Looking very KLASSE-y Dan! Such a cleaner look to the front end, I can't wait to get rid of my pre-facelift "old style" headlights. And to you facelift guys above, don't start complaining because your headlights look 10x better stock than the pre-facelifts!

I will be pulling a tmv and doing the ebay "facelift look" housings with CCFL angel eyes soon, as its the last thing on the exterior I really need to make this car feel complete. However I will be going off the beaten path and doing some very choice light output upgrades which will have my illumination almost to the level of another lighting pioneer, X5SND.....


Did you hook up the AE's or no Dan? I remember you saying you weren't going to. Now get some fresh fender turns to match those headlights man!

I agree that the projector doesn't look OEM but out of all the available clear aftermarket lights the rest of the light looks the most OEM. DEPO did a great job on the E53 set compared to some of the other models they've made lights for.

Yeah, world of a difference. I need to order the DDM HID kit today... already ordered the DEPO sidemarkers last night, the OEM look so faded with the new headlights now. No I didn't hook up the rice lights lol :p:

Have you had good luck with DDM in the past? From my experience they are hit or miss, I had good luck years ago on my old VW, but I bought a kit for my dad's truck a couple years ago and the ballasts fried themselves in a few months, and the bulbs didn't seem to be as good of quality as they used to. Guys on HIDP have mixed reviews, it seems the "old DDM" was reviewed better than they have been in the past few years, but if they work good for you, by all means go for it!

If you're keeping the car, I know at $150 its pricey, but the Morimoto kit from The Retrofit Source is the highest quality kit I've seen, comes with either a relay harness or error cancellers, and you can get the brighter XB35 bulbs for 20 bucks extra. I just got a set from them in H3C for my projector fogs, install pics are coming when I get everything hooked up.

I never had a problem with them. I used their HID kit for my fogs in the E46 and it worked well... can't beat $30.

I do have some luck with DDM Tuning.
All of my cars without Xenon/HID are running 55w-5000K kit from them. Only need to use their lifetime warranty once and it went pretty smoothly.

Like you said, for the price it really can't be beat, lifetime warranty helps so if they blow at least you get replacements.

Well shit, how much for the LED's? I could use a ready spare just in case.

he has the halogen projector versions with the halogen rings IIRC

Man, those look great! OK, I'm ditching my notion about staying with original headlights... Dan, can you please PM me details of where you got those headlights?

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

Gary do you have stock xenon? This is what Dan got since he has halogen headlights stock:

00 03 BMW E53 x5 Angel Eye Projector Headlights Black | eBay

If you have stock xenon, the same ones are a bit more since the D2S versions come with LED angel eye rings (and subsequently are charged $200 more for that version)