Now that I put in 35W HID low beams, I'm thinking of swapping the halogen accent lights in the hi beam housing. Anyone have any recommendations on how many SMD's would be good, and if they need to be those Error Free bulbs. I don't know if the X would throw an error code or if it's Can-Bus ?? Anyone come across this ? Thx !

Also did some more little mod's this weekend. Will post up once I have the pics

 

The X type doesn't even care about those lights so you can add LEDs and it wont throw any errors.

As for LEDs, I recommend going to your local Autozone, or other big brand car store and look for some small Sylvania 2825 LEDs. These are the brightest 2825 LEDs around (even with only 1SMD chip) and with a name like Sylvania they last for a loooong time.

 

myexcursion, like was said above, the running lights in the high beam lens are not monitored for current draw. So, even if you pull the bulb out, it will not throw up any error messages. I upgraded mine and I went a little bit further than other people in that I actually got my hands on some 285K MCD 10mm leds. I then spliced a resistor into the wiring inside the headlight to make the LED work. This happens to be just slightly dimmer than the factory 194 bulb that is in there from the factory.

With the aftermarket LED bulbs, I have personally seen a lot of problems with the SMD based bulbs (the ones that have the multiple little squares soldered to the face of a bulb base). The solder on these is minimal and even the slightest bit of corrosion of the solder will result in their failure. The ones pictured above are very similar to what I installed myself and mine have been going for over 6 years now with no issues. The problem I have noticed is most of the bulbs like the ones above do not distribute the light very well. So, you will get a very intense light when looking straight on, but you don't get a lot of light once you get away from looking straight on.

If you need to know more, let me know. I do a lot of playing with LEDs. I am currently in the process of making a bunch of custom LED fixtures for inside of my house.

 

A lot of good info - thanks guys!

I'd like to see how the sylvania's light up the area. Not sure if 1 LED is very bright though for the hig beam accent light area. Anyone have them in their X with a pic ?

Amazon and ebay have tons of SMD bulbs, but doesn't sound like they have very good track record.

 

Here is a picture of my car after the LED upgrade. Keep in mind that I have 6000K HIDs in my car too in both the low and fog lights.





Here is what the car looked like before the LEDs were put in.



If I remember right, the camera was set up with about the same exposure time. So, you can base the light output of the LEDs vs the halogen bulbs off of the first and third pictures.

 

Are the projectors from non HID headlights the same as OEM HID ones? Do they blind other drivers? I see lots of cars on the road that slap on aftermarket HID kits and they are never aligned and some blind the heck out of people.

 

carcster, the X-Type uses a projector style headlight system in both styles of headlights. So, putting HIDs into a non-HID housing will result in proper projection of light. I did this sort of thing with the wife's 2010 Ford Fusion (has the projector style headlight) and there is a definite line for the lights that you can see. The same is true of our X-Types.

 

A picture says a thousand words ! really clears it up. I put in 5000 HID lights in low beam last weekend, and since then the halogen accent lights are just itching me to go. I think I may end up trying the Sylvania's posted above by Acapiz. They are only 1 LED , but as an accent they may be just enough.

 

Myexcursion, keep in mind that my LED accent lights are technically considered 7000K lights. So, they are going to have a slight blue hue to them. This is going to be more noticeable with the 5000K HIDs as there is a bigger color difference than between my 6000K HIDs. Granted, they are going to be much closer than your halogen bulbs which are down in the 2500K range.