Reverse or backup light
 

I have searched and found very little in regards to people upgrading their backup lights (even on other forums so I figured that I would ask in both forums). I would simply like a much brighter white light when backing up (specifically out of the garage since it is a tight fit through the doors). Maybe it is just the placement of the backup lights but the output is not very bright when using the mirrors to see. Any suggestions. HID doesn't really seem practical.

I heard there are higher wattage bulbs for reverse lights, but do not know where. If you hear anything, I am interested too. Thanks

I have read where doing LED or xenon upgrades and stuff like that has caused error codes and stuff. We have a 2008 Acura MDX and those lights can be changed to practically anything with no worries, but apparently not so friendly on the BMW side.

LED bulbs cause the bulb failure lamp to show up on your instrument cluster. This is because the car is monitoring the amount of current used by the bulb to determine whether the bulb is functional or not. The amount of current LEDs take (usually something like 50-200 mA for signal and brake lights) is too small for the car to notice that there actually is a bulb. So it thinks that the bulb is broken and lights up the light in the cluster.

You can get over this by installing an extra load equalizer or similar parallel to LED bulb to fool the car to think that everything is fine. The extra load will pull enough current through.

I am actually playing around with led bulbs right now and it seems that in the rear you could solder extra cables to the black plastic base which holds the bulbs. Then solder the extra load into the new cables. This way you don't need to splice or cut any wires on the car.

Has anyone used load equalizers or extra load with LED bulbs? If, what kind (power, resistance)? I wonder how much deviation from normal bulb LCM can handle before it smokes out...

- p

FYI...I'm driving an 2002 E46 (thinking about buying an X3 too)....but I recently installed LEDs in my license plate, no errors. I'm thinking about doing the reverse and have been assured that no errors will show (none showed with the license plate LEDs). Maybe b/c mine's and E46, but I think if you buy from like Umnitza or JLEVI, should be no error.

Well, I ended up purchasing the 796 bulbs from candlepowerinc.com, they are almost exactly 800 lumen compared to the oem 400 lumen bulbs. Unfortunately, the resulting light is still very weak. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the X3 reverse light housing/reflector are too tiny to produce much light. Any LED option would be WAY more pathetic than even the oem bulb. About the brightest LED setup might get near 150-200 lumens which is still only half the brightness of the oem. The candlepower bulbs look more like a video projector bulb than a car bulb, but like I said the result still isn't bright like I wanted/needed.

All I can say is mine are super bright and beautiful blue. Check out http://www.jlevistreetwerks.com/BMW-...duct_info.html. Yours should be blub 7506.