Anybody in the NY/NJ/CT tri-state area willing to do this, let me know. Mine have white turns and would want those in the swapped ones too. If you don't know, the adaptive xenons are a new option that actually turn slightly in the direction that you are turning the wheel to provide better visibility. For some stupid reason, Mini chose not to offer the black headlamp housing on a 2011 JCW even though they had it on the WC50. Anyway, I would rather have the OEM version than doing the Joey mod.

 

I'm not in the area or interested in losing my black housings, but was just curious... Don't the adaptive headlamps require additional equipment beyond just the housings to function? I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some kind of additional wiring and computer control involved, given that just about everything else is run by the computer on these cars...

 

..and that it likely can't be DIY field retrofit.

I have adaptive on an Audi. Great feature. I'm surprised Mini prices it for so much less than other manufacturers where it's an option, assuming HID that is.

Anyway, from the Audi experience I recognize that the adaptive system needs a steering input to know to "adapt" left and right as you turn and straighten out. That input probably comes from the angle sensor integrated with the steering column. That overlaps the anti spin safety system most likely too. But the problem is likely to be this is all "black box" where the car needs to be programmed to know what systems are onboard. Even if all the hardware is there (steering sensor, etc.), it would be very hit and miss whether it could be gotten to work, even assuming the car configuration could be adjusted electronically to tell the car it now has adaptive.

Meanwhile, on the "donor" car side, it wouldn't surprise me if it now threw a code and/or turned on a light too saying something was wrong with the adaptive system. My Audi did that when it saw a problem with what turned out to be the steering angle sensor. If you could isolate the wire in the HID harness that drives the adaptive feature and got it unplugged (or temporarily removed from the relevant connector) you could likely test ahead of time if it is going to throw a warning light. And by the way, you should also check if the basic connector to the HID units are the same. Maybe they changed (expanded) the overall connector to add adaptive, maybe they just used an unused pin location, or maybe they just piggybacked the adaptive function with a dedicated second connector.