Anyone had any experience w the Spec-D or similar HID headlights? Looking to upgrade my halogens in my 05 R53. Gonna be an expensive endeavor to swap the factory Xenons out of my 06.
Trouble with converting halogen housing to HID is they were not designed to use an HID light source. You will have hot spots & an uncontrolled beam pattern. They will be brighter, but you'll be blinding oncoming traffic. As Mark said try & source some oem lights from a recycler. Here's a good place to start. Car-Part.com--Used Auto Parts Market
He has a set of HIDs to swap between cars. But I think the wiring may be an issue. I have a set of these DDM Tuning 35W and 55W HID Kits on order for Julie's car. I'll let you know how they turn out.
The key is to NEVER drive a car with better lights at night. As long as you don't know how great modern lights are you don't really notice how bad the old ones are.
If you want to put HID on your MINI you should really buy a set of used OEM housings and then order a set of 4300K or 5k bulbs that fit the OEM projectors. Never put HID's in halogen lamp housings they will not project the light correctly and blind everyone. Also do not install bulbs over 6K (8k - 12K) or they will look ghetto blue or purple.
A lot of people I know have swapped to LEDs with decent success. From what I gather they are not as bright as HID, but are brighter than most halogens. They seem to use the reflective housings decently enough to not be a nuisance. https://www.lifetimeledlights.com/products/category/headlights