I picked up an '06 MCS last week, and I'm in the process of cleaning it up. The OEM halogen headlights were very faded, so I swapped the housing with a set of OEM Xenon headlights I had in the garage. I was surprised they were an easy direct replacement, but they do act up a little when I turn them on. They don't turn on unless I flash the highbeams. At that point they power up and work fine. Any suggestions?

 

Yeah you need to repaint your front bumber

 

Don't the xenon have a special relay/igniter? I also thought the wire size was bigger on the xenon as they take more juice.

 

If the controller ends up going bad, there is a value line replacement that will save you money.

http://new.minimania.com/part/NMA801...non-Value-Line

Please let us know if we can help!

Drive Hard. Drive Safe. Keep Grinning.

 

I tried this a few years ago. I came to find that 02-04 halogen coopers could take xenons from any year, but an 05-06 cooper with halogens needed a special cpu programming form MINI to get them to work. I never tried flashing the high beams to get them to turn on. They just flickered or didn't work, I cant remember.

From what I remember most dealers will have no idea how to do this, but it is possible. I remember reading a post from a guy who got the programming done. If you found a workaround thats great! Think of it as an anti-theft feature at night.

Do some forum searching. I have a whole long thread dedicated to swapping certain year xenons.

 

Thanks for the input. I just went down and messed with them a bit more and the Xenon's are not powering up at all. The brights work fine though. I must have been mistaken, and the Xenon's likely never powered up at all. It was late last night when I was messing with them and thought they were powering up. My bad.

I won't be able to get an ECU flash to get them working, as I have an issue with the OBD port. I can't get anything to connect to it (no signal).

As for the bumper paint, that's nothing compared to the horrible mess from the clear bra. I've been scraping it off a little at a time with a heat gun. I'll need to respray the entire front of the car once I'm done. :(

 

You need to have the BC1 reprogrammed to have xenon lights. I've done this many times before, as I had to do it for my GP.

 

Please do tell.. What do I have to say to the dealership MA? Can I do this myself? If dealership, how much? Details! I tried back in '08 and no one had an fix, so after owning 3 minis, if it didn't have xenons I wouldn't buy it.

 

PM sent for pricing.

 

yea the BCM needs to be adjusted for using xenon lights, I had to do it to my car, I went from halogen to xenon. its preety simple process if your handy with a laptop. but what happens is that with halogen bulbs, the BCM sends a frequency with the current to the lights.... not a constant load. since halogens produce light by heating up tungsten the metal stays warm with the frequency.


xenons have a ballast that controls the power going to the bulbs. the ballast needs a constant power source, not something with frequency, this causes the flickering. turning your highbeams on is strange on why that helps....


NCS Expert/Dummy can fix this, and do a multitude of other things.