LED Trunk Light upgrade - The Unofficial BMW M5 Messageboard (m5board.com)

whatheheck · 5th January 2007, 07:24

OK, I've been wanting to do this upgrade for a while now but I was always too busy. Well, I was on a 10 day vacation during Xmas so I finally did this upgrade.

Summary:
Just like our Angel Eyes, I wasnt very happy with our trunk light.
1) It is not very bright.
2) I prefer white light output verses incandescent yellow.
3) Stock trunk light consumes a lot of power as it is a 10 watt bulb.
4) This bulb gets blistering hot.

Trunk light mounted on the boot lid uses festoon bulbs. Easy upgrade. Just buy the brightest white festoon LED bulb you can buy. In this case, the "Superstar LED festoon bulb from autolumination.com for 10 bucks each. This is currently the brightest LED festoon bulb you can buy.
Done! See attached photos.

The 2nd trunk light further inside the trunk uses a special 10 watt incandescent bulb. So I removed the stock bulb and used two "Superstar" LED festoon bulb side by side and stuffed it inside the trunk light bulb holder assembly. Result: Superbright white LED trunk light.

These Superstar bulbs are bright, especially when I combined two of them side by side. It consumes much less power, it doesnt get hot, it has cool white effect, and will probably last a lifetime.

Another worthy upgrade for the beast.

Dan

Vossen10 · 5th January 2007, 07:26

very nice!

Gustav · 5th January 2007, 07:30

That is BRIGHT!

EM5PWR · 5th January 2007, 07:30

Hey Dan , I'm starting to think you have a light fetish...

Looks good...

HPizKing · 5th January 2007, 07:31

Kool...I'm on it!

Need4Spd · 5th January 2007, 07:37

So you used a total of 3 of the same Superstar festoon bulbs?

I take it you used the white ones. The store also carries blue and red.

Any anomalous "bulb out" warnings? Perhaps that's only triggered by exterior lighting. Often if you put in different bulb on exterior lights, the impedence doesn't match OEM spec, so the system thinks you have a burned out bulb. None of that happening to you after this mod?

whatheheck · 5th January 2007, 08:01

THanks for all the compliments guys. Appreciate it. Glad you like it too.

Mr. Need4speed - Yes, I used a total of 3 superstar white festoon LED bulbs.
One for the bootlid and two stuffed side by side inside the 2nd trunk light.

That is correct - NO light ECU fault light. The trunk light doesnt report any faults to the light ECU so you wont get any OBD fault indication.

BMW is pretty smart, they only designed the ECU to report burned out bulbs to lights that are essential for safe driving. Such as headlights, turn signals, brake lights, and even license plate lights. So if you upgrade those lights to LED - you will get a fault (unless you use a 50 watt load resistor to simulate the incandescent bulb filament, which gets hot and needs to be mounted somewhere.)

FYI, I upgraded my license plate bulbs to LED's too but I got tired of the fault message and I really dont want to add those load resistors - so I removed the LED's eventually and went with Xenon festoon bulbs.

BTW, if you folks are interested on upgrading your footwell lights to LED, see my separate post here: http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/sho...606#post941606

Dan

gherardini · 5th January 2007, 08:07

i am sooo doing this one. the white light looks great. and for thirty bucks! compare it to the yellow interior lights seen through the back window. haha! great job! thanks for the write up!

btw... how did you attach the leads to the dual festooned bulbs? can't see through the tape...

whatheheck · 5th January 2007, 08:10

By the way, I already have white festoon LED lights on my interior dome lights but these new Superstar LED bulbs are really bright.

So I ordered 6 more superstar LED's and will install these on my dome lights soon. Will post pictures later once my 2nd order arrives.

Yes, total of 6, two superstar bulbs mounted side by side for each dome light location similar to what I've done here to the trunk lights.

Dan

whatheheck · 5th January 2007, 08:26

Thanks. Glad you liked the upgrade.

Please note, the light is very bright because it was night time when I took the photos and very dark inside my garage. Dont be disappointed when it is not as bright during the day time.

This is no different than angel eye bulbs. It is always brighter at night, even when the bulbs upgraded to the predator ICE LED. Bulbs will always be brighter at night.

Anyway, here are details for the inside trunk light. You will need to remove the stock bulb first, then cut the clips connecting the bulb to the connector as close to the connector as possible to make room for the LED bulbs. You need to leave enough metal so you can solder the wires to it.

Note: LED bulbs have polarity! Which means you need to connect positive to positive leads and negative leads to the negative leads. Otherwise, it wont work!

Use one or two 1.5 volt AAA battery to determine which side of the LED bulb is positive and which side is negative. Mark the positive with a red marker.
Align the positive side by side, attach a wire and solder the two bulbs together.

Then you also need to determine which side of the car connector is positive and negative so before you solder the wires to the connector, check your car and determine which of the two wires is plus and minus. Then solder the wires permanently to the proper terminals.

Hope that helps.

BTW, yes, I currently have the stock incandescent dome interior lights as you noticed. I had white LED festoon regular bulbs in there but removed it and will be replaced soon with the same superstar bulbs too.

Dan

Quote:

Originally Posted by gherardini

i am sooo doing this one. the white light looks great. and for thirty bucks! compare it to the yellow interior lights seen through the back window. haha! great job! thanks for the write up!

btw... how did you attach the leads to the dual festooned bulbs? can't see through the tape...