F15 chassis LED foglights anyone?

[g300d]

So the guys at Retrofitsource have a quantity of OE BMW F15 LED foglights for sale on their site.

Anyone here try them?

The sparkies at hidplanet have already stripped these lights down to glass and plastic and retrofitting the guts everywhere.

[pezho405]

Do you have a link?

[romeokc10]

Must be these.

http://www.theretrofitsource.com/bmw...l#.UzIRzoXVcms

[Ricky Bobby]

X5SND bought a set as he was trying to pioneer that fog light solution, I'll let him chime in here, but lets just say they are nowhere near being able to be retrofit into stock housings, or bolt on our cars for that matter.

[X5SND]

These?




They're quite a bit larger (both internals & housing wise) than our E53 housings. A direct retro won't work as the housing is too large to hide behind the bumper. That's not to say some sort of sulution could be found, but I simply dont have the time to play around with them at the moment.

Also, as far as light output goes....their beam is WIDE but color temp is pushing the 5-6k+ range which doesn't make me particularly excited to do anything with them.

I have some output shots somewhere...

[g300d]

Yup, those, thanks RB & X5!

Yeah, I saw the beamshots over at hidplanet. Very wide beam but little throw. I thought they were the same diameter as our fogs.

Just wondering about them as I ponder a pre-facelift fogs/morimoto matchbox retrofit..

[X5SND]

They'd be a LOT of work to retro into the E53 properly. Get yourself a set of OEM projector fogs and a Morimoto H3C kit and you'll have rock'n fogs with minimal effort!

[g300d]

Thanks for the advice X5, I'd do that for sure if I wasnt also wanting to put some auxiliary driving lights...I am still seriously considering taking pre facelift fogs and retrofitting Morimoto matchbox projectors to get longer throw low/high beams vs the wide but shorter beam an HID drop in on the stock fog projectors would give.

[X5SND]

Interesting. I haven't dug too deep into their output, but if they're anything like the Morimoto Mini's, the matchbox is going to have an intense foreground.

Just off the top of my head, retrofitting the matchbox into the pre-facelift fogs isn't going to be a straight open and swap as im sure you're already aware of. The factory projectors have 2 screw mounting points on the bottom, but use a pressure-fit pivot point on the top to enable their vertical adjustment. It'll take some doing, but looks do-able.

I have pics floating around that detail the inside workings of the projector fogs (some are posted in the projector foglight thread)... they may/not aid you in deciding what route to take but probably worth a look if you plan to take the housings apart!

[Ricky Bobby]

I second what X5SND said, the Matchbox is a good idea but not as simple as you think. As well, the OEM (and Depo, although I recommend OE Valeo as it takes less tinkering) fogs are glass lenses that are permasealed, not easy to get off without damaging something, it can be done, just not easy that's all.

Honestly since I did my Morimoto H3C 4300k retrofit into the OE Valeo projector housings, I don't use my fogs much, only when back-road driving and I could use the additional lighting for deer lookout and such. The light output is INSANE for fog lights, and since ours are so high up already they are almost like an auxiliary driving light.

I recommend getting yourself a fresh set of Philips 85122 bulbs to really increase your xenon output on the headlights, at 10 years old you are definitely due for a new set as they have decreased in lumen output and colorshifted to probably 5k at this point!

Then I would recommend what X5SND and I have done if you still want more light, to retrofit a Morimoto kit into the projector fog lights, obviously we recommend 4300k for most light, or you could go 3000k if you wanted the color contrast.


And if you STILL don't have enough light then, take a weekend to open those permasealed housings and swap in some EvoXR projectors!