BMW M5 Forum and M6 Forums banner

Morimoto H7 LED Highbeams *Writeup*

25K views 69 replies 25 participants last post by  boris1 
#1 · (Edited)
Well as promised, I have documented my second install of these LED's into my 2002 M5. I took a chance on these LED's last year on my 540i, not knowing if I was even going to be able to make them work. Well I was, and let me tell you, the results are absolutely AMAZING!!!! They are unbelievable bright, and the response time is just the icing on the cake. I bought the bulbs from theretrofitsource.com, and the are $120 + Shipping.

Prerequisites:
1) You should disable your high beams DRL's! On my 540i this was enabled by default, and I used a cheaper BMW scanner from Amazon to reprogram the LCM and turn it off. You don't necessarily have to turn this off as these bulbs do support DRL function, but it must be between 4v and 9v, and a non-pulsed signal. I have not tested the voltage these car put out for the Highbeam DRL's, so it's up to you to check that if you don't want to disable them. Honestly, I think these will be too blinding, even at DRL voltage, for when it's starting to get dark and you haven't put your headlights on yet.

2) Using the same software, I would also highly recommend you disable the highbeam bulb check. What the LCM does is send a short pulse of voltage to each bulb around the car. If it doesn't see the resistance it's supposed to, it throws a bulb out warning. With these LED's, you won't get a bulb out warning, HOWEVER, since LED's react so fast in comparison to halogen, they will flash periodically when you first start up the car, as the LCM is checking all the exterior bulbs.

Require Tools:
- Flathead screwdriver
- T15 & T20 Torx socket/screwdriver.
- Bench grinder.
- 8mm and 10mm sockets and ratchet, preferable 1/4".
- Hacksaw

First take off the headlight, and find a table to work on. There are four 8mm bolts holding them onto the car. Then removed the factory HID ballast if your car is equipped with HID's, as the ballast and it's bracket block access to the highbeam bulb. You can take them out as one unit, there are three 8mm bolts holding the HID bracket to the headlight housing.


Next remove your stock highbeam bulb. Twist counter-clockwise, and then it should pull out.


Here is a pic of the factory H7 bulb, next to the morimoto bulb. You can start imagining what we need to do now.


Use the flatblade screwdriver to help you remove the H7 bulb from BMW's H7 adapter. Once again, can you start to see what needs to be done? The morimoto H7 base twists on and off from the housing. What we need to do is to get the factory H7 adapter to sandwich between the morimoto H7 base and it's heatsink. We need to use the BMW adapter because that's what twists into the headlight's twist lock and holds the bulb in place. Once modified to fit in the morimoto bulb, it will then hold that bulb it.


Get your hacksaw, and begin cutting around the base of the factory bulb adapter, where the stock connector plugs into.


Cut evenly all around, until you can see the electrical pins through the gap.


At this point, adapter easily snaps apart.


Here is the cut out portion of the adapter next to the morimoto bulb.


Here is the fun part! you need to grind down the thicker end of the adapter (opposite end of the O-ring), so that it fits inbetween the morimoto h7 base and heatsink. TAKE YOUR TIME. You don't want to grind too much and it end up being too loose inbetween the morimoto base and heatsink!



Almost there! Remember as you get closer to it fitting, slow down how much you're cutting so it's not too loose.



Done!
VIDEO OF FINISHED BULBS AND ORIENTATION
HOW TO LOOSEN HEADLIGHT TWIST LOCK AND INSTALL BULBS


Here is the adapter and twist lock fitted into the morimoto bulb. In the video I stated that you can just loosen the twist lock, and have enough room to install the bulb and then tighten it back down. However, I found it difficult to lock in the bulb without spinning the adapter on the morimoto bulb. So I just unscrewed the twist lock piece from the headlight, installed it onto the adapter on the bulb, and installed everything as one unit.


Installed, tight and sealed.



And here is a video of how fast they are, and a little bit of the output too I guess.
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

I am waiting for some more of my videos to upload, and I will update the thread later on. In the meantime, enjoy!

EDIT: Here's a video of them in action from the front of the car!

VIDEO OF MORIMOTO LED VS HALOGEN


Chris
 
See less See more
15
#2 ·
Great job documenting the work involved! I think something useful here would be a video on how bright the light is during the day. A video with the camera pointing at the vehicle in sunlight to show how effective the LED high beams are during the day for flash to pass.
 
#3 · (Edited)
Sure thing! I will tell you that they are brighter than the halogen's by far, it's not even comparable. The reason they work so well in this housing, is because of how the Morimoto bulbs throw the light, and how e39 high beam reflectors are designed. The morimoto's shoot a 180* beam from each side, hitting the reflectors nearly directly, which wrap around the bulb in these housings. All of the light put out by the LED hits the reflector, the LED bulb itself does not shoot any light forward. This is not some cheap H7 LED bulb replacement, these bulbs are designed to be used as headlights, and are BRIGHT.

Although not the best video, you can get a sense of how bright they are in comparison to the factory HID's in the video I linked above.

Here's the specs of the bulbs taken from the website.

LED EMITTERS: 2x CREE XHP50 per bulb
KELVIN: 6000K
INTENSITY: 5000lm (raw; per bulb)
INPUT POWER: 34w (per bulb)
INPUT RANGE: 6-30V DC
CURRENT DRAW: 2.7A 12V DC
 
#7 · (Edited)
Updated the main post with two more pictures, and added a little video from within the car. I admit, it's not the greatest video. I need to find a darker road and setup my GoPro to show you guys the full effect. At least you get an idea of what it's like, better than nothing I say, lol.

LINK TO NIGHTTIME VIDEO

Also updated the main post with two more pictures of the finished bulb and adapter.

EDIT: Looks like I can't edit the main post anymore. So here are the two pics I'm talking about I'd like to add.





Chris
 
#14 ·
I was going to use the Morimoto LED's for my foglights, but the previous owner of my car had the LCM coded so that the foglights stay on with the highbeams. This means I don't have to worry about flashing my high beams, as the foglights no longer turn off with the highbeams turned on. As you may know, flashing an HID bulb is very bad for the ballast and will ultimately destroy them. I'm just going to put HID's in my foglights because of this, as they are plug and play; plus I don't really see a benefit to having instant-on and instant-off foglights they're either on of off, noone flashes their foglights.

Chris
 
#11 ·
You mention that you have these in your 540 also. Can you tell me how long you have had them installed? The reason I ask is because I ordered a Morimoto Elite HID plug and play retrofit kit for another vehicle of mine. I absolutely love the light output and color the quality has been absolute crap after 1 year. I have replaced one of the computers only to have it fail literally 3 days after I replaced it. Then the other side promptly failed. Probably going back to OE halogen if I try one more time and it does the same thing.
 
#12 · (Edited)
I installed these on the 540i in October of 2016, no issues. I also have 55W Morimoto low beams, and 35W foglights. I did have some issues with the passenger side igniter, they warrantied it for me though and it has been fine since.

The 55 watt's only have 1 year warranty, and the 35-watt has 3 years I believe. I buy Morimoto stuff versus other brands because I wanted quality, sucks to hear you had issues. What type of vehicle is it? It might just be bad luck, or something else is going on that is killing them.

I will have a total of 6 of this kits between my two cars soon, currently at 5. I have a 55-watt kit for the fogs on my M5, just waiting for time to do it.

Chris,
 
#15 ·
Since Photobucket has decided it's a no-no to host images anymore, is there a possibility you have your pics stored somewhere else and can repost them again?

I've recently worked on upgrading my lights and made a detailed thread about it. I'm still running on stock H7 bulb and would like to upgrade to LED one. Can you provide a link or the p/n of the bulb from Morimoto site?
 
#16 ·
#20 · (Edited)
I don't think the LCM matters, but I'm not sure. My M5 is a 2002, and the 540i is a 2003, both have these bulbs. I have no idea which model LCM's either car has.

Nothing out the ordinary needs to be done, except if you want to program the LCM to stop checking the high beams; they will flash periodically as the car does it's bulb check sequence.

Chris
 
#21 · (Edited)
*Sorry I had to post this again. I cannot edit my original post to fix the hyperlinks*

Well as promised, I have documented my second install of these LED's into my 2002 M5. I took a chance on these LED's last year on my 540i, not knowing if I was even going to be able to make them work. Well I was, and let me tell you, the results are absolutely AMAZING!!!! They are unbelievable bright, and the response time is just the icing on the cake. I bought the bulbs from theretrofitsource.com, and the are $120 + Shipping.

Prerequisites:
1) You should disable your high beams DRL's! On my 540i this was enabled by default, and I used a cheaper BMW scanner from Amazon to reprogram the LCM and turn it off. You don't necessarily have to turn this off as these bulbs do support DRL function, but it must be between 4v and 9v, and a non-pulsed signal. I have not tested the voltage these car put out for the Highbeam DRL's, so it's up to you to check that if you don't want to disable them. Honestly, I think these will be too blinding, even at DRL voltage, for when it's starting to get dark and you haven't put your headlights on yet.

2) Using the same software, I would also highly recommend you disable the highbeam bulb check. What the LCM does is send a short pulse of voltage to each bulb around the car. If it doesn't see the resistance it's supposed to, it throws a bulb out warning. With these LED's, you won't get a bulb out warning, HOWEVER, since LED's react so fast in comparison to halogen, they will flash periodically when you first start up the car, as the LCM is checking all the exterior bulbs.

Require Tools:
- Flathead screwdriver
- T15 & T20 Torx socket/screwdriver.
- Bench grinder.
- 8mm and 10mm sockets and ratchet, preferable 1/4".
- Hacksaw

First take off the headlight, and find a table to work on. There are four 8mm bolts holding them onto the car. Then removed the factory HID ballast if your car is equipped with HID's, as the ballast and it's bracket block access to the highbeam bulb. You can take them out as one unit, there are three 8mm bolts holding the HID bracket to the headlight housing.


Next remove your stock highbeam bulb. Twist counter-clockwise, and then it should pull out.


Here is a pic of the factory H7 bulb, next to the morimoto bulb. You can start imagining what we need to do now.


Use the flatblade screwdriver to help you remove the H7 bulb from BMW's H7 adapter. Once again, can you start to see what needs to be done? The morimoto H7 base twists on and off from the housing. What we need to do is to get the factory H7 adapter to sandwich between the morimoto H7 base and it's heatsink. We need to use the BMW adapter because that's what twists into the headlight's twist lock and holds the bulb in place. Once modified to fit in the morimoto bulb, it will then hold that bulb it.


Get your hacksaw, and begin cutting around the base of the factory bulb adapter, where the stock connector plugs into.


Cut evenly all around, until you can see the electrical pins through the gap.


At this point, adapter easily snaps apart.


Here is the cut out portion of the adapter next to the morimoto bulb.


Here is the fun part! you need to grind down the thicker end of the adapter (opposite end of the O-ring), so that it fits inbetween the morimoto h7 base and heatsink. TAKE YOUR TIME. You don't want to grind too much and it end up being too loose inbetween the morimoto base and heatsink!



Almost there! Remember as you get closer to it fitting, slow down how much you're cutting so it's not too loose.



Done!


VIDEO OF FINISHED BULBS AND ORIENTATION
HOW TO LOOSEN HEADLIGHT TWIST LOCK AND INSTALL BULBS


Here is the adapter and twist lock fitted into the morimoto bulb. In the video I stated that you can just loosen the twist lock, and have enough room to install the bulb and then tighten it back down. However, I found it difficult to lock in the bulb without spinning the adapter on the morimoto bulb. So I just unscrewed the twist lock piece from the headlight, installed it onto the adapter on the bulb, and installed everything as one unit.


Installed, tight and sealed.



And here is a video of how fast they are, and a little bit of the output too I guess.
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

I am waiting for some more of my videos to upload, and I will update the thread later on. In the meantime, enjoy!

EDIT: Here's a video of them in action from the front of the car!

VIDEO OF MORIMOTO LED VS HALOGEN


Chris
 
#24 ·
Oh boy, new headlight technology to master! Thanks for the info.
 
#27 ·
Dragging this back up as I'm considering adding this to my winter to-do list. If I go ahead with this project I'll use the Amazon adapters to avoid cutting up my stockers (I like to archive stock parts to return to stock if needed), but I'm curious - did the HID ballasts screw back into place over the LED high-beam housing, or did you have to mount them elsewhere, or use spacers or something? That housing looks pretty big compared to the original halogen adapter, hence my question.

Thanks!
 
#35 ·
I guess I didn't realize 9005 would've worked. I just knew H7 was a factory bulb, and started my quest from there.

Well as promised, I have documented my second install of these LED's into my 2002 M5. I took a chance on these LED's last year on my 540i, not knowing if I was even going to be able to make them work. Well I was, and let me tell you, the results are absolutely AMAZING!!!! They are unbelievable bright, and the response time is just the icing on the cake. I bought the bulbs from theretrofitsource.com, and the are $120 + Shipping.

I cannot see the pictures... :(
I still see the pictures, that's strange. Anyone else not seeing them?

Looks so effing cool! Any pix of them lit up?

Thanks!
I will try, it's hard to get pictures of them at night because every camera I've tried fails to capture it decently. They are insanely bright and always generate a conversation when people see these things in action!

Chris
 
#33 ·
Well as promised, I have documented my second install of these LED's into my 2002 M5. I took a chance on these LED's last year on my 540i, not knowing if I was even going to be able to make them work. Well I was, and let me tell you, the results are absolutely AMAZING!!!! They are unbelievable bright, and the response time is just the icing on the cake. I bought the bulbs from theretrofitsource.com, and the are $120 + Shipping.

I cannot see the pictures... :(
 
#34 ·
Looks so effing cool! Any pix of them lit up?

Thanks!
 
Top