There have been many threads on the AE topic since BMW screwed the US market over royally. Most are well debated and there is some mis-information in there.
I have spoke about the study done over at M3post.com about the best replacement product. Several people have tried all the variants and have all settled on the LUX as the best bulb solution. The ultimate solution is by
OSS. However, the OSS mod requires you to remove both headlights and send them in to Florida and they open your headlights and replace the rings and bulbs. I thought about the deeply, but if you ever have a problem you have to yank them out again and ship them off.
Thus, the second best option and the #1 best bulb replacement option is LUX. I have their V1 on my M3 and it has two LEDs and the power supply and everything can fit into the light housing. The V2 I have on the X5 has a different power supply and must sit outside of the headlight housing as a precautionary measure incase it becomes too hot. This is the one detraction from this product. Apparently, only one or two people had the power supply get too hot and damaged the headlight. So just to be safe they redesigned it will longer wires and an inline fuse to sit outside the housing. This makes it very difficult getting the cap back on the housing once you switch out the bulbs. You could notch the cap and line the wires up with that or try to get the cap closed with the wires sticking out. It takes some work. There is a nice small slot towards the outside of the headlight assembly where you can tuck the power module and fuse to hide it. That is the only negative about this product and as you can see the pictures take care of everything else. No other replacement bulb, outside of the HID AE-which has very uneven light distribution and requires more equipment, has the overall day brightness and visibility of this LUX H8.
I couldn't be more pleased with the way these turned out. I have included a number of photos in different lighting since I know many people are interested in replacing the stock setup and are comparing different vendors.
Lastly, I am not being paid, given a discount or a member of
NAMO. I payed the same price as anyone else would. I'm just trying to contribute to the community on something that alot of members are interested in.
The color does not appear as teal as it does in some pics. Somewhat hard to capture the exact hue. The color is definitely pure white.
Enough chat, on with the pics!
08-05-2010, 10:40 PM
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