Well, I had a spare set of lights (extras from my Land Rover Discovery project I'm working on), so I decided to put them to good use.

However, I didn't want to use any of the available mounting kits because from what I could tell, all of them allowed the mounting to be seen. I wanted my lights to appear to be "floating" in the grill opening, so this is what I came up with.

Lights are Hella FF1100's. I took the standard mounting pods from the lights, and by combining some of the parts, I was able to siamese the brackets together, giving one mounting pod that attached to both lights.

Then, I made a plate that is sandwiched between the two pods. This bracket extends behind the pods and through the lower grill, where it attaches to another bracket that I had attached to the front bumper inner steel beam. I drilled through the beam and inserted the bolts through it, then welded the heads to the front of the beam, effectively giving me two studs that protrude from the rear of the bumper beam. This way the bracket can be removed/installed again without having to remove the outer bumper cover again.

Anyway, I hope it's clear from the photos what I did. I'm pleased with the results, but will probably make a new bracket for between the mounting pods that puts the lights about 1/2" further out for a little more adjustability.

All that's left now is the wiring (yuk!).

Deconstruction:




Drilling through the beam (harder than it should have been!):

 

Bolt heads welded to beam:

 

Veiw of mounting studs (bolts that extend thru the beam):

 

Bracket that mounts to bumper beam. The light bracket will extend thru lower grill perpendicular to this bracket and will be attached by two "thru" bolts that pass thru the tabs on upper bracket, thru holes in lower bracket, and secured by nuts.

 

Lower bracket sandwiched between "siamesed" light pods:

 

Slot trimmed in lower grill to allow bracket to slide thru and attach to upper bracket:

 

Components of light pods (not all parts were used once I joined them together, but full adjustability is still maintained):

 

The lights have to be mounted to the bracket before it is inserted thru the grill (but can be adjusted once installed):

 

Mods, please make this a sticky. I plan to do something similar. I think MINI asked way too much for two simple plain ol fog lights. I always planned to install them as aftermarket stuff.

 

lol in before all the pics. looks amazing BTW

 

And this is the result:

 

they look good! well done. IMO i think they'd look more at home with some kind of black outline...like paint the frame edges black... they look silver?

 

nice job...love to

 

Yes, I agree. When I take them off to make the longer lower bracket, I plan on painting the trim rings either satin black or Melow Yellow. The lights themselves are satin polycarbonate.

The MY may be too much, so I'll probably just go w/ black.

And thanks for the compliments so far.

 

Holy smoke! That's a great DIY job. I'm pretty adventuresome, but that's well beyond what I'd try. The results look great.

 

Sweet! Nicely done. That ought to reflect those cones around the backhoe.

 

x 10000000000

 

Definitely go black. I think it would really make them pop. Keep us updated!

 

looks sweet, It would be sick if you had 4

 

Bravo! I bet you could market a kit for that.

 

Looks GREAT!!! The black wheels look good as well. Did you paint the headlight surrounds or did you use the Dip that people have beentalking about?

 

Looks great, Lots of luck with them.

Larry

 

Nice work!

 

Verrrrrrry nice design... and well executed. A+ mod.

 

Thanks everyone. The rings came from MinSpeed in FL pre-painted.