I’m in the middle of a light refresh on the X5, mostly because pre-facelift headlights are on a big sale at getbmwparts. Still not cheap, but almost $350 off is really good, especially when considering how hazy mine are now, how foggy the left one gets after it rains, and how poor a job I would do trying to clean and re seal them myself. I also took EODguys advice and picked up some KC LEDs to replace the small incandescent KCs I’ve got on the front.
The headlights, right front plastic tray they sit in, and long rubber rain seal for the right side (left side seal was replaced an year ago) are coming from the mother ship in Germany, so several weeks away. The KC lights arrived along with the pre-fab brackets I bought that are for a Ford Raptor. I plan on modifying the brackets to either bolt onto, or weld onto my front oil cooler bracket.
New lights with the brackets on so I could see how best to approach the modifications. They are super beefy (metal and powder coated), and large enough to fill the space in front without looking silly.
They are 6” diameter lights instead of 4, should be much brighter and can have a slight radius set across all three to help spread the beam pattern out laterally. Plus 3 should look pretty nice up front. The 4” incandescent KCs were too small and not bright enough. I had hoped to use the same wiring but the plugs are different and I’ll need to wire in a relay as they draw too much power for the switch. I seem to recall I added a hot wire to the passenger floor 12v power socket in an attempt to get my Kenwood dimmer working, but that ended up having to come from the light switch. I think that wire is still behind the dash so I can use it for the relay.
Current situation:
I’ll cut out what I need for the brackets in cardboard and take them to a local metal shop to fab. Welding them on would be easiest but the ECS bracket I repurposed to mount this stuff is nicely powder coated and I’d rather not deal with rust later. Rejiggering the brackets so they bolt on somehow may be the best answer, if possible.