RootKit

nelson29, great job on the CIC retrofit! Been following the thread closely and everyday I'm really thinking about it. Looks like you guys have the previous issues iron out.

sachal007

so whats the final verdict on this

I wanna go ahead with this but there is still no clear answer

I have a car with a 09/05 production date.

I have LCI tail lights right now with bruce - but would be selling bruce once i have the retrofit cables installed

I have LCI headlight and am planning on using my old LCM, Xenon ballast and AHL unit


Do i just installed all these and get the programming done? ?

nelson29

You should definitely do it! IMO it's the best retrofit you can do.

turboawd

yeah, someone needs to do a proper DIY thread.

DiaminDog

Ok, Nelson thanks for input.. the headlights including adpative are working fine, dealer said it kicked back a few times, but now my tail lights don't illuminate at night unless i hit the brake pedal, the bulb that illuminates is the inside circular one as oppose to the ones that illuminate the lci bars on the outer part of the tail lamp. dealer has told me they are not taking any resposibility for the parts I have replaced "because they don't belong in my car" and refuses to program again, he is telling me they do not want to program my car again because he feels it is causing a domino effect of issues. any ideas on how i can correct this, i have already paid over 500 in prgramming fees.
thanks to all who can help..

RootKit

Double check the taillight pins, compare that to the instruction diagram. Make sure the color of the wires match the corresponding color codes.

DiaminDog

the tail lamp sockets come pre wired, they are plug and play in the oem bmw wiring kit. only the front i had to place each individual pin myself. does it matter that i havent run the 2 ground wires from the rears to my new lcm? would it just be easier to get v6 cables for the rear at this point?
thank you !

nelson29

Of course it does

You can not use the V6 cables with the full headlight and tailight retrofit.

DiaminDog

nelson maybe its obvious to you, but i had the tails installed, with the bmw oem harness prior to installing the headlights, and they worked flawlessly. i never connected the grounds to the lcm. it was only until i updated the lcm that the tail lamps lost some function. and i was told those wires to the lcm only affect the error message. so do you think its possible to keep the headlights installed as is,. remove the oem bmw tail plugs and use bruce cables w resistors?

RootKit

At this point, it is easier and much less costly to connect those two wires! The coding of the LM gives different function to your taillights. There is a reason why BMW included those two long wires--it powers the LED rods of the taillights. The wires are not grounds, obviously will lose some function with the update since you havn't connected the wires back to the LM. Even before the update, your taillights did not work flawlessly and function properly as intended.

If things were plug and play, many members here could have saved some money and not use Bruce's cable. Also, there would have not been that very long thread couple years ago when many of us were scrambling to get the taillights to work properly.