So yesterday, i was driving and had my fogs on as i usually do. I was going thru a drive thru and i saw smoke coming up from my hood/bumper area. After I got out to check I found that my fog light housings were melting inside the fog light chamber.
Looking for the communities opinion, is this likely the cheap housing not being heat resistant or the bulb putting off too much heat? See pics below, the bulbs also look like they burnt or something...maybe just discolored from the smoke. Bulbs are the same specs at 12v35w
Yes, i have the ziza in my R52 and R58, no problems for years on my Genuine MINI housings. Those are only 35w so its not like you put 100w bulbs in ( which people do on headlights and burn out the housing) Aftermarket ones have been fine. Those amazon ones look like they could not handle any heat. They might not be made of the same plastic as OEM or not rated for heat. I have seen cheap china headlights do that.
Yes, i have the ziza in my R52 and R58, no problems for years on my Genuine MINI housings. Those are only 35w so its not like you put 100w bulbs in ( which people do on headlights and burn out the housing) Aftermarket ones have been fine. Those amazon ones look like they could not handle any heat. They might be made of the same plastic as OEM or not rated for heat. I have seen cheap china headlights do that.
Do you know if these are rated for heat? They seem to be made by the OEM supplier and are $100 cheaper than genuine mini...
All the ones we have are fine, TYC actually made some of the aftermarket system for MINI aka the factory MINI retrofit fog light LED DRL kit thats nla. 63122338554 NLA now.
Those were made by TYC for MINI as a Genuine Accessory.
is this likely the cheap housing not being heat resistant or the bulb putting off too much heat?
Probably a combination of both. Those Ziza bulbs run hot.
Don't believe the marketing: those "hyper white" bulbs are junk. They use blue glass to make the light look whiter, but a halogen filament doesn't put out much light in the blue range. They can't boost the wattage to get more light because that could melt the wires, so what they do is use an overdriven filament that runs hotter. This gives crappy bulb life and still only gets you the bare minimum lumen output through the glass because so much is being absorbed by the blue filter.
The heat issue comes from the hotter filament, and from more of the light being absorbed by the bulb glass instead of going out the front as light. They're the same wattage as the stock bulbs (meaning they use the same energy overall) but the difference is where the energy ends up.
Basically you really want to avoid any halogen bulbs that use blue glass. This goes doubly for headlights. Here's a writeup that goes into more detail:
Probably a combination of both. Those Ziza bulbs run hot.
Don't believe the marketing: those "hyper white" bulbs are junk. They use blue glass to make the light look whiter, but a halogen filament doesn't put out much light in the blue range. They can't boost the wattage to get more light because that could melt the wires, so what they do is use an overdriven filament that runs hotter. This gives crappy bulb life and still only gets you the bare minimum lumen output through the glass because so much is being absorbed by the blue filter.
The heat issue comes from the hotter filament, and from more of the light being absorbed by the bulb glass instead of going out the front as light. They're the same wattage as the stock bulbs (meaning they use the same energy overall) but the difference is where the energy ends up.
Basically you really want to avoid any halogen bulbs that use blue glass. This goes doubly for headlights. Here's a writeup that goes into more detail:
Really appreciate the knowledge!!!! I am going to go back to non-blue fogs and put back in my regular bulbs for drls to match. I still have my original fogs anyways that still work. I guess ill have to live with the halogen yellow light tint. I was able to get my money back on the amazon housings and i bought some TYC ones from ECS. They are $130 more but hopefully they are high quality. Guess im just out the $20 for these blue zizas bulbs that got melted plastic housing and soot all over em now.
Just get any H8 that will plug in, then code out the bulb checks.
I don't want to code out the bulb checks, I like the idea of my system telling me when the lights failed.
I just got the TYC housings in and they are metal or glass or something different than the cheap amazon ones, they have some heft to em. The amazon ones were straight cheap af plastic. I wrote a 1 star review
I don't want to code out the bulb checks, I like the idea of my system telling me when the lights failed.
You don't have to code out the bulb checks to run LED bulbs, just make sure you get the LED bulbs that indicate they are 'no error' or "error free"-- Headlightrevolution.com has a few.
You don't have to code out the bulb checks to run LED bulbs, just make sure you get the LED bulbs that indicate they are 'no error' or "error free"-- Headlightrevolution.com has a few.
You're much better off coding out the bulb checks. The reason is that the canbus-compatible or "error free" include a load resistor to make the bulb look like a normal incandescent bulb to the computer. The resistor pulls extra current and produces extra heat, so it negates a lot of the advantages of using an LED in the first place.
If you use a non-canbus LED and code it out, you'll end up sending less current to the bulb and generating less heat. This video has some details:
You're much better off coding out the bulb checks. The reason is that the canbus-compatible or "error free" include a load resistor to make the bulb look like a normal incandescent bulb to the computer. The resistor pulls extra current and produces extra heat, so it negates a lot of the advantages of using an LED in the first place.
Well not all of us have the ability to code it out.
And the brightness and whiteness are the only advantages of an LED, could care less about using less juice.
Well not all of us have the ability to code it out.
And the brightness and whiteness are the only advantages of an LED, could care less about using less juice.
Brightness and whiteness are not the only advantages of LED. Power consumption and heat generation are also advantages if driven properly. I would not want to put in an LED that includes a resistor that generates extra heat. This whole thread was started because i melted my fog lights housings...lol. Even though it was becasue they were cheap china crap it would still defeat the purpose.
