For anyone who is interested in having the full 35W xenon on a factory non-xenon MINI (minus the headlight washers etc.):
I purchased the "retrofit" xenon kit that MINI makes from ECS, installed them, and they worked except they flickered. I took them to the dealer to be coded, and after the coding was done they worked.
A year later, I saw the new spyder led headlights from ECS (https://www.ecstuning.com/News/MINI_...014/ES2863258/) and wanted to update the look of my MINI. I bought the xenon spyders from ECS. I then purchased the bmw ballasts off of ebay (# 63117356250) along with some Philips Osram 6000K Ultinon D1S XenStart HID XENON BULBS 85410WX 35W.
Plugged everything in and tada! Nothing worked but the turn signals!
The parts sat for about 6 months till I got the time to fool around with them to try and make it work. I'm surprised, as it took me less than 30 minutes to figure it out (I thought it'd be harder--or impossible, i.e. coding I can't do). I used a multimeter and found that the non-xenon stock headlight plug isn't a direct fit for the spyder xenon plug (guess that's not too surprising). But I only had to move one wire to make it work. Since the turn signals were working, I knew they were getting power and were grounded. It turns out the xenon headlights were not lined up with the ground for the stock halogen connectors. I cut the headlight ground wire, soldered it to the turn signal ground wire, plugged them into the harness, and they work
I then installed the factory retrofit led foglight kit from mini. Turns out I didn't have to tap into any of the new wires from the foglight kit to make the drls in the headlights work. I used the connectors included with the spyder headlights, but I put some liquid electric tape and a tie strap around them to ensure they stay dry and keep working--I didn't feel like soldering them. The only thing I have left to figure out is the high beam, but I believe MINIs just use a shutter to switch between high and low, and that is probably the one brown wire in the headlight that I didn't connect--will figure it out shortly when I have more time.
As you can see from the pics, everything works and I now have 35W osram xenons on my MINI that was halogen from the factory

 

Good write up, thanks for the info.

 

Thanks for the info and glad it all worked out, those look great.

 

Looks great!

 

Thanks!

 

Looks good....

 

I finally got around to wiring the high beams to make the lights fully functional. I am happy to report it is a piece of cake. I have attached a picture of the oem plug to the headlight from the car's side. The blue and white wire is 12+V, the brown wire is the ground, the smaller wires at the bottom are for the turn signal, and the yellow and blue wire is for the high beam. The yellow and blue wire gets connected to the brown wire from the headlight unit. The pins do not line up in the plug. If you know how to move the plugs pins around, you could do it that way, but I just ran an "easy tap" wire, bypassing the plug because it was easier. It took about 10 minutes total, including the time to find which wire went to which. This is an easy adaptation and now the high beams work. Again, this was a 2008S with stock halogen, now with 35W Philips xenon, DRL, and working high beams.

 

Thank you for this write up. This will be my winter project.

 

+1 I really like the output on the headlight with xenons and they looks great also.

 

How did you connect the bmw ballasts to your car? Could you show some pictures? Because I'm interested in buying the lights to but I need to know for sure how to attach my halogen "cables" to the bmw balast. Thanks in advance

 

Hello,
You need to buy the correct headlights, as there are two types. They make halogen and xenon and you will need the xenon unit to have the spot to mount the ballasts. They are available here:
https://www.ecstuning.com/News/MINI_...014/ES2863258/

As you can see in the attached picture, there is a spot on the bottom where the ballast plugs in. You will just need three screws to secure it. No other wiring is needed. The only wires that I changed are the ones I noted in previous posts above. (Also remember you will need the car coded to work, which I had the dealership do on the original "aftermarket" MINI 25W xenon lights). Hope that helps

 

Hello,
Many thanks for the reply It helped a lot, now I'm certain to buy them

 

Hello,
Could you tell me where you bought these Xenon Bulbs? And are they Bi-Xenon?
Thanks

 

Monaco23, can you tell us your experience with the 25w and the 35w since you had both? what is the mejor difference between the twos?

 

arviddumon:
The bulbs I bought were from here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Philips-HID-...dXq-lu&vxp=mtr
You need to make sure you buy them from an authorized reseller as there are many fake Philips bulbs out there. Also, you do not have to get 6000k, that is just the color I chose. It is slightly blue and I like it, but there are other color options for a d1s bulb. It depends what you want.
A Bi-xenon bulb has two bulbs within the light, or it can mean you use two separate lights, one for high beam and one for low. MINIs use neither of these. The bulb itself is not "bi-xenon" but it acts like a bi-xenon. MINIs use a shutter within the projector. When the shutter is down, it's low beam, when the shutter is up, it's high beam. So the bulb does work as a "bi-xenon" but it isn't a true bi-xenon bulb. If you look at previous posts, this is the last part that I figured out. The brown wire in the headlight is what activates the shutter in the headlight. When I wired that, as I posted previous, the high beams then worked.

sub3622:
The 25W MINI xenons are a definite improvement over the halogen. They allow you to see well and the color is white, 4300k I believe. The 35W are a noticeable improvement over the 25W. They are brighter, and because the headlight is different, the "cutoff" is different. The cutoff is cleaner on the 35W (very sharp, probably due to the projector lens) and it also is "euro style" meaning the light kind of goes like this: ____/ . It illuminates what's on your right side better. The other difference is that the 25W MINI headlights are not like the "real" xenons. There is no visible ballast attached to the headlight and the bulbs are kind of weird. Originally when I didn't have the 35W lights working I was going to take the internals out of the 25W and put it in the 35W headlight, but they are completely different and that won't work.
Overall, I'm very happy with the 35W, visibility is very good, and you also get the halo LEDS

 

Thanks for the input. Those halo leds at night are very bright on their own. Not enough to drive on of course, but pretty bright. I have the direct 35w factory bulb in the xenon to xenon kit and the throw and focus of the light are clear and bright with a good cutoff so you don't blind on-coming traffic. I did not have people flash me at all, like my headlight were too bright.