Upgrading 6 pin pre-facelift OEM tail light to 7 pin facelift OEM tail light?

[Delmarco]

Is there a way I can upgrade my 6pin to 7pin and just get the OEM facelighted R/C/R clears?

Notice how the OEM R/C/R looks clean and best. All lights coordinate and work as should.






I was looking to upgrade my old e46 style tails to the newer style and went thru a disappointing spell with the R/C/R Depos (looks ultra bootleg on the inside) and the Eagle Eye "semi-LED" tails (the aftermarket technology for LED tails are not nearly as good as OEM-you got dim leds, missing leds, misaligned leds, and either a loss of the trunk lid light and loss of clear-white-light back up light or mis-coordination of non led type trunk lid light and led tail light).
See pics below for the grotesque details;

miscoordination of led tails and non-led trunk lid light of C/R Led Tail



loss of clear-white reverse light and instead the red trunk lid led light glows brighter on R/C/R Led Tail


also poor brightness distrubution of R/C/R Led tail before the comprehensive "resistor" fix





The Depo's R/C/R regular tail looks horrible on the backside


And some kits come with one less bulb on the bottom row which looks less bright and more bootleg,

whiles the OEM R/C/R tail comes with two bulbs on the bottom row.

[witeshark]

I see what you mean. IMO, the OEM's look the best, and work the best.

[drz]

I haven't seen a DIY for this, although I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Are you open to teh OEM pre-facelift clears?

I thought the LED clears from bimmian.com were good quality That is what I planned to get for my car even before I got the car. However, such expenses are on hold at the moment

Good luck, non-facelifted bud.

[Delmarco]

The LED clears vary depends on if you get RCR or CR style. And each style have their own short comings. So much so I decided against them and wait for the technology to improve. at E46fanatics a kid bought RCRs and found that some LED were not working and some were working too well (ie. brighter than the others) and the over all effect was dimmer than OEM since the CR led units are embedded deeper into the light whereas the OEM leds sits closer to the shell and are angled to give out greater brilliance. Plus some CR kits may not come with a interior trunk bulb.

Don't get me wrong led kits have been improving and Eagle Eye makes the better kits.
I just figure why spend $300 today and get a half-assed kit when I can wait a year or so and spend half as much and get a better kit.

So I looked at the Depo RCRs and found too many asthetic and quality deviation than I would have liked.

[Delmarco]

So the deal is you can easily splice up the wiring for the 6 pin to 7 pin convo and beat the lamp-out warnings, but the facelifted E46s have a slightly flatter shaped tail light housing so it won't even fit.

Someone at E46fan suggested that I just modify the trunk lid light aka the Euro Fog light so that way it functions as a normal driving light and a brake light. See pics below.