100w Xenon look bulbs

Don't even bother. You'll fry the relay contacts and possibly also your reflectors. Ans as they are so-called "Siuper Duper Blue Mega Output Snake Oil" lamps, they will in reality have less output than good qulaity standard lamps from reputable manufacturers. If you need extra light without making your car illegal and damaging the circuitry, just ft a set of Osram Silverstar lamps. These produce a

*genuine* increase in performance with the same (legal) wattage as the standard lamps.

JB

"Russell Smith" wrote

*ANY* coating actually reduces the effective light output, and you should not use any bulb that has a coating for that reason. You're wasting your money buying a 100w blue-coated bulb over a good 65w Osram or other bulb.

There has been a very good set of articles in the US's BMWCCA's Roundel about light upgrades - might not do a lot of good for you UK guys. However, it is clear that any real HID conversion kit must have the ballast and power supply, so the wiring should not be a problem.

Floyd

Agree with the above, don't do it! The real bargain was the one you or the original owner missed by failing to get the factory "OE" Xenon headlight option. For *only* $700, you could have had the BMW installed Xenon headlight with auto-leveling or if is a recent purchase, Xenon Adaptive headlight with auto-leveling.

If you bought this set up now will cost you in excess of $1400 PLUS labor. Too bad.....

IMHO, these sort of bulbs, being illegal in the UK, use old technology and don't offer much - if any - improvement over the high efficiency ones from Philips, etc. Remember tungsten lamps are very inefficient with most of the energy going in heat. So near doubling the power doesn't necessarily mean double the output - other methods may dramatically increase the output of a 55 watt one.

And the fact that it's blue coated makes things worse. This is an attempt to raise the colour temperature to somewhere near daylight - or to imitate HID types. But all it does is reduce the effective output.

Here's the article from Roundel...

Kyle.

98 740iL 97 M3

Do not know how true this is, but I also heard from a BMW mechanic that the computer will only send enough electricity to the bulb to reach what is needed and these 100w bulbs will never see their potential anyway.

100 watts is just over 8 amps. The smallest cable used on any car will handle this without melting. Something else caused the problem.

I have 100w bulbs in all three of my cars. SD1 Vitesse, Toyota Celica, and BMW. None have given any trouble. In the '94 525i I have 100w mains and Phillips Vision Plus dips. Fitted 18 months ago. No problems. The other cars have had them even longer. Again without any problems. Mike.

I think you should stick to the SilverStar bulbs. The light is very white, and they will not cook the wires or the plastic lens.

What are you using Dave? Half thinking about upgrading my E30 for the winter. Used to run 100W main beams in my E36, worked well but the bulbs blew quite a lot.

In my previous 735i's I used to fit higher wattage bulbs in the dipped beam headlights. As this was a larger 7 inch shell they could easily handle the extra power, and gave a modest increase in light output for a very modest investment (kept the old bulbs as emergency spares too).

Newer cars only have 5 inch shells, and that combined with the coating (which will absorb energy and make the bulb even hotter) is likely to lead to problems with overheating.

The coating will also reduce light output, so you will only gain an advantage as a poser.

I had 135w/80w in my E36 for 4 years with no problems

Not worth it. If they're really 100 watt, they'll fry your system. If they're claiming 100W output from 55W bulb, they'll be less bright than OEM.

Best standard halogens are Phillips Vision Plus or OSRAM (euro, not Sylvania) SilverStar.

Nothing beats real HID, although some installations are better than others.

R / John

My E30 with ellipsoids comes with 55W low beam and 65W high beams. The low beams have a black cap on the end, the highs do not.

I replaced all four with 65W Phillips Cool blue high beam bulbs, by modifying the socket to fit the low beam plug. These are quite cheap, being about 50% more than standard bulbs.

I find that my low beam and high beam output are both significantly improved. The scatter pattern lights up signs a mile away. I have not yet once been flashed by oncoming traffic in 3 years of running them. (on the other hand, in my wife's sunfire I get flashed about once every two months, and yet the lights are so dim I feel unsafe at night driving over 80kph) I find that the low beams need replacing a lot (I run them in the daytime also) but they're cheap so I don't mind replacing them about once every year and a half or so. The light color is very near to white, looks good at night. I'm really, really happy with the difference, especially considering how cheap it was. I think I added it up to 3400 lumens on high beam -- for like $40, instead of maybe $1000 for a true HID conversion to get 6000 lumens. Stock being something like 1700 lumens IIRC.

-Russ.

Thanks all, I put them in and am going to keep a close eye on the wiring and connectors, may yet pull them out as I don't want to do any damage. The lights really white and its a good improvement on standard. I once has some 130/160 watts in a Caviler , as one of the posters said it melted the contacts in the light switch.

Thanks all Russ.

If headlights go through the light switch, it's worth doing some re-wiring. Add relays close to the headlights using high amperage cable for the feed. A very small amount of voltage drop - as you will get if they're routed through the lighting switch and dip switch - can make a vast difference to the light output of normal 55 watt bulbs.