a mirror.



This diagram should give you some idea of what to do back there. The bulb connector must be removed before twisting the bulb or you will damage the socket. Squeeze the bottom two sides and slide the H8 connector off. Then, twist the H8 bulb to remove. Replace the bulb using the reverse.

If you're using an HID kit, your ballast may be fat or slim. Make sure your ballast is made for an H8/H9/H11 connector. This means the pin spacing will be much smaller than other 9005/9006 spacing which is very wide.

That being said, I used a set of slim ballasts that I had laying around and bent the pins to work correctly. But, don't be like me - order the right kit and save yourself the time and hassle.

I'm not going to show the kit, itself, because it may confuse you depending on the kit you use. All you really need to know is:

1) Remove the H8 connector - squeeze and pull down.
2) Twist the H8 bulb, remove from socket.
3) Remove rubber gasket left over in the socket.
4) Replace with HID H8 bulb.
5) Connect HID ballast to H8 factory connector.
6) Connect 2 wires from bulbs to ballast.
7) Find a place to mount inside the bumper. On the passenger side, there is quite a bit of room to work with. On the driver's side, the space is quite cramped because of the windshield washer fluid reservoir. Regardless, there was enough room for me to wedge the ballast in there.

As for the LED running lights, there are only a few steps:

1) Twist the Wedge bulb, then remove from the socket.
2) Replace the bulb with an LED.
3) Important: LED bulbs are polarity-sensitive, so check the running lamps before re-assembling. To do this, simply put the key in and turn the running lights on.
4) If everything looks good, re-insert the bulb into the socket, and twist.

I hope all of that made sense. And now, I'll show you how it all looks! None of this is color corrected, nor exaggerated. The pictures are from the iPhone 4S, and extremely color accurate. The lens flare effects are also natural.

This shows only the fog lights - no Hellas, HID mains, etc. Very bright!


Not off-yellow. Pure yellow color. Very happy with these bulbs!




Views of the extremely-bright-white 15-SMD Wedge running light bulbs.





And because I'm proud of these, I'm going to toss in 2 pictures of my 85w yellow bulb upgrade I did tonight in my Hella Black Magics:



^^ Sorry for the blur there. Working on something that may not go public.



^^ Color Corrected - Thanks countryman-s!

I hope this helps somebody out there either on the fence about converting to either LED or HID, or perhaps even helps somebody start off on the right foot before an install!

Happy modding!

 

"Views of the extremely-bright-white 15-SMD Wedge running light bulbs."

Where did you find these and did you have to put a resistor on them?

Thanks

 

GREAT DESCRIPTION AND PHOTOS!!!! thank you. you headlights look to have a blue light in the picture, are they factory bulbs? it may just be the photo. i replaced my parking lights with led's and in my photos they match the headlights perfect, but in person they look more purple/blue/white instead of very white only. i now have bulbs from auto bulbs direct that match perfect that are not led. the bulbs are blue, but lights up very white. im putting my mods in my gallery because i cannot figure out how to post pics on threads. man those hid fogs are much brighter

 

Geoffrey, my pleasure, my friend: http://www.ebay.com/itm/330608491798...#ht_3489wt_980 - I obviously have no affiliation with the seller, etc. I was very picky about the color, because most of the bulbs I ordered were very blue. I used all of those blue-ish wedge bulbs on the interior of the car (much like yours looks).

I didn't add resistors, but of course I am getting warnings all over the place. I have a D-CAN cable coming, and I'm planning to code out all of the bulb checks. Prepare for at least a few questions to head to your PM box when I get it.

Countryman-s, thanks for the compliment! The HID lights for the mains are not really blue, but they're not factory, either. They are special Philips OEM bulbs called 'Ultinons' that posses a closer-to-6000K look without any reduction in brightness. They are used on several high-end euro sports cars. More importantly, they give a purple-ish look that a BMW projector lens is supposed to put off. Most importantly, they are OE, and street-legal. They're also A-OK for warranty work on the factory ballasts, since they are an approved Philips bulb. They are in the Xenarc/XenStart family, and thus supported by Mini. It's good peace of mind, even though they're expensive.

A quick note, they're nowhere near that blue. Because of the ludicrously-bright 85w yellow bulbs in the Black Magics, I'm sure the colors are way off. I can digitally correct them to show you what the eye sees (it's more purple-ish white):



Most of the blue HIDs are very dim, and just look silly - I know this from experience, as I ran 6000K in my headlights for a week before yanking them back out. The last set of LED parking lights I had was also very blue, and I didn't feel that looked correct for the front of the car.

 

Did you use a resistor w the kit to avoid bulb out warnings?

i have nice bulbs but have some ballasts i can put to use be have been too lazy to do so.

 

On the HIDs for the fog, I don't have any errors. The ballast draw is 35w, which matches the H8 spec of 35w.

For the LEDs, I'm skipping the resistors and going for the coding-out method.

 

Hmmmmm im gonna have to find out what the wattage is for my ballasts. From one of my motorcycles so the draw should be low, also a slim ballast.

 

Most car ballasts (fat or slim) will be 35w. For a motorcycle, I've seen them as low as 18w.

Some car ballasts are 55w (I've had a few of those over the years), and now some crazies are making 75w ballasts.

 

Touche, whole point is that they put out more light and draw less... Wonder why they would unless they put out sunlight lol

 

Absolutely! No reason really to fear using HID in the fogs.

As you all can see, there is an excellent cutoff due to the nature of the H8 bulb in that enclosure. The top part of the bulb with the pole goes along the top as it should. This guarantees it's not going to blind anyone on the road, nor overrun your lights.

Now, the real trick will be to code the fogs to run with the brights. Turning HIDs on and off isn't such a great plan.

I'll also keep an eye on melting the housing. I know many of you were concerned with that, though I've never done that in nearly a dozen cars thus far.

 

Gonna see this weekend if i can put a kit together, ill prob have to order 3000k bulbs since i dont think i have any but im sure i have universal ballasts

 

I have had the 3000K HID fogs in for a couple of months now as well as the LED parking lamps...
The only problem I had was the HID fogs were green instead of yellow.
On closer inspection I noticed that the tip of the HID bulb was throwing out a lot of blue colored light (yellow + blue = green)
I blacked out the tip and the base of the bulb with high temp paint just leaving the part of the light that produces the light open... the lights are now a golden yellow and aren't blinding oncoming drivers anymore, but still as bright...
The original halogen bulb is blacked out on the tip which allows the reflector to focus the light low on the road...

Without blacking out the bulbs the lights were extremely bright and green, which pissed of a New Mexico Highway Patrol when I was traveling to CA, luckily no ticket for that...

 

Yikes! Glad that mine don't have a green/blue tinge to them at the front or rear. I've had bulbs like that in the past, though.

Good call for those that have this issue, though! Excellent idea.

 

I have my car coded to run the fogs with the high beams, as well as allowing the high and low beams to be on at the same time (I have halogen headlights)...
I don't remember of the top of my head which parameter it was in NCSExpert...
I have run the HID fogs during a long night drive (8+ hours) no problems with the housing.

 

Fogs and High Beams On Simultaneously
FRM2 FL_UND_NSW_NICHT_GLEICHZ
Allows fog lights to be on while high beams are also on. Needs to be changed to nicht_activ.

 

How are ya'll doing the codes for changes, a laptop or what? this is new to me

 

You'll need a K+D-CAN cable ($58 on eBay), a laptop, and will need to do quite a bit of reading to make sure something doesn't go haywire on you. We can help you with the R60s. Geoffrey is the master of R60 coding.

Here's the best place to start - it's where I learned what I know now:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...beginners.html

and

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-yourself.html

Thanks to Geoffrey for the links!

 

Thanks theta. If you have a R60 built after April or May 2011, I'm not sure the exact date, you may need to modify the cable slightly. The 7 & 8 pins are soldered or "jumped together". On the newer cars they need to be separated to accommodate the new network connection so the cars can be hooked up to the net and be looked at by Germany.

 

WOW!! i did not know at all about coding. viewing those links felt like i just took the red pill in the matrix! a hole new countryman world, thanks guys

 

Where did you get your bulbs from? Yours look great and I'd like to avoid getting a greenish bulb. Thanks

 

I got them on eBay, but I'm not really one to advertise for a seller. If you'd like, I can PM you with the name of the seller I bought them from.

I will say they cost me a whopping 13 bucks.

 

an pics of the hid fogs on from a distance. i would love to do this to my wifes R60

 

Sure, I can do that for you!

Do you want to see the fogs from the driver's seat or from a distance looking back at the car?

 

Just wanted to check in now that I've completed all of my coding adventures. You can code all of the light checks out (far past what is listed on the normal spreadsheets) and have a full resistor-free LED conversion without any warnings. Much easier and cleaner for only the price of a cable.

This includes the really hard or awkward ones to put resistors on like the brake and reverse lights, etc.

I will try to get a nice fog distance picture tomorrow - it's been raining like crazy lately.

 

Hey theta, could you possibly do a countryman coding adventure write up so people like me " who are not coding confident" could tackle this mod? i have the code spreadsheet, but a countryman specific thread would be very helpful.