[Alaska_Pfalmer]

Hi guys, I tried searching around before posting for some information. I got some of the answers that I needed, but I still have a few questions that I would like some input on please.

I have a 2007 335xi w/ xenon adaptive headlights.

I live in Fairbanks, Alaska. It's dark here in the winter.

I've previously owned:
1) 2002 745i
2) 2000 328i Sedan
3) 2007 328xi Coupe

The headlights on all of them have sucked. My wife and I drove from Washington state to Alaska like 5 winters ago. She was in a 2005 Grand Cherokee, I was in the 745i. She had to go in front, and I had to tailgate her, because my headlights were too dim to be safe.

So, I want to upgrade my headlights. My Dad (a retired mechanic) loaned me his 2001 Grand Cherokee a few weeks ago. He replaced the stock bulbs with HIDs from DDM tuning. They were miles better than the lights on my bimmer. They took like 10 seconds to warm up once you turned them on, but once they did you could see amazingly. I talked to him about it and he said that he's installed those lights on dozens of people's cars and they've been great. So I want to put them on my car.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but I looked on REALOEM and searched around the forums and my understanding is that my low beams and my high beams both use the same bulb. They just move a mirror to adjust the beam. However, if you flash your high beams at someone, a totally different bulb is used. That one is an H7 halogen bulb. They did that because the Xenon bulbs take a few seconds to warm up. So if you have your headlights off, and you want to flash your lights at someone, you need a bulb that can come on instantly. It seems like a waste to me to have a whole housing and bulb assembly that only gets used like 10 seconds a month, but that's just my opinion. I tried this with my car and indeed the two outside lights in the headlight housings are on for the high and low beams, and the two inner lights only come on when you pull the stalk to flash the high beams.

So what my Dad and I are thinking is that, rather than mess with the xenon bulbs at all, we'd be better off to instead replace the H7's with HID bulbs, and then connect them to a switch that we would mount on the dashboard somewhere (FYI- We'd also have a fuse on the line and possibly run a relay so we aren't running all the power around everywhere). So if that switch is off, the lights will work just like stock. Then flip on the switch and it turns on the super bright lights. The only downside would be that we'd lose the ability to flash our high beams at people with the halogen bulbs. That's fine tho because we always have the headlights on when we're driving anyway, so if we need to flash someone with the highs, we can just turn the stock highs on and off.

So, what I need to know is:
1) If I'm just replacing the halogen bulbs, and then running my own wires and switch, do I need to get the 'Ultra Canbus HID Kit', or can I get the regular 'Ultra HID Kit'? I'm not really clear on what the whole canbus thing is actually, I just know that some cars need it to prevent bulb warning lights.
2) Is there anything that I'm not thinking of, or that I should consider before I go ahead?
3) What do you guys think of our idea? Good idea? Bad idea?
4) If I can use the regular kit, do I need any of the three optional extras they have? (HID Harness, Error Eliminator, Adaptor Cables)

As a quick side note: I don't plan on turning on the super bright lights unless I'm out of town and won't blind anyone.

Links to the Kits:
http://www.ddmtuning.com/Products/UltraCanbusHID

http://www.ddmtuning.com/Products/Ultra-HID-Kit

The canbus kit is more expensive, and only comes in 35w. The regular kit comes in 35w or 55w. So ideally I'd like to get the regular 55w kit.



Lastly, this has virtually nothing to do with the rest of my post, I'm just in a chatty mood. My Dad used to work 90 mins south of town and he had the most amazing light setup I've ever seen on his old chevy lumina. Four giant aftermarket lights mounted to a bracket he fabricated. Two of them were wide beams that lit up the sides of the road, and the other two were narrow beams that were so bright, you could see a moose in the road from two miles away (assuming you were on a straight stretch of course, haha). I thought about getting a setup like that, but decided not to. For one, I only live a few minutes out of town, and I don't really need it. And two, they'd look ugly on a beautiful 335. They looked kinda rugged and cool on an old car, but on a pretty bimmer I don't think I'd like them.


Thanks for your help, and for taking the time to read my extremely long post

[Black09BMW]

I'm not to familiar with the lighting options for our cars but I will say the reason why your fathers lights were so bright is because they are HID's in stock housings without projectors I assume. Some states it's actually illegal to have them without projectors because it is very bright and can blind other drivers. I've never heard too many problems with output on our headlights so maybe just replacing the original bulb with a brand new one will do the trick instead of installing a complete new setup.

[Alaska_Pfalmer]

Originally Posted by Black09BMW

I'm not to familiar with the lighting options for our cars but I will say the reason why your fathers lights were so bright is because they are HID's in stock housings without projectors I assume. Some states it's actually illegal to have them without projectors because it is very bright and can blind other drivers. I've never heard too many problems with output on our headlights so maybe just replacing the original bulb with a brand new one will do the trick instead of installing a complete new setup.

I've heard the term projector, but I didn't really know what it meant. So when I read your reply I decided to look it up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/commen...stems_and_why/

According to that, when I flip on the high beams it is essentially the same as having a housing without projectors. So that can't be the only reason that why my Dad's Jeep in brighter. And just to clarify, his HID's only come on with the high beams, so even tho he has HID bulbs in a standard halogen housing he's not blinding people all the time. His low beams are stock.

From your post, I can't tell if you mean replace the xenon bulbs with new OEM xenon bulbs, or you mean replace the stock xenon bulbs with aftermarket bulbs. If you mean just put in new OEM bulbs, do you think that would make a big enough difference? How much dimmer do the bulbs get as they age? I've never driven a brand new BMW. The newest of the 4 BMW's that I've owned had about 60k miles on it when I bought it. All of them have had rather poor headlights. Also, a pair of new xenon bulbs is about the same price, or a bit more than the HID kit that I'm interested in. And even if replacing the xenon bulbs made the lights brighter, I'm looking for something brighter than stock headlights to use out of town.

If you mean replacing the existing xenon bulbs and/or ballasts with aftermarket ones, I thought about that. There are two downsides to that tho. First, I wouldn't have my normal stock headlights. I don't want to blind people. If I put really bright lights in the low beams, even if they aren't shining directly at people's eyes, I'm afraid that they'd be bothersome to the other drivers. Leaving the xenons stock would allow me to only have brighter lights when I want them. When the switch is off, my lights would appear totally stock, thereby avoiding any blindness/annoyance/legal issues.

Second, if I replace the existing xenon bulbs and/or the ballast, I don't know what effect that would have on the computer. I don't want to throw error codes or mess anything up.

I don't know why I complain about the stock lights and other people don't. Given that it's been that way on all four of the BMW's that I've owned, I don't think that I just have a lemon. So it's either that my bulbs are way dimmer due to age, or that I only think they're dim because I'm using them in a dark rural area and comparing them to high power aftermarket lights designed for that situation. When I compare my stock headlights to other random cars on the road with me they seem to be about average brightness, or maybe a little above average.