I have a facelift V50 and left the factory projectors in place. A post I put up in Sept 21 (original thread
here) on the headlamp issue and how I went about solving it....
On my previous S40 I changed the projector units for new coupled with Osram Nightbreaker Plus. It made a difference for sure.
On the facelift V50 I tried to access the appropriate bolts to remove the projectors and found it way harder so I went down the LED route. Yes, I know it's not legal but here's my experience.
I replaced the H7 halogen bulbs with ones specifically designed for Projector H7 housings link
here.
The bulbs must be installed with the LEDs pointing downwards looking like this from the front ^
The bulbs come with no instructions which doesn't help but to install the mounting ring pulls off the H7 bulb and you mount that first to the projector. The LED bulb then pushes into the mounting ring at the rotation angle you choose. As mentioned the LEDs should point downwards.
I have switched the beam flattening lever usually used for driving abroad on both sides as all LED and Xenon systems I've encountered have a flat beam
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rather than the usual Halogen beam
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There is no dazzling other drivers and the car passed an MOT without issue. The LEDs I bought were the only ones I could find that were both designed for projector units and compact enough to fit into the V50 lamp unit. The heat created seems to be low enough not to cause me concern and the built-in CANBUS error cancelling works well. The error cancelling developed a fault after 9 months but ABD happily swapped them under warranty.
Ultimately the V50 headlamps are now usable, probably better than the S40 with replacement projectors and upgrade halogen bulbs. They aren't quite as good as the OEM LED units on my previous 3 series but the huge advantage over any halogen solution is that I'm not replacing a bulb every 3-6 months. That's about all I used to get out of halogen bulbs given they were on all the time.
I resisted the lure of LEDs for a long time due to the legality issues and the poor quality of many earlier units. At £70 I've no regrets for solving the problem.
Cabling wise, there was sufficient room in the units as there's very little bulky cabling with these LEDs. The CANBUS unit in the connector cable is accommodated easily in the housing.
I'm very happy with the lights in wet and rainy conditions. I've driven the length of the UK in all sorts of conditions and they are certainly an improvement over the original halogens or upgrade halogen bulbs.