I figured I'd introduce myself here with my knowledge because I don't see too much of it here. My name is Branden, I've been retrofitting and doing custom lighting for cars (mainly subarus, nissans and motorcycles) for about 9 years now. I do headlights as a hobby to afford modding my own cars. It afforded me swapping my 99 legacy wagon with an sti engine and building it to 300+ HP. I am great with any type of wiring set up or HID setup questions you guys have.

If you have any questions regarding:

Blacking out Headlights (joey mod as you guys call it)
Fog light installs
HID kit / installs
HID retrofits (using projectors ect...)
or LED lighting!

Please let me know So I can help you guys!

-B

 

Welcome. How about showing us your work?

 

I Sure can!!

Btw, in some of the pictures they are signs for B&S headlights. its stands for brenda and sally headlights. my and a friend used our nicknames from our crappy landscaper bosses and made it sound funny.

also please check out hidplanet.com for my name HeresMyMind and any posts i've made there or on nasioc.com or sl-i.net regarding headlights!

Here are some of my own cars

-B

My personal yzf600r retrofit, FX-r 2.0 projector, porche panamera shroud, 50watt Phillips dl-50 Hid bulb, the retrofitsource.com 50watt ballast and wiring harness and LEDs in the shroud.


my subaru legacy 99 with fxr 3.0s in JDM subaru headlights



My 94 nissan maxima with e36 bmw depo headlight conversion with Evo-xr projectors


02-03 bugeye FXr retrofit made for a customer who backed out

 

Glad to see you're doing it correctly and not just sticking HID's in housings designed for halogen.

 

Great work. Welcome

 

I had a 98 outback for a lot of years I always wanted to do an STI conversion to.. that car must have been fun of yours.

 

Hi,

I recently bought a 2006 Mini Cooper (R50) and feel that the headlights aren't quite doing the job.

I replaced the bulbs - H7 12v 55w - but am still not satisfied. I thought of polishing the glass and took it to a glass guy. He refused to do it saying I didn't need it so he didn't want to waste my money. (An honest guy.)

Xenons are illegal here if they're not original equipment, so that's out.

What are my alternatives?

1. Can I safely increase to 24v 70w and would it make a difference?
2. One electrician told me that he could put in H4s (for close to $75) but H4s have 3 prongs so how can he do that?
3. Is the only difference between H4 and H7 the number of prongs and H4 are hi/low beam while H7 just low?

Thanks for your help.

 

I can understand because some aftermarket ones I've seen don't control the light well -or are not correctly installed. They can be blinding to oncoming drivers.

What if you retro-fitted the actual original equipment xenons? I doubt anyone would even know if they came on the car from the factory, if the dealer added them as an option, or if you installed them yourself.

That retrofit is a big undertaking from what I've read - more than I want to do now. Looking at around $1000 US dollars for the headlights themselves. It's a different wire harness, of course ballast and expensive bulbs, etc. -Then none of it will even work until its dealer-programmed, or if you know someone that can do it with NCS or whatever that programming program is called.

My factory halogens were aimed too low when I got the car. I aimed them up a little. If you try, adjust 1/4 or 1/2 screw turn at a time -keep track of each adjustment you make If I remember right, it's the inner screws (closest to te center of the car) to adjust vertical. The outer ones, (closest to the fenders) adjust horizontal (I didn't adjust those ones). Counter clockwise raises them.

I followed this roughly http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html. Basically you want the flat part of the top of the beam to land about 32 or 35 inches above the ground when you're parked exactly 25 feet away from a 90 degree vertical wall on flat level ground. No one flashes their high beams at me -so they're not too high, and I see much better.

I hear that headlights being aimed too low from factory is common with MINI. Might be worth checking.

 

I second that. Nice work!

 

alright here are your options.

do not increase the headlight bulb wattage this is bad for safety and performance.

1) add driving lights to the front, hella ff500 fogs work great to add and fill in the lows.

2) polishing the plastic will help SOME

3) depending on the retrofit, I install OEM projectors bulbs and ballasts from another car, (example, infinite fx35, g35, honda s2000, acura tsx ect..ect...)

by doing this it will look OEM, and when they look at the headlights and pull headlight bulbs out everything will say DOT approved on it.

4) buy OEM HID headlights for your car, the new projector ones are 700$ off amazon.

 

Maybe I should have stated that I live in Israel. Our cars have to pass a yearly inspection and anything out of the ordinary (Xenons, wide tires) is noted on the registration. So mods are almost impossible.

My remarks to your alternatives:
1) Also illegal here as it's not original equipment.
2) Maybe I'll give it a try.
3) I don't think it's something I could handle on my own.
4) $700 is a little too steep at this point.

Just to give you an idea what we're dealing with over here. About ordering from abroad: I just ordered a center armrest from a company in the US and am waiting to see how much import duties and taxes they're going to hit me with. The part costs $200 ($350 with shipping) in the US. I only found one place (besides BMW) over here that has it and they quoted me $1150 - without installation!!!!

Thanks again for your help.

 

i have OEM HID headlights im selling now (non projectors) for 375. maybe find out how much shipping is to you?

-B

 

Thanks for the offer - really - but I want to wait for the armrest to see what the procedures are for taxes and import duty.

Further, after driving my wife crazy for almost a year until I found a car in my budget that I could live with, then sinking an additional $3000 into it to fix the things that the seller neglected, then constantly talking about it at every opportunity, then spending every Friday afternoon with the weekly washing/cleaning - I think she's ready to show me the door if I so much as mention anything else over $10.

 

Not necessarily. This bulb is only 10 more watts and the Mini wiring and charging system will easily handle it. It's essentially an H9 bulb on an H7 base. And H9 bulbs are perfectly legal. Unless the inspectors really know what they're looking at and actually remove the bulb to inspect it, they'll never know. And the difference this bulb makes is substantial. Osram takes special care to make sure that the H9 filament is positioned exactly where an H7 filament would be so the bulb works as an H7 does only with more light output. You can actually get higher output H7's, but that comes at the expense of shorter life. This Osram gets you the added lumens without a sacrifice of life.

http://store.candlepower.com/osraulhiouh7.html You may even be able to find them locally.

Are your light lenses really plastic? Mine (factory HID low/Halogen H7 high) are glass.

Another thing that can sometimes help a lot is to rewire the headlights so that there is a minimum of wire length gettng the current to and from the bulbs. And use larger gauge wire. I know this works well on most motorcycles but may or may not be of benefit on the Mini.

Good luck.

 

I was in the auto department of one of the big chain stores and only saw 55w H7s. But they did have some H7s labeled as pseudo-Xenons. They had a display box to show them next to regular bulbs. As far as I could see, they looked whiter but I'm not sure if they were any brighter.

I'm trying to find out if they're legal before giving them a try. I'll also look around for some 65w.

BTW, I've been taking cars for yearly checks for over 20 years and haven't seen them take out a headlight yet. But I've also never taken a Mini for a check.

Thanks again.

 

FYI....do NOT buy any bulbs with any kind of tint (usually blue) where the light from the filament must pass through the tint on the way to the reflector. They do nothing to improve light output and actually reduce light output.

A large chain store isn't going to carry this bulb. You'll have to go to a store that specializes in auto supplies only and even then they might have to order it. Or you can order it over the internet. Trust me, that bulb is the very best H7 available.

 

THanks for the offer. I am installing aftermarket LEDs in brake ducts of my Countryman. I want them to dim when i turn on my headlights but be on and bright the rest of the time. The directions show a control module and 4 wires and instruct me to attach the red wire (with 5 amp fuse in line) to "ACC/Ignition power in engine bay or inside. I would rather attach in engine bay but don't know what wire or fuse to tap in to. They also instruct if I want them to dim with headlights on to "connect the blue wire to the headlight." But where? Can't I attach to a headlight relay in the engine bay fuse box and if yes how do I find the right fuse or wire to tap? Thanks in advance.

 

Actually that's not correct. If you can live without the auto leveling then they're plug and play and no programming needed. I upgraded my 03 from pre facelift HID's to the facelift ones. I then replaced my son's halogen's with my old HID's. Plugged right in and worked great.

 

It's awesome that you're willing to share your work! I recently purchased a 96 legacy that had front end damage, I am currently rebuilding the motor and fixing the body. The car needs new lights and both my other vehicles have retrofits I've done my self, I don't think I can handle driving without proper retros anymore. I was wondering if you have any info you could share on putting the fx-r projectors in the jdm lights? I am planning to get the jdm lights, but would like a better output and would obviously need to make them LHD anyway.

 

Hi Heresmymind.
I have an 06 Cooper S with halogens that I want to retrofit OEM Xenons to. I'm not concerned about the self leveling or the washers, just that the lights work.
They work fine when the engine is off but when you start the engine they strobe. I've spoken to BMW who aren't much help at all and they said that I need a different moduel but I've read of people fitting ballasts / resistors which have worked.
Do you know what I can do to get them to pwkr?
Cheers

 

I'll share my experience. I had thought that it would all be plug and play (as indicated a couple posts up) and it may be for certain years, but for my 2005 I had the same strobing issue you describe.

I have Morimoto Mini H1, with ballasts and a relay wire harness. I thought that if I went OEM that I would have to get into the BCM (body controll module) and do things beyond my skill/tools etc. Since I didn't care about the auto leveling I went with Morimoto from theretrofitsource.com.

In my set up, I have a relay which gets it's trigger from the original halogen headlight plug, when it is energized it closes the relay, thus feeding current directly (note: inline fuse) from the battery to the ballasts.

When the car was off, key on, it worked great, but soon as I start the car, I can hear the relays buzzing as the relays open and close very quickly, and the hids strobe.

I was told this had something to do with the car trying to step down to 11 volts, because that makes halogen bulbs last longer but does not decrease the halogen light output. I read somewhere else that automakers convert DC to AC, for the same reason... I'm really not sure which is true -Just what I read somewhere.

My solution, I called the retrofit source, they sent me an inline capacitor. I don't know the specs of uF, heat or voltage, but if you call them, they'll get what you need. I installed the cap in line between the halogen headlight plug and the trigger side of my relay. You may know that a capacitor works in a similar fashion to a battery, and what it does is insure that the relays have enough power to stay closed, even though the car wants to flash the lights.

Hope that helps. Heresmymind may have other or better suggestions. I messaged him acouple times before I ordered my kit -he had good advice and knows as much or more about headlights than anyone else I know.

 

The turning indicator lights on my 2010 Mini Cooper s are turning on by themselves randomly. Also when the headlights are on they switch to high beams by themselves. I can tell there is some sort of power issue when I open the door and the interior light turn on there is an obvious voltage fluctuation ...

What could this be ?

Please help

 

Hi Erica,

Things like that can be difficult to diagnose, especially from a distance. I would first check that the battery is fully charged, and the terminals are clean and have good connection.

If it were me, after that I would do a search to see if others have it as a common problem. Look for signs of moisture or rodents chewing on wires.

You could get a multimeter and connect it between the battery ground and the terminal that normally connects to the battery ground. It's a common procedure, so you can easily find step by step if you google it. Next pull fuses 1 by 1 and check the guage. If you have a short somewhere that is grounding and draining the battery you will be able to isolate which circuit (fuse) has the problem.

I may be sending you on a wild goose chase though -problem could be unrelated to my speculation. In my mind it's always good to check the basics as a first step in diagnostic though.

 

I'm looking to duplicate your yzf600r retrofit with FX-r 2.0 projector, porche panamera shroud, and 50watt Phillips dl-50. How much would this cost me and also how long does something like this take for you to complete?

 

if you provide all the parts, roughly 2 days from when I receive them, please use facebook to contact me, I have an official retrofitter page now, and work directly with The Retrofit Source.

-B

https://www.facebook.com/Bs-Custom-L...1295802590384/