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      09-27-2020, 03:24 AM   #1
hugo_nz
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Drives: BMW iX Xdrive40 MSport
Join Date: Sep 2018
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

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2022 BMW IX  [0.00]
F12 Ambient Lighting Upgrade - Using OEM Optics

A couple of weeks ago there was a post about ambient lighting updates available to the F12/F13/F06. Long story short, without significant wiring and software updates there is no way to get multi-colour ambient lighting in our cars. This got me thinking about what options we had other than sticking aftermarket LED strips over the existing optics.

I found THESE on amazon. The thing that stuck out was that you could use the existing optics with the new light units.

This is the result:







Obviously the photos from my phone are enhanced so I did some manual adjustments to more closely simulate what it looks like in real life, and this is the result:



The result is not crazy bright or garish at all. I attached the supplied LED drivers to the factory optic strips. Running the connecting wires into the car was a wee bit of a challenge since there is no wire tunnel through the door harness. I overcame this by running them out the bottom of the door, under the rocker panel covers, illuminate sill plate and up into the car under the weather seal. Pretty clean, invisible install.

I added footwell lighting front and back using the supplied fibre optic cables. The optics are hidden under the trim panels and the rear seat bench so they are not directly visible.

Pretty happy with the result. Took a fair few hours to do but I did remove the seats to properly hide the fibre optic cables for the the footwell lighting. The cables are all routed to the armrest storage. The setup for the app used to change the colours was seamless and works as expected.

Last edited by hugo_nz; 09-29-2020 at 12:26 PM..
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