pauld2012 said:
I was thinking of upgrade my 2005 z4 non xenon lights can anyone tell what i need to buy ie what lights from ebay etc ? and what are the problems fitting etc . I looked @ some forum posts and they are a bit jumbled some saying they can be a straight swop and others saying they are not .and what will be the diffrences be just the angel eyes ? thanks for any help
Hi,
I know how you feel as there are so many old posts regarding HiD upgrades using the old style ballast kits that needed external error cancelling resistors or were so big, required external fitting and drilling, it was also hard for me to make the right choice regarding a HiD upgrade and then the discussions regarding MOT legalities all just went around in circles. So after reading a lot of threads and doing extensive research to formulate an educated opinion, I have gone ahead with the conversion and this is my view on it all...hope it helps.
I bought some from eBay listed by "we-sell-hids" for £58.00 all in that had the listing title "CAN BUS PRO KIT VAUXHALL VECTRA C ASTRA CORSA H7 HID XENON CONVERSION 8000K 6000 -MID BALLAST ALL IN ONE - ERROR FREE no flickering". I ordered the 4300k bulbs as wanted to keep everything as close to OEM for MOT reason. My car currently has projector lenses just as the OEM fitted Xenons have, clear lens covers to not scatter the light pattern and headlight washers to clean the lenses but not fitted with auto self leveling lights (although I think as the manual light leveling system cycles up and down when the lights are turned on, most MOT testers might assume that they are auto leveling - hopefully!)
The kit contained everything needed and the fitting was a simple plug and play job that took about 30 mins total time to fit. Couple of things to watch out for is the kit will have a rubber bulb cover on it that you will need to cut off as not needed because you are fitting this into a sealed unit and there also are two parts on the cars metal bulb holder that will need to be flattened with pliers to seat the bulb correctly (its really simple and you will know what I mean when you see it). As the ballast's are slim, there is no drilling or fitting required as all you need to do to is put the 3M supplied double sided sticky pad on one side and tuck the ballast into the far corner of the inner headlight enclosure (Side of the high beam housing furthest from the main beam) as there is a void there big enough to hold the ballast. You then tuck all the wires into the back of the headlight enclosure, pop the cover back and push up the retaining clip back up and its all done, tucked in firmly and water tight.
Everything works perfect with no errors or flickering and the light brightness is just right.
With regards to MOT requirements, I needed the have a couple of tires changed last week and as the fitters are also a MOT testing stations (and I mean a proper place where they do things the right way), I asked them to check all the bulb alignments as I have recently changed all the bulbs (also changed the main beam / fogs to white halogens as the yellow light looked wrong against the Xenons), and they came back and said "one of the high beam bulbs wasn't seated correctly" (as they are a pain to access correctly without taking the wheel off) "and main beams needed a little adjustment but all done now and tested with the MOT alignment tools" without mentioning anything at all about them being retrofit or not being MOT legal so you can use that info how yo like to make your own mind up regarding the MOT requirements.
Finally if you do the conversion and change the main beam and fogs to road legal white halogen bulbs, don't for get to change the small side light bulb in the main beam housing for a 501 Canbus error free LED bulb.
Hope that helped and good luck.
Billy
.