Yes, I have a Gen I 2002 V8 LSE. 124k miles. (I need to take some pics, as she's in excellent condition still. Had her since 12/2002. Drove her off the lot with 5 miles on the odometer).
Anyways..I just finished the project. I'll try to get pics later, but if I didnt post this now, I'd forget or put it off indefinitely. It's really a simple project.
As mentioned earlier, I opted for these :
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/we...2044____?cm_mmc=aff-_-cj-_-3641530-_-10720525
I also purchased these from radio shack:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062558&CAWELAID=107592761
I REALLY didnt want to have to drop the entire headliner to get to the backside of the map light assembly, so I took a few easy shortcuts.
-Drop the front of the headliner a bit so that you can have some room above the headliner to run your LED wires. To do this, use a flathead to pop off the decorative covers on your front side grabhandles and the triangular decorative covers over the outer mounting points for both of the sunvisors. Remove the torx screws holding the grab handles and the sunvisor mounts. (inner mount for the visors have no decorative cover over the single torx screw). Carefully let the sunvisors drop down, doing your best to not let them dangle solely by the electrical wires that power the lighted mirrors in the sun visors. Using a flathead (or your fingers), pull back the A pillar covers. They are attached to the car via metal clips and they simply unclip when you pull back.
- I decided to mount my two LED's in the center of the maplight, exactly halfway between the passenger side and drivers side edges of the domelight with one about 1/8 to 1/4 inch from the front edge of the maplight and the other about 1/8 to 1/4 inch from the rear edge of the maplight. in other words, one behind the other. I started off with a very tiny drill bit then gradually worked my way up (the gradual method helps to prevent cracking) to a 1/4 inch hole.
- the LED's I purchased fit perfectly/snap perfectly into the LED Holders mentioned above. However..the perfect fit means a small portion of the rounded front end of the LED sits outside of the LED holder, which means that portion of the LED will be exposed a bit when mounted in the maplight. Not good, as the LED is BRIGHT and having it exposed makes them SUPER visible. Like two SUPER BRIGHT Green little domes sticking out from the maplight. In addition, when powered on, those LED's then light up the entire clear domelight lens itself in a green tint. Looks VERY rice. So, following BMW's lead (if you notice, their led's are recessed back up inside the LED holder), I placed the LED inside the holder, but did not push it all the way forward until it clicked into place. Once the LED was a bit less than halfway into the holder, I grabbed my tube of RTV black silicone, and placed a neat bead of it around the circumference of the LED holder so that the entire area of the LED including the splits/seams in the LED holder were covered. (Covering it all ensures that the LED sticks well/stays inside the LED housing and ensures that no stray LED light goes inside the lens/lights up the lens. You only want the light to cast itself gently down onto the actual console. )Then I let it cure for about 2 hours.
-I then inserted the wire leads from the LED's up into the drilled holes and inserted the LED/LED Housings carefully into the drilled holes. It was snug enough to easily stay in the holes without falling out. Since the headliner was dropped down in front, I was able to easily grab the LED wires from the topside and snake it across the front of the headliner over to the drivers side outside mount of the sun visor. I then routed the LED wires down into the triangular mount hole into the passenger compartment where I was able to then splice into the two wires that power the drivers side visor mirror. Positive was a green/brown wire and negative was the black wire. *Note: The passenger side mirror had two black wires. I dont know which of those black wires were positive/negative, nor did I test.
-Re-assembled it all.
With this wiring setup, the LED's are illuminated all the time. (Although the circuit that powers the sunvisor mirrors is one of those delayed hot's, where the power is cut after about 10 or 15 minutes after you exit the car..so yes, the LED's shut off after that timeframe) I may go back in later and change the wiring to tap into the dashboard wheel that controls the brightness of the dash lights/only turns the LED's on when the parking or headlights are on. I have not had a chance to test them out yet, but based on some preliminary testing last night, these may be brighter than I want/much brighter than the subtleness of the BMW orange mood lights. These LED's seem to be VERY bright.
I'll try to get some pics and report back later after I checked them out tonight.
