jsaxophone

I finally managed to update my '06 to LCI headlamps and tail Lamps. Got everything in, it all seems to be working perfect, AHLs work left/right, I'm not sure how to test the vertical.

Amazing refreshed look. I'll take a moment to show it off:

Supplies:


Worn Out Pre-LCI Lamps:


Refreshed:






Onto the Halo bulbs. I originally had Orion V4, they came out amazing, in the beginning:


But over time, cutting the lenses didn't hold up. They begun to leak, fog, crack, etc to the point that they were un-salvageable, see above. No use, they were done.

So far, the V4s are the absolute brightest fucking halos you will ever be able to buy, but they come at the price of having to dremel open your headlights. With the LCI upgrade, I'm not going to open these guys up. It comes down to the H8 bulb. Having read around, one of the best seems to be the DTEC V9.5s, I'm open to other suggestions, but these puppies are 100W and, as advertised, no error codes.

Various threads asked for night/day pics, it's almost impossible to compare them over the internet, so I decided to grab my SLR and shoot everything in manual mode. I parked the car in the same spot, snapped my pictures from the same spot, adjusted all settings to be exactly the same as before, and the photos back up my experience.

The 4 images are:
Orion V4 (Non-LCI)
LCI Stock (Night Mode)
LCI Stock (Day Mode)
DTEC V9.5 H8

I can tell you, the DTECs are just a hair DIMMER than stock, especially from the outer halos, maybe they need to be re-positioned, but they are orientated exactly as the stock H8 bulbs. The benefit, however is that they do not dim at night, not to mention, the LED white looks a lot more updated.

Here is a left/right comparison:



And 2 GIFs (you may have to click on them)
Night http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...1.gif~original
Day http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...2.gif~original

Boost7

looks good, I've been wanting to upgrade my front headlights to lci as well
did you do the swap yourself or someone else did it? also you had to get a new lm2 correct? what else is involve?

jsaxophone

I did it myself, but I had the proper tools to do the LCI factory update as instructed by BMW. This required 4 wiring adapters, crimping, moving pins, and a bit of luck that my car was produced late in the year.

The car came with AHL Bi-Xenon, I purchased AHL Bi-Xenon LCI lamps, and I purchased an AHL Bi-Xenon LM2. You can see everything I needed in the first pic. Heads, Tails, Adapter for the heads, Adapter for the tails, and the proper LM2 module. I had to run 2 wires from the tails to the front, swap 4 pins on the LM2 (which sucked) and use a special crimp tool to create new headlight plugs. I made sure to do the install EXACTLY as BMW laid it out for the service dealers.

That said, it's one of the more complex wiring installs I've done and I haven't even programmed it, yet.

Boost7

I really want to do this mod because I have a 2005 model, so I did the Osram CBI upgrade and didn't see much improvement. Then swapped those bulbs out for 55w D2S kit, a bit brighter over stock and the CBI.
Since the CBI bulbs were just sitting around, I gave them to a friend that has a 2008 LCI model, wow big difference in light output with the LCI headlamps.

Quarta2six

Thats a damn good job on the headlight refurbishing... Did you do it yourself or did you pay to have it done?

jsaxophone

This wasn't a refurbishing, I upgraded the headlights and tail lights completely.