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My CPO came loaded except for LED headlights. Having had HID or LED lamps in all my recent cars, I came to be spoiled by nice bright white lights at night and dull yellowish lights on regular halogens were really bothering me.
So I started reading up on replacement lamps on this forum and others and was surprised to find lots of conflicting information as to what went where. Most posts stated that main headlights were H4 bulbs, but Osram Sylvania application guide specified H13 bulbs. Osram guide was wrong and halogen bulbs in my F56 was indeed H4 bulbs.
Hopefully this thread will be useful to those who are interested in upgrading to brighter and whiter lights on their Mini Cooper.
DRL replacement with iJDMTOY 80W High Power CREE 5200s LED Bulbs
F56 with non-LED headlights come with halogen bulbs. They are 9003/HB2 or H4 bulbs and simple to switch out. I initially considered replacing the halogen bulb with HID xenon bulbs using readily available ballasts. But using HID xenon bulbs in non-projector type of lamp housing can cause poor illumination pattern and can blind oncoming drivers. I then read that Sylvania SilverStar ZXE was close to HID as you can get using regular halogen bulbs and wanted to give them a try.
F56 headlight bulb is housed in lamp housing. Access is provided through a plastic cover which can be twisted off.
Twist off the plastic cap to access headlight bulb
Once the cap is off, you can see that the bulb is secured to the headlamp housing with a wire clamp.
Squeeze the wire clamp to the side to free the bulb from the lamp housing. Electrical connector simply pulls off.
The replacement bulb I chose for headlight was Sylvania SilverStar ZXE 9003/HB2 H4
Along with the headlight, I wanted to change out the fog light bulb to match the same bright, white light. OEM fog light bulbs are H8 bulbs. H11 bulbs are similar to H8 bulbs, but have slightly different tab pattern and are 55W compared to 35W for H8 bulbs. H11 bulbs can often fit in H8 housing and I wanted to give higher wattage bulb a try since they are often interchangeable with minimal modifications. I am happy to report that H11 bulbs fit into F56 fog light housing with no modification needed!!!
Fog light, DRL, and parking light are housed together in lamp housing that is accessible through an opening in front wheel liner.
Cap to the lamp housing twists off. Turn the tire to the opposite side to more easily access this opening.
Once the cap is off, you can see the three lamps inside the lamp housing.
DRL and parking lamps are on top and Fog light is on the bottom
Connector to the fog light pulls off and the bulb can be twisted off from the lamp housing.
Even though the OEM fog light bulbs are H8 bulbs, I wanted to try brighter H11 bulbs.
OEM H8 bulb on the right<br/>Sylvania SilverStar ZXE H11 bulb on the left<br/><br/>They are nearly identical in appearance
OEM H8 bulb on the right has slightly different tab pattern than Sylvania SilverStar ZXE on the left
However, H11 bulb does fit into existing fog light housing without any modification. Due to different tab pattern, connector ends up facing up instead of down with OEM H8
Due to difference in tab pattern, H11 bulb connector faces up after installation into fog light bulb housing. Other than that, fit is perfect and requires no other modification.
Resulting light from H11 bulb is whiter and brighter than OEM H8 bulb.
OEM Headlight and fog light on passenger side<br/>Sylvania SilverStar ZXE H4 headlight and H11 fog light on drivers side
DRL on F56 uses 25W PSX24W bulbs. Unfortunately, Sylvania does not make a ZXE bulb in this size. I, then found iJDMTOY LED replacement bulb for DRL on Amazon that reportedly was plug and play with no CANBUS errors. I thought I would give it a try.
Bulbs came very poorly packaged with no protective wrap of any kind. Thankfully, there appeared to be no damage.
DRL is housed in same lamp housing as the fog light. The connector to the bulb pulls out easily after pressing in the tabs on the side. However, bulb is not as easy to remove from the housing as the fog light bulb. There are locking tabs along top and bottom side of the bulb that must be pressed in with a small screw driver to release before the bulb will come free. Tabs are also very brittle and break easily.
Small screwdriver needs to be inserted into those yellow plastic tabs to release the DRL bulb from the lamp housing.
LED DRL bulb on the left<br/>OEM DRL bulb on the right
OEM DRL bulb on the left - notice the broken tabs<br/>LED DRL bulb on the right
Even though the connectors appeared identical, LED bulbs were a much tighter fit than the OEM bulb in the lamp housing. I thought that I might break the housing because I had to push it in with such force. Thankfully, I heard the plastic tab lock into place. Electrical connector goes in only one way due to locking tabs and I encountered no light bulb error on the dash.
Results were worth it. Light is very bright and white, closely matching ZXE colors. It's not blue at all.
OEM DRL on passenger side<br/>iJDMTOY LED DRL on drivers side
I guess I can go outside and play with my lights. But I have the HID factory lights, so do i have a top & bottom section of the fog lights like you do? I want to upgrade to LEDs and I am curious what I need to buy. Just not sure if I need one or two different bulbs. I would like to have a 3000k color (yellow) for the fogs and a matching color to the HIDs for the DRL portion.
Also I see you bought from Mt. Laurel, so did I.
I apologize, yes I knew my DRL's are apart of the LED headlights, what I was referring too was the fog light area lights.
I have my DRL's turned off, but the fog light bulb area like you have pictured has a top portion and bottom portion. My top portion is always on whenever I have my headlights on, so it's more of what I would call a driving light. The bottom portion never seems to come on. Even if I hit the fog light switch on my dash, nothing happens to either the top or bottom portions of the light; the top just stays lite.
So I don't know if something that can be done in coding or not, but I would like to have the bottom portion of the light come on when I hit the fog light switch and I would like to replace the bulb with a yellow LED bulb for better fog visibility.
Top portion also has a small parking light, so that might be what is coming on with your headlight. Go and take a look to see if there are any bulbs attached to your light housing.
Just upgrade headlight / fog / DRL / parking light to LED on my 2016 F57. Did take me few tries to find out the error free / no warning canceller combo. Got good light pattern from headlight + fog light (brightness / color similar to my friend's factory LED F56) . Here is the list of LED bulbs I installed:
Very cool thread. I'm thinking of changing some bulbs on my 2017 S with the standard lights. Am I right in assuming the bulbs are all the same, or do they change from year to year?
How do the H8 bulbs come out? I was just under there and fought resistance no matter which way I tried to twist the bulb
Same here. Even the manual indicates the bulb should twist out, counterclockwise, but I met firm resistance to the point that I was concerned about cracking the housing if I applied more force. Holding off for now.
nickmini .......your post mentions the LED replacement H4 kit headlight bulb by Hikari?? ...is that what you installed/replaced in your headlights ? how difficult was the install as the picture on Amazon shows that Hikari kit bulb has a large housing, with a fan? ......did you buy at Amazon?
I was not too happy with the stock halogen H4 and replaced those with the phillips x-treme vision H4's which are definitely brighter but only minmally (the phillips x-treme's are similar to the sister brand sylvania siverstars and are supposedly a little better)
nickmini .......your post mentions the LED replacement H4 kit headlight bulb by Hikari?? ...is that what you installed/replaced in your headlights ? how difficult was the install as the picture on Amazon shows that Hikari kit bulb has a large housing, with a fan? ......did you buy at Amazon?
I have been wondering the same thing. If you look at this Amazon review.
There are a bunch of detailed pictures that include a pretty chunky ballast type thing for the LED. I haven't looked inside or around the headlight housing yet, so I'm wondering how these bulbs have been installed. Where the ballast is mounted in the car etc.
Now that winter is coming, I am looking for replacement headlight and spotlight bulbs since I will be driving in the dark a lot more.
There are a bunch of detailed pictures that include a pretty chunky ballast type thing for the LED. I haven't looked inside or around the headlight housing yet, so I'm wondering how these bulbs have been installed. Where the ballast is mounted in the car etc.
I haven't installed mine yet but there seems to be a bunch of space free in the headlight housing, I think the driver box will fit in there fine. I'm probably going to leave the back cover off so the fan can get some air.
Same here. Even the manual indicates the bulb should twist out, counterclockwise, but I met firm resistance to the point that I was concerned about cracking the housing if I applied more force. Holding off for now.
annnnd what happened. i can't turn mine to come off.
I did a similar upgrade with my F56 a couple of months ago: I replaced my halogen headlamps with LED's, replaced the front parking lamps with LED's as well as the DRL's with LED. Supposedly they were all CANBUS Error Free but just to be on the safe side, I have coded all the lamp voltage monitoring to OFF but I still get a "parking lamp malfunction" from time to time. All the lamps are working so I dont know what it could be? I haven't reverted back to stock yet but I figure I would ask before I do.
The black fitting twists off, you put that in the lamp housing (after removing the existing bulb of course) and re-attached the metal clip, then you put the bulb back in at an angle and twist it so it's back to vertical. I didn't buy the CANbus adapter so instead just changed the coding to LED upgrade in the bimmercode app.
Along with the headlight, I wanted to change out the fog light bulb to match the same bright, white light. OEM fog light bulbs are H8 bulbs. H11 bulbs are similar to H8 bulbs, but have slightly different tab pattern and are 55W compared to 35W for H8 bulbs. H11 bulbs can often fit in H8 housing and I wanted to give higher wattage bulb a try since they are often interchangeable with minimal modifications. I am happy to report that H11 bulbs fit into F56 fog light housing with no modification needed!!!
Fog light, DRL, and parking light are housed together in lamp housing that is accessible through an opening in front wheel liner.
Cap to the lamp housing twists off. Turn the tire to the opposite side to more easily access this opening.
Once the cap is off, you can see the three lamps inside the lamp housing.
DRL and parking lamps are on top and Fog light is on the bottom
Connector to the fog light pulls off and the bulb can be twisted off from the lamp housing.
Even though the OEM fog light bulbs are H8 bulbs, I wanted to try brighter H11 bulbs.
OEM H8 bulb on the right<br/>Sylvania SilverStar ZXE H11 bulb on the left<br/><br/>They are nearly identical in appearance
OEM H8 bulb on the right has slightly different tab pattern than Sylvania SilverStar ZXE on the left
However, H11 bulb does fit into existing fog light housing without any modification. Due to different tab pattern, connector ends up facing up instead of down with OEM H8
Due to difference in tab pattern, H11 bulb connector faces up after installation into fog light bulb housing. Other than that, fit is perfect and requires no other modification.
Resulting light from H11 bulb is whiter and brighter than OEM H8 bulb.
OEM Headlight and fog light on passenger side<br/>Sylvania SilverStar ZXE H4 headlight and H11 fog light on drivers side
Another highly recommended modification!!!
I'm trying to replace my fog light bulbs on my 2016 MCS F55 but it doesn't look like your picture, there is a gray hard plastic grill like cover to much of the back of the fog light. When you installed your fog lights was there anything like this?
This is what mine looks like
I'm trying to replace my fog light bulbs on my 2016 MCS F55 but it doesn't look like your picture, there is a gray hard plastic grill like cover to much of the back of the fog light. When you installed your fog lights was there anything like this?
This is what mine looks like
That looks to me like you have the LED modules. What does the front look like?
12-05-2016, 06:12 PM
