LEDs - What It Takes To Be Road Legal?

A comment on our blog got us thinking. Can you have the updated look of LED’s and it be road legal? What does it take?

Well, the first thing you need is a car that, at some point in its life, has been “facelifted” with some LED lights. If a manufacturer has designed and fitted LED lights to a production car in the EU 

then they have passed all the stringent tests and have been “E” marked.

It just so happens that I own an which was later facelifted with rear brake, tail and indicator LEDs.

The next step is to source these lights. Brand new from BMW these lights are over £400. There are a lot of aftermarket copies for less but these run the risk of not being ECE 

approved (not road legal)  also. I therefore, opted for a second-hand set of genuine BMW ones. In total with wiring adaptors and postage this cost me around £200, for some lights! But they 

are road legal.

I fitted them myself so there was no labour costs involved but it’s something to bear in mind if you’re not so willing to remove and replace the lights.

The last hurdle is compatibility and this will differ from car to car. With the cars CANbus system, it detects the LEDs as a fault and causes them to flicker and pulse. Without remedy, this results

in the lights still not being road legal. 

For me, this was less about them being road legal, and more about it facelifting the car. However all this vs just changing the bulb? With the LUXFIGHTER LEDs you can achieve very similar

 results in just a few seconds…..