Research led me to the above – reviews saying they’re excellent quality and a step above the average aftermarket spotlight. I chose stainless steel over chrome (also available in black) for ease of looking after. Barely distinguishable from the chrome around grille, etc. They come with wiring kit to connect them into main beam (i.e. come on with main beam) but I was aware that this might be tricky with factory xenons: other MINI folk have struggled to find the switched power going to main beam on xenons but I decided I’d fit them and wire them up to front fogs temporarily rather than have them non-functional. It’s easy if you don’t have xenons as the separate high beam bulb wiring is very obvious.
Fitting spotlights: the supplied brackets attach to factory points behind grille and appear mega sturdy. Require cutting slots either side of grille so once fitted there’s no going back! Instructions from seller show where to make cuts but TBH I just figured it out myself – I made it harder for myself as wanted a super neat job with the holes as small as possible. Lamps attach to the brackets with a single bolt allowing aim adjustment up/down and side-to-side. You could stop now if you only wanted them for looks. TBH with how good the xenons are I don’t feel the need for extra light so it was all about cosmetics for me, but my OCD couldn’t cope with something non-functional on the car…
Wiring: the included kit comes with instructions too. Fused 12v wire from battery to relay, earth wire to relay, power wires from relay to spotlights, and the ‘remote’ wire to tell the relay when to send power to the spotlights. Ran spotlight wires along top edge of bumper secured out of sight. Drilled small hole and used tight fitting grommet to get power wire into battery box. Fed a wire down to passenger side front foglight to act as the ‘remote’ wire. Connected it all, installed fuse, switched them on and nothing. Checked wiring again with electrical tester and all was OK but the spotlights themselves weren’t earthed – they’re designed to earth through the mounting bracket but I guess them being painted/powdercoated makes that impossible, so I ran new earth cables for both. I’ve fed that back to the seller.
All now working perfectly and come on with front foglight switch. I might look more into finding the correct high beam wire to use to trigger them but I’ve probed a lot with the electrical tester already without success. Personally I love the look of them, think they’re very neat. For <£90 and a few hours of your own time they’re well worth it. Actual light output is OK, they’re quite focussed so guess they throw light further than high beam but I’ve not had a chance to test they properly yet.
I’ll update with proper photos of the install when I get a chance in daylight.
Any questions fire away and I’ll answer what I can.
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