Looks great and thanks for sharing! I was contemplating something similar to this myself a few days ago now you've inspired me to pull the trigger on it. I know the camera white balance isn't the same on all photographs so how white do they look? Pure white like your plate lights or any bluish tint to them?

 

No back up camera here. I just sold my property in Incline Village but plan to keep the E61 registered there as long as possible since they don't require smog tests.

 

The lights have a slight blue color to them I would say they are 5500-6000 kelvin. The last photo with only the glass open is the most accurate. They are not as blue as pictured in the original photos in the driveway, I would say those appear to be 8000k.

Hope that helps,
Evan

 

Any codes/errors? Nice car btw

 

Negative.

 

Nice work too 👍 Thanks for the link.
Plenty of food for thought!

 

Great job bro ! I'm definitely going to get some of these !

 

Hey Evan, is this pic of the inside of the trunk also illuminated by the two new lights you've added? Or did you replace the lights inside the cargo area (one on each side IIRC) with LED bulbs too?


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Right now, as a lazy way to get more light, I'm considering upgrading just the existing bulbs of the two cargo lights as well as the one under the tailgate door to the left of the lock with LED's. Pic below borrowed from an E39:


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The cargo bulbs are 10W 6411's if I'm not mistaken. Would doing so though throw the "bulb out" code as they don't draw enough power? I doubt I can get a 7W or a 10W LED bulb for them...

I'm guessing I might have to go with a CANBUS bulb... ? Like this?

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...oon/1264/2937/

But what's got me confused is that I think you are supposed to get a lot more light with an LED bulb, and this one's listed at only 60 lumens, whereas I've read the regular bulbs puts out 100 lumens.
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And I was going to do the same with the reverse lights, to get more light. They're supposed to be 921 / W16W bulbs. Same "bulb out" error issue and lack of equivalent light issue?

 

The light emitted in the cargo area with hatch shut is from the same 2 bolt-LEDs, it is a nice feature as they are functional with just the glass popped (I never planned on this, it just worked out well).

I still have my oem festoon bulb in place at the end of the tailgate, the LEDs are wired into it so I never experienced any bulb out warnings. I am not certain if the light modules run checks for interior lights or not, it may just be exterior lamps. If you are familiar with NCS Expert you can just code out the bulb out warnings.

The reverse lights are a real struggle as they are small (T10 bulbs) and the openings are also incredibly small. I purchased some "25w" Cree XP-E bulbs, they were am improvement over stock but leave a lot to be desired. I have had serious thoughts at mounting some Rigid Industries LED pods as reverse lights, the issue is there is no obvious location to do so and I really want to keep the rear of my wagon nice and tidy. Before I resort to drastic measures I will probably running the brightest T10 bulbs I can which at the moment has 10 cree xb-d LEDs. We will see.

Evan

 

I understand now how the inside also lights up with the two new lights. Cool.

Yeah, I don't know if the interior bulbs are checked by the CANBUS system also, or just exterior bulbs. I guess I can check easily enough by pulling one of the bulbs in the trunk and see what happens.

But I think I'm beginning to understand why people go with LED lights, when just replacing bulbs. Let me know if I'm correct. It's mainly for esthetics to get the whiter light. You get about the same or slightly less lumen output as before it seems for most of the replacement bulbs I've found. But they use 1/4 of the wattage as a regular tungsten bulb.

But my goal's not to use less power. I want more light. I wanted to use an LED bulb that uses about the same power as the regular bulb, but since it's more efficient, I'd get way more light/lumens. But since they don't seem to make such bulbs, it doesn't look like just replacing the bulb with an LED type will do me any good.

Right? Or have you found any?
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For the backup lights, are these what you've used?

iJDMTOY 25W CREE XP-E High Power 921 912 Reverse Backup LED bulbs

They say they're 921 replacements, but list them as T15 base bulbs. But if it's true, and they put out 500 lumens, that's impressive. That's double stock output!

And what are these 10 cree xb-d LED's you've found? A link? I'm not keen on blowing $50 on bulbs that I can't return to find out they're not much of an improvement...