Hello everybody!

My parents have a 2007 Mini Cooper base model and every time I stop by to visit, they make sure I bring my DA polisher so I can get clear up the headlights.

The poor car only has 35k miles on it and the SPORT MODE button is wrapped in cobwebs. However the headlights are beyond repair now. I've looked on Amazon and Rock Auto for replacements but I'm not sure how the quality is. I'm avoiding eBay since you can't really read reviews on the products. Can anyone share their experiences?

Prices range from $80 each on up from what I've seen so far.

The car is a total base model with no options so I'm assuming it has standard halogen bulbs and none of that fancy auto-leveling witchcraft.

 

Here is a photo when it was about a year old. I'm not sure if you can tell what features or options it has by looking it but I figure it couldn't hurt to post it.

 

I'm not sure what you've been doing with the headlight lenses, but they don't require any maintenance or polishing, beyond basic washing dirt off the car. I've had mine on my winter beater R56 for ~7 years and 65K miles, and they suck as much as they did when new (one of these days I will retrofit Xenons).

From the pic you posted, there is nothing obviously wrong with them either.

But I'm sure you can replace them with a new set of original halogens, or Xenon retrofit$$.

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Did you reply to my thread to increase your post count? Because you obviously didn't read anything that I posted. My question was "Does anyone know of any good headlight replacement sets?"

Below the picture I posted, I clearly wrote "Here is a photo when it was about a year old". Obviously, there is nothing wrong with the headlights back in June 2008 when the photo was taken. But here we are in 2015 and in the wonderful state of California we have this stuff called ultraviolet rays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet in case you want to read up on it). It can cause skin cancer and even fade your paint! Pretty nasty stuff when you think about it.

So my problem is that the headlights are hazed over from all the UV rays eating away at the plastic. Oh wait:

Thanks! I never thought of that! I'm glad we have people like you around to help simple minded people like myself. It's a wonder I was even able to put my socks on today.

 

i totally understand your problem , because I got the same problem too. It usually happen at the top corner of the headlamp for me. After polishing it, it will come back a month or two. Because all the UV coating were polished away. Thats why its a recurring problem. I did bought a new set of 25w xenon to replace it, as the halogens are so dim and I dont want polish them anymore. But this time, I applied lamin-x on the new lamps, hope that thing reduce the dust, sand stuff like that will erode the coating and stay clear for longer even under the strong sun

 

Where did you get yours? And are the Xenons a direct replacement?

 

You can get them directly from Mini. As I recall, they are rather spendy. A good thread here -

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...rofit-kit.html

 

i got mine from ebay, tou need to do coding to make it work