Venom Headlights for Facelift e53. Anyone Tried Them?

[crystalworks]

RB, thanks very much for the suggestions and information. I've talked to you about the halos before. Let me address the points you made and my thinking.

-I had been looking for lens replacements stateside but had no luck and I never peruse the UK or Euro ebay offerings. $155 + unspecified shipping costs is kind of pricey for lens replacements. I purchased new ones for my wife's e83 for <$100.

-$1200 euro options are obviously the best way to go... but I am not willing to drop that kind of coin on a vehicle the market says is worth ~$10k when there are other areas I could spend that $$$ on the car like maintenance and the like.

-I can bake these permaseals open... I'm not worried about that. It will take time and work... but I'm very familiar with lighting mods (which is why I am trying to avoid it... lol). I estimate it will take at least 2 weeks of downtime to bake them, repair all the wiring, measure for new LED halo rings, and then wait for those rings to arrive. Plus I will have to have the lenses professionally corrected as you outlined above. I'm guessing that would cost ~$100. The Umnitza V2 are another $170. So that's about $300 to go this route.

-The Venom headlights. I usually agree with you 100% on this subject. But in this case I actually kind of dig the design. Very reminiscent of the newer "Efficiency Design" headlights on the later generation X's. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I totally understand your opinion on them. To me (and I checked with the wife too) they actually look very good, minus (as you pointed out) the smaller halo rings. The fact that they are CCFL also sucks. But that said, before LEDs I ran plenty of CCFL kits that lasted me many years. Also with this route there is no downtime and I could work on the factory headlights at my leisure.

-The projector quality is definitely something I considered. I plan on doing a comparison in the garage to see the difference in lighting (scatter, cutoff, etc). Also to help aim them upon installation. Going with the aftermarket option I might retrofit a better projector into the OEM headlights as you mentioned above since down time would not be an issue.

I am hoping someone has actually tried these headlights... hah so I don't have to be the guinea pig. Let me know what you think of my thoughts RB. LOL I don't mind being disagreed with. Hopefully some others will chime in as well.

Edit: Yes I have factory Xenon.

Edit #2: I just noticed that it says "not compatible with Bi-Xenon w/ Adaptive function." What is the Adaptive Function? Is that the leveling function? Because if so, mine has that (when you power up the truck it cycles the headlights down and up) and makes this discussion moot.