INTRODUCTION

As some people may still remember, I bought these LCI Replica tail lights earlier this summer for my Pre-LCI 2004 car.
I made a thread about them and it can be found here.

The lights were ok as for replicas, but there was some discussion that their looks could be enhanced a bit with Bruce Miranda's cables. I contacted Bruce and after some emailing I decided to order the cables from him at a price of 75£. That price included shipping from UK to Finland also.
Bruce makes different cables for different purposes, and these cables were the cheaper solution for my needs. The pricier version would have cost the double, but they would have been plug&play. The version that I bought needed some coding to be done with the car. I wasn't scared about this, because I knew that Bruce knows what he's doing .


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FROM OEM PRE-LCI TO LCI REPLICAS

The tail lights that I bought aren't only imitating the LCI tail lights, but they also have a slightly smoked look.

Here they are lying on my kitchen floor side by side:


The install was pretty easy. The hardest part was aligning the lights to sit nicely, but that wasn't too difficult either.

The difference to OEM Pre-LCI lights was noticeable:



Like said, the lights were ok, but there were two "backlights" behind the rods which were on all the time, as can be seen in the picture below (right one). This resulted that rods didn't stand out as clearly as they could!



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LCI REPLICAS WITH BRUCE'S CABLES AND CODING

The solution to make those two backlights stay off, were the cables. You just can't take out the bulbs, because these bulbs work as braking lights also.
So, the cables do the trick, but without coding the car, I would have got lots of different errors in the idrive concerning the tail lights. I kinda tested this during the process .

Here are the cables:


Installing cables was a straight forward job with the great instructions that I got from Bruce. Sorry no pics of the harnesses installed .

Bruce made the coding easy for me. At first he gave me instructions how to dig up a specific file from the car with the NCSExpert. Then I sent the file to Bruce, and he did the actual coding. He sent it back to me, and all I had to do was to feed the recoded file into the car, with the NCSExpert and Bruces guidance again.

Here's Eric doing the computing:



Cables + coding resulted this (next 4 pictures):










The backlights were gone, but when braking, they lit up !
This was what I was after, but there was more to come...


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EXTRA CODING

At this point I was pretty happy with the outcome, but I wished the rods could have been still a bit brighter. I know that by carving little grooves around the rods would make the LED's light spread more evenly on them, but that would be pretty hardcore, wouldn't it ! I happened to mention about this to Bruce, and he adviced me to try something with the NCSExpert. I did try it, and voilá!

Here's a comparison pic between the "basic" coding done and the "extra" coding done (I took the pics with the same shutter speed to show the difference):



Here's another:



...I was happy (as well was Eric) .


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CONCLUSION

I've been driving around today and everything works as it was meant to work . I am very happy with the outcome, and especially I'm very pleased with all the help that I got from Bruce. His instructions were great and if had something to ask, he always answered pretty quickly.

I think 75£ for the cables (including shipping) + coding isn't too much, considering the benefit that is achieved with them and with extra tips with the LED rods. Only thing that some people can consider as a con, is the need to code the car. If you live near Bruce, then it's not a problem. In a case that you're far away from him, there's a threshold doing this as you have to have the OBD2 cable to communicate with the car plus the right programs. However Bruce can help that part .

The cables do what they're ought to, so I surely can recommend them!




Here are few after pics:








- Antti -

 

 

Nice and comprehensive review!

The extra coding that made the rods light up brighter is interesting to me. Wonder if it's possible with OEM LCI tails as well?

 

Great review. Thanks for sharing!

 

Wow...Its amazing.

 

Awsome Antti. Love it

 

your ride looks amazing antti
love the wheels

 

They look great. I likee !


Although I am pretty curious about the "xtra coding" aspect.

 

Looks very nice! Congratulations