Fog Light Repair / Bulb Replacement

Fog Light Repair / Bulb Replacement E90, 330i BMW

I have to say I am very impressed with how long the Bulbs in my Car have lasted, my car is 12 years old and I've only had to replace 3 bulbs so far.

I personally think it's German Engineering at it's best.  I've owned other cars and usually with in 1 to 2 years a bulb goes out.  It's something that happens regularly to other cars, not to my car.

As you can probably guess by now, we are going to talk today about replacing the Fog Light, Bulb.

My bulb went out when I hit something on the Freeway.  I don't think you can tell but the entire Fog light Housing is broken, it's pushed in a bit in the picture above.  When the Fog light got it, it immediately took out the bulb, I got the "Ding Ding Ding" associated with something wrong, you know what I am talking about... and I saw that a bulb was out on the display it showed a fog light symbol.  Honestly I thought it was the main headlight initially, that would have been expensive, so I am happy it wasn't that.

It's actually not that difficult to replace, but it does require a little bit of work, just follow along.

Tools: You will need an 8mm socket to remove 4 screws below and to the side of the where the bulb is located.  Just enough to have access to the bulb.

Access: The idea is to make enough room to be able to twist off the bulb so that it can be replaced.  I ended up removing 3 screws from the bottom of where you see in the picture below, and 1 screw in the fender.  Again, enough room to access the bulb.

Special Note: The Harness attached to the bulb was not long enough to twist off the bulb, as I twisted the bulb initially, it didn't want to rotate enough to be able to remove the bulb, so I looked at the wire Harness closely and I noticed that the wire harness is clipped onto the bulb housing on the left side, I undid the clip and that gave me about 2 inches of length more to be able to twist off the bulb off.  I was struggling for a good 3 minutes before I realized I could do that.

Only Enough clearance for me to reach inside to remove the bulb,
That is all you need.

Bulb to twist off

Bulb Replacement:  The Bulb I ended up getting is an Sylvania H11, it was a perfect fit. The Original Bulb was a Philips H11, in case you were wondering.

Amazon link at the bottom of article...

Bulb Close ups:  This is what the bulb looks like when you take it out from the Housing.

Bulb Clip:  To remove the bulb from the Wire Harness you will need to undo 2 clips on the side of the Harness:  You have to undo them both at the same time for the bulb to pop out of the wire harness.

Undo both sides of the clips to remove bulb.

Note:  The Bulb only goes in one way. The bulb has a keyed part that prevent it from being installed backward, in the wrong polarity.

Note the key on the right side

Replacement Bulb:

Jacking up the Car:  I did have to jack the car up to get access to the bottom of the car, I guess I could of done it without Jacking up the car, but I have to say it was easier that way.

Bad Bulb:  I don't know if you can see it but the inside of the bulb is broken.

Wire inside the bulb is broken.

I was thinking of doing an LED upgrade, if I do that upgrade later, I'll post about it.

Thanks for Reading this far, have a wonderful day and I hope this was helpful to you.