LED tail light DIY
 

Installing the sonar LED tail lights on the e53 is very easy. it may appear difficult at first if you have never done any work back there (like me) but once you take a look its all simple. This should help give you an idea of how easy it is and convince you to order them :thumbup:


-Step One:

pop out reflectors on both sides to reveal the screws, and remove them

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/1.jpg

- Step two:
pop out plastic caps to reveal two more screws, and remove them as well

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/2.jpg

- Step three:

open lower trunk lid and pop out the black plastic covering. you can start at the arrows or the opposite side, i found the arrows easier.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/3.jpg

be careful not to break the plastic tabs!

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/4.jpg


- step four:

once the plastic covering is removed, begin to remove the bolts holding the trim/insulation. you do not have to remove the insulation.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/5.jpg

push the other plastic part up to reveal more bolts to remove:

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/6.jpg

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/7.jpg

-step five:

remove the three bolts holding the cargo tail lights, and unplug the connector for the reverse light. dont forget to remove the reverse bulb and put it in your new unit (and rear foglight bulb for european models)

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/8.jpg

reattach everything and test to make sure the reverse lights work before putting everything back.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/9.jpg

step 6:

remove three bolts holding the tail light in and connector, and replace with the new sonar led tail lights. don't forget to put in your turn signal bulb (only bulb you will need). and if you have a cd changer/nav/amp on the drivers side be careful not to let the bolt drop, its a hassle to get it out.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/10.jpg

OEM unit to give you a better idea of what three need to be removed.
http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/11.jpg

Test to make sure everything works, and your all set!

A few things to look out for:
-damage to the tail lights (mine as well as another members arrived chipped)
-LEDs do not flicker (shouldnt happen on models 02 or before, for later models a capacitor is needed)
-LEDs light up! (the pins in the LED connector might not all be exposed, causing the unit not to work. I also had this issue as well)
If you do have any issues, the sellers usually have great service and will ship out new units (hopefully) lol.

Step 7:
ENJOY your new, updated look :thumbup:

mt,
Very nice write up. Well explained with good pics :thumbup:

Q: How do you remove the small plastic caps in pic 2 without damaging them?

Would have been nice to see cose up pics of the final product (on & off).

Foomph

Thanks for the knowledge,look forward to doing this soon.

LOL.... You dont have to take out everything like you did, all you need is to remove this panel and take out the inner lights.
Much faster and less work . :lmao:

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/pp38/xmt2007x/3.jpg

and the expert speaks...

Tom, I was about to say the same!

haha tom your right i did notice that. but i found it easier to work with everything out of the way, it only took like 2 extra minutes :nanana:

and x foomph, i had those two small caps removed with this tool i found in my tool box (i don't even know what to call it). it looked like a pocket knife and had like 15 different pieces of metal which got thinner and thinner. i used one of the thinnest ones to pop the two caps out. so i guess just find something really thin.

the reason there is no pictures is because i received a defective unit (one chipped and one didnt work at all) now i have the chipped LED tailight in and the OEM one on the right, so its ghetto :D. i'll take some pictures when the new unit arrives.

That is a feeler gauge and it is used to set the gap on a spark plug, points, etc....

Feeler gauge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

;)

wow good call haha. i thought my description made no sense. thanks :thumbup:

Cool, thanks guys. So best I have a feel round for a feeler gauge when the time comes.
mt, GL with replacement unit.

I tried that yesterday -- I couldn't figure out how to get the tail lights off. Is there a mini-DIY?

Tom, Can you also install the rear trunk bottom hatch tail lights with this procedure? I seem to remember a thread in which someone added the taillights on the bottom trunk hatch. Did you do this? If so, were they LEDs?

its been 4 years...how come theres no pic of the final product?

the plastic trim of the lower hatch comes off with a flatblade screwdriver... then, there are about 9 philips screws that hold the surrounding plastic piece, and they are not created equal, remember which ones were taken from which spot - there are two types of those screws... don't forget the screws that are at the lock side of the panel, there are two small square plastic covers that can be popped with a thin blade, and two more screws (iirc) towards the sides ... once you remove that plastic shroud, along with the sponge/foam, then you should full access to the nuts holding the light assemblies...

Here are some photos of my LED tails...

Lovely

Very nice, thank you for the detailed DIY.

I have a question about the facelifted models with Brake Force Distribution (BFD)... the BFD signal uses Pulse Wave Modulation (PWM) to modulate the intensity of the tail lights and on the LED lights makes them flicker... this issue is resolved with installing a capacitor that smoothes out the square wave of the PWM and the LEDs stop flickering.

the question is about the programming - there is a line in the LCM programming code that states "LED taillights - nicht active"... I don't remember exact spelling at this moment, i would need to dig up the old file to look it up, but...

I wonder if there is a member who has the LED tail lights, does not have a capacitor (or can remove the capacitor rather easy) and is able to use NCSExpert, could change the line in the programming code to see if the LEDs will stop flickering AND will retain the BFD ability...

Any takers?

TerminatorX5, you might as well said "Hey tmv, can you ....."

Sure, ;) I'll keep you all posted.

hey tmv, can you??..

:thumbup:

I'll take one for the team :D

When I first put my LED tails in my 2006 X5 a week ago, I had flickering despite having coded the LED tail light option in NCS; and I thought the LED tail lights were too dim ( I could barely see they were on in bright sunshine, although the brake lights were brighter.)
I turned off all cold monitoring as well.
I ended up changing the PCM setting, really just by trying one setting, then test, then try another, until I was happy there that there was no flickering .

Is it possible for you to share your TRC file reading from your LCM? I'd love to check out the setting and compare. Thanks in advance. PM me if you dont want to show it in public.

Ok, tomorrow , it's midnight in my neck of the woods...
Also, even with LED option coded to activ, I don't have two stage brake lights, ie all the brake light LEDs light up regardless of brake pedal pressure.
And changing the PCM value, I've got the tails nice and bright, with no flicker... But I'm not sure if I've got capacitors , if I do , they didn't stop the LEDs from flickering at my X5 original setting...

You would have had to install the caps, so if you didn't, then you don't have them. What did you use to do your programming?

this is interesting, so somewhere in the programming you managed to remove flickering but it was not the LED-activ...

please do share the file - and there is no personally identifable information in that file, you can post it publicly... unless you still would like to do a PM..

Yes you need to pop that out to get to lower tail gate lights and yes i did it by added more LEDs in there...
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...5/2a08b693.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...5/a1068539.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...1310189223.jpg

Ok, I thought some caps may have already been installed inside the housing due to how the flicker wasn't very bad and almost imperceptible when the brighter brake lights were on. :dunno:
I just used NCS Expert.

I remember changing this - PWM_ANSTEUERUNG_SL_LHI from value 4 to value 1, which made the tail LED's brighter, but also eliminated the flicker; the lower the number, the brighter it got, and the less flicker I could see...
I'll try to attach trace file...

Thanks for the file deepblonde
I can't read the LCM on my 4.8iS from NCSExpert. This is the error. I can't test the light until I get pass this. Time for some online research.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...psabe119a7.jpg

Thanks Tom! That looks awesome. I'm going to have a look in the back panel to see what I can do to get these babies lit up.

Looks to have a little bit of CELIS style tubing inside of them. I've got a GT1 latop...do I need to do coding to stop error messages then?

It looks like they do have the Celis tubes, however those don't light up.
If your vehicle info is current, you don't need to do anything to put them on your pre-facelift. It's a direct swap.

Those light do have Celis tube that doesn't lite up but I had them lite up by adding more LEDs into them. .. You can call me crazy haha.

Btw way if some of you having problem with erro codes just add one capacitor per light (side) it will taking care of that problem.if you guys need how I more then happy to help you out how to soldering the capacitor to the light.

Hey mrbmwx5,

I am having difficulty figuring out how to add the capacitors. I have 2x (2 pin) capacitors, and have the led tail lights. How do I tap these buggers in?

update:

So I have soldered a capacitor directly on both sides (black cap to black wire, white cap to green wire) and have some flikering still. I have cold monitoring disabled in the programming. Any suggestions?

What capacitors did you use? and which wire did you solder them on?

I Used 35V 6800mf capacitors, seen wired here... look ok?

Another problem is, when I rev the engine, all my interior / exterior lights dim and brighten upon throttle depending on the RPM. This has happened after installed lights.. Any ideas?



http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b4...729_194606.jpg

You should have bought the resistors off Ebay that have a wire at each end instead of a bare pin. I installed a set on my X, one of the first mods I did, it was an easy install and with the resistors I used you can install them with simple T-taps connectors instead of going through the trouble of soldering. Plus they look nicer and neater than the ones you have, they come in 25w and 50w, I think I used 25w. My LED tail lights have been on for 4 years now with no problems whatsoever, check out the link below.

2X Load Resistor for Car Turn Signal LED Bulb 25W 10ohm | eBay


EDIT: I just noticed you have a 2005, apparently from everything I've read over the years, BMW changed something starting in 2003, so the 2003 and up models have trouble when installing LED tails, mine is a 2002.

If your lights are flickering with the rpms your alternator is weak it has nothing to do with the tails

Check the voltage regulator/alternator, and also check the battery under a load - it should act as power reserve/capacitor (kind of) to prevent flickering under revving the engine... this low frequency flickering is different from cold/hot monitoring and brake force distribution flickering

Thanks for the tips guys.

Looks like I made a huge error and attached a680uf capacitor instead of 6800uf. That's probably the problem.

As for the flickering, could it be a weak alternator or weak battery?


EDIT:

Thanks, but where to the 2 wires from each side all go? I know there should be one (+) and (-), is there just one extra wire on each side?

Yes. What are the wire colors on the led tails again? I can check in the trunk later to see where my capacitors are tapped

2 Black, 1 Green, 1 Red.

If you google search this comes right up:

As promised....this time with pictures http://www.xoutpost.com/images/smilies/thumbup.gif

Follow these instructions if your LED tail lights flicker after installation:

1. Use provided red wire tap-in connectors; clamp one on the green wire, and the other on either of the two black wires. This is on the aftermarket wiring side, not on the OEM wiring. We do not want to modify that!
2. Plug in the red side of the capacitor to the green wire, and then the black side of the capacitor to the black wire.
3. Zip tie the capacitor neatly to the rest of the wiring.

The capacitor's can be bought directly from Caesar at Lightwerkz (the capacitors are not on their website but other great stuff is, so check it out):

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: LightWerkz.net
.
Attached Imageshttp://www.xoutpost.com/attachments/..._tail_1_x5.jpg

So,

I installed the capacitors following this instruction and I am still getting a continues flickering. The good news is that the "check lights" error is gone. My next move will be to replace the battery. Is there anything that I am missing?