Angel eyes

[chas3]

Pics or it never happened

[gruf]

Can i warn you?
I have had the hid aftermarket kit with canbus and the same with 6000k led bulbs for angle eyes that advertise no error codes,
after a month or 2 the inactive suspension light came on and i took the car to my mate who has computer, he read the car and i had egr valve, 5 dea transferbox, glow plug unit and 5 glow plugs, egb electronic brake balance, instrument cluster, as errors,
I didn't think there was anything wrong as the car was running as normal so I put it down to the lights because (I always got my mate to read car coms and never had problems) i always wondered how they got round the error codes, what i have found out is that the aftermarket leds and hids have resistors to trick the computer that the lights are ok, then the car computer starts to think that others things are going wrong because of the voltage is not correct in the car, so i decided to get rid of the hids and buy genuine bmw xenon’s from my mate and i fitted them and had the car comms set for xenons, after reading the car a few more times over a couple of weeks and still getting a egr valve, transferbox, glow plugs and instrument cluster error i decided to change angle leds
i now have no errors, what i would say is be careful with all the things on your car because i think they send the car pc a bit scatty and eventually it will probably be misery in the end

[TwinsPoppa]

Thanks for sharing. That's interesting information.

When I installed the angelibrights, I had some weird things happen initially. The driver side angel eye would blink a few times when I would first power on the X with the key in the ignition. I can't rememebr if I had this happening right away with just the swap.

I do know that when I started to wire the AE separately to a switch, this was happening.

After a while I rewired it several times and ended-up rewiring it so that it bypassed a switch totally. It now doesn't do the blinking anymore. I will say that I had rewired it w/o the switch several times (different ways) and it STILL had the blinking so it wasn't the switch.

Then I upgraded my fogs with a 35w HID kit from DDM Tuning. Had problems with the cluster lighting up like a xmas tree. I bought their error-correcting harness and that solved my problem.

Everything was fine for a while for a long time. Then I had problems with my fogs sometimes not firing up. The ballasts and wiring were getting wet from car washes and rain. No matter where I relocated them, they would always get wet. So, I wrapped them in some insulating material and its been 99% fine. However, after a while, now whenever I have my headlights on and turn on the fogs I get the self level suspension inactive message.

Usually, turning the car off will get rid of the error message and the HL and fogs work fine - usually.

I have a lot going on there I know but you just gave me an idea. I'm going to put back my stock AE bulbs and see if I still have problems with my HID fogs not playing nice with my HLs.

Sorry for the long post but wanted to give as much background as possible.

Also, I know I'm not the only one that experienced the weird blinking on the driver side AE on power up - and they didn't have ibrights but they did have LED AE bulbs too.

I'll post my findings when I have time to do this experiment.

Originally Posted by gruf

Can i warn you?
I have had the hid aftermarket kit with canbus and the same with 6000k led bulbs for angle eyes that advertise no error codes,
after a month or 2 the inactive suspension light came on and i took the car to my mate who has computer, he read the car and i had egr valve, 5 dea transferbox, glow plug unit and 5 glow plugs, egb electronic brake balance, instrument cluster, as errors,
I didn't think there was anything wrong as the car was running as normal so I put it down to the lights because (I always got my mate to read car coms and never had problems) i always wondered how they got round the error codes, what i have found out is that the aftermarket leds and hids have resistors to trick the computer that the lights are ok, then the car computer starts to think that others things are going wrong because of the voltage is not correct in the car, so i decided to get rid of the hids and buy genuine bmw xenon’s from my mate and i fitted them and had the car comms set for xenons, after reading the car a few more times over a couple of weeks and still getting a egr valve, transferbox, glow plugs and instrument cluster error i decided to change angle leds
i now have no errors, what i would say is be careful with all the things on your car because i think they send the car pc a bit scatty and eventually it will probably be misery in the end

[gruf]

i had the inactive suspension and it scared me, so i weighed up the cost of what could happen compared to having white angles, stock orange ain't bad and if you buy the proper 10w bulbs from BMW then they are brightish, give it 2-3 years and everybody will want to go back to the retro look and they will all of got bored of the white angles

[StartX5]

Hmm... be honest, i just switched back to original "boring" angel eye last night after removed and checking my LCM unit. My aftermarket angel eyes keep flickering for 5,7 times whenever i insert key in; eventhought it's stop right after i start the engine 3,4 seconds, but after last night i feel unsafe for my X electrical system if i'm still using aftermarket led for my AE.

[TwinsPoppa]

I just did a quick experiment. I disconnected the AEs (ibrights) and tested it with the HLs on and fogs on - no inactive selflevel suspension message. I did not put the stock ones in. I just disconnected the AEs at the terminals.

I tried it several times and turning the X on and off too. Couldn't get it to give me the ISS message.

So, I can safely say it has SOMETHING to do with the LED AEs but can't 100% attribute the problem to it only because - I have my AEs wired to a 12v source. So, my AEs are on whenever there's power and wired different than stock.

I don't have the time right now to experiment more but, at least in my case, it seems its as gruf said - especially if he has stock wiring and all he did was replace the bulbs.

It's concerning that you don't get errors/problems right away - only after some time has passed. Correction, at least for me and StartX5, there was the AE blinking on the driver side HL on powerup.

[gruf]

i had the flickering on start up with led angles.
thats what made me ask questions about the way the lights work without error codes

[TwinsPoppa]

Originally Posted by gruf

i had the flickering on start up with led angles.
thats what made me ask questions about the way the lights work without error codes

Would you mind sharing the brand of LED AE bulbs? Are they the generic Ebay items?

[gruf]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LED-Angel-...item3f0f2d6436

They look the same shape

[StartX5]

Merry Christmas to friends!
Upon returning to LED AE - i have been using LED AE since 4/2009 and been living with flickering AE since then. However, recently my X created a weird problem - driver side hid fog light is changing color (not bulb nor ballast issue). I was just guessing this that and wondering why this happened to driverside and I also was thinking flickering LED AE of driverside. So I pulled the Light Control Module (LCM) out, it looks fine, little dirts. I clean it and making sure everything look good then reinstalled the LCM, turn X lights on, foglight back to normal of the way it should be. Again, I think about LED AE flickering may cause this problem? Oh i hate guessing this and that, and finally i decide not to use LED AE and installed OEM halogen AE.
I am not sure about your LED AE but in my case, i don't want anymore troubles.
I talked about this with TwinsPoppa couple days ago and i was thinking to replace new LCM to see my hid foglight will be better or not.

In order to make LED AE lights work without error, they built canbus for angel eye LED bulbs and that contains built-in resistor to "fool" X5 light checking error. Not sure if this creates "weird" problem to my foglight and LCM or not, however, for now, don't feel safe if i keep LED AE for my X.