Piss-Poor E53 Reversing Lights - Cure Found

[X5-D-Sport]

Piss-Poor E53 Reversing Lights

Any one else found this irritating ?
I live out in the sticks & there is zero street lighting, & I have to tun the car in my drive, & the reversing lights on the E53 are not too amazing...

So, I 3d printed an adapter that allowed me to fit a 100 Watt LED lamp into each reversing light slot of the tail light cluster....

Problem solved.... and the LED draws about the same power as the original 21 Watt bulb so no warning lights pop up either.

Just thought I'd share this one.

[X5Sport]

That’s a result, and good use of a printer too. One question though ... 100W is more than 21W no matter how you do the maths, or am I missing something? The warning lights are triggered by resistance if I understand BMWs ‘cold check’ process - and I may have misunderstood that bit

[X5-D-Sport]

Hi Richard,

you are absolutely right re the MATH...

However,
bear in mind that a 21 watt bulb does not produce 21watts of light, it just guzzles shed loads of power..... about 2 amps.
ie Amps x Volts = Watts... or 12 volts x 2 amps = 24 watts

However 21 watts of actual power piped into a high power 100w LED bulb, will produce a similar amount of light that the 100 Watt normal bulb will... on much less power.

Hence 20/25 ish watts of energy fed to a powerful LED headlight bulb will give a similar light output as a 100w standard headlight bulb

Hope this makes sense, as I'm confusing myself now ha ha

[X5Sport]

Yeah OK I get it. One of the things I learned with energy saving lamps is to look at lumens rather than power. Sounds as if the ‘100W’ are really lower power consumption but yield higher lumens? The key thing it they work and well by the sound of things. I’ve can’t find the lumens for the LED headlights on the 2 series, but they only draw about 11W however they are significantly brighter than any other lamp I’ve driven behind recently. The downside is the £2k per headlight if they break!!!

My old Mk1 Cavalier had 600W of lighting on the front - it could boil eyeballs at 1/4 mile. The alternator needed uprating though - and relays with heavier wiring triggered from the light switch & loom. Those were the days when such mods were easy to do No tarty connectors, computers, programming or nagging lights/bongs from the dash.

[Alan Gunn]

How about a picture not that i have the printer to do it.

[Leslie]

Sounds a great improvement reverse lights never that great on any car.

[X5Sport]

Could you stick the STL files etc up in Thingiverse or Prusa in case others want to try it - pretty please? Will they fit any other BMWs? Just wondering if the X6 would benefit although it has a day/night reversing camera - or seems to - and has naff all view behind.

Or of course charge a small amount to make them up for people

[Themoog2]

I had the same problem with mine. I tried led bulbs which were brighter but set off the dash warning. Then I lined the inside of the plastic with reflective foil. A bit better but not much.
Only after nabbing some aftermarket new rear lenses on fleece bay did they work better. Well, I say that but it's not been a full dark winter yet..