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Philips Xenon Fog Retrofit

Abstract - Inspired by E46Fanatics member "JacobNJ". When I got my M3 fog lights, the stock Philips halogen bulbs had a yellowish tint compared to the bluish tint of my factory Xenon low beams. I do realize that there is a good reason why fogs are yellow; due to its less dispersive nature compared to bluish lights in the dark. There is a good explaination located here.<LINK HERE>. I figure that I drive at most two days out of a year in some sort of heavy fog, and even then I drive pretty carefully when it is that dangerous, that I am willing to take the risk of having less effective fog lights.

Purchase - Bought as a full Philips HID kit through an auction on Ebay from member "alil92teg".

Parts - Philips ballasts, Philips D2R bulbs, extra cables, relays, fuses.

Installations - I have never seen a DIY write up on this particular mod yet, so I basically just invented this process as I went along. The bulbs that came with the original M3 fog lights were 9006 type rated at 51W. The xenon arc bulbs were H-7 type rated at 35W. Basically, the Xenon bulbs were too big to fit into the 9006 type socket in the housing. I decided to use a dremel tool to bore out the socket until it was big enough. The socket on the housing was made of metal, so dust and debris got all over the housing. Allocate extra time to clean the housing and the lenses. I then used a grinder bit on the dremel tool and smoothed out the socket to make sure there weren't any rough edges. At this point the fitment of the Xenon bulbs were perfect, except that it would still pop back out if I hit a bump hard enough. I took my hot glue gun and glued the outer edge of the bulb to the housing. The bulb and housing were secured and now I had to worry about mounting the ballast.

As JacobNJ mentioned to me in an email, I agree with him that the hardest part is to mount the ballast. The ballast needs to be bolted down to something very secure. It puts out about 25,000V so it would be dangerous if it weren't mounted properly. Since the high voltage cable from the ballast to the bulb was only about 1 foot long, the ballast had to be close to the corresponding fog light. I figured the best way to do this was to modify the bolts on the ballast and custom build a bracket that held the fog light and ballast together as one unit. I went to Home Depot bought some screws, bolts, and "L" shaped brackets. Lots of drilling, dremeling, sawing, and filing were performed on the pieces to get them all to fit together. Since I knew that these Xenon bulbs would be much brighter than the original stock setup, I adjusted the fog lights to their lowest angle setting. Now the completed pieces were ready to be placed into the front bumper. At first the pieces did not fit exactly the way I planned, but after more customization, the actual pieces fit into the front bumper perfectly. It took me a total of 8 hours over a few days.

Impressions - WOW! The intensity of these Xenon bulbs were amazing, my Xenon fog lights had become my high beams, low beams, and fog lights. Well, it turns out that there are two versions of the Xenon bulb from Philips: D2S and D2R. D2S is the bulb designed for projector typed housing such as those found on BMW low beams. D2R is the bulb designed for reflector typed housing such as the M3 fog lights. I had a pair of D2S bulbs which caused all the uncontrolled dispersion I was experiencing. I got my hands on a pair of D2R bulbs and that did the trick. I fired up the D2Rs and sure enough the beam pattern was controlled and focused. For the first 10 minutes the D2Rs lit up quite yellow, but now they are bright white with a bluish hue. I suspect that its just a break-in property of brand new Xenon bulbs. Furthermore, the factory Xenon low beams and Philips Xenon fog lights have similar orange-to-blue color warm up phase and similar brightness levels, primarily because Philips/OSRAM actually OEMs for BMW Xenons.

While going through this whole process of retrofitting Xenons into my fog lights I learned many things I would like to note. First off, gas discharge type bulbs are just amazing. If you look at the bulb closely, you can see the igniters and the gas chambers. Gas discharge bulbs usually last longer, burn cooler, and consume less energy. As mentioned above, the stock halogen bulb was rated at 51W over the Xenon bulb at 35W. Initially, the Xenon bulb takes more energy than the halogen bulb to start the reaction, but after it reaches a steady state, it actually consumes less power. A great site to visit about gas discharge bulbs is Autolamps-Online. These guys offer the 6000K Xenon bulbs which are even whiter than the 4300K. Most people including myself love the bluish hue of the 4300K Xenons, but many have reported that the 6000K Xenons are less blue. This is true because 4300K just so happens to be closer to the bluish spectrum than 6000K. That is the main reason I retrofitted with 4300K and not 6000K. One last thing, Philips actually does not offer a Xenon conversion kit. They offer the individual components such as the ballasts, bulbs, etc. Make sure exactly what you are buying before you make the purchase!