Mini Cooper LED Headlight Teardown

Dang, this one even bigger 18*14*11cm. Made by Valeo.

This LED projector is dual beam, using force convection aka fan to removing heat from its emitter/heatsink.
Build quality, especially plastic for mounting bracket have a “cheap” feels unlike BMW 2 series.

Starting to remove each parts. Same as BMW, use stupid “technology” with ALL BLACK color for cable, WHY ?!
Those big bowl is serve for High Beam.

You can see emitter after removing the bowl. Using flex cable as connection from main connector to emitter.

Removing further, we can see double bowl serve as Low Beam.

Here’s a closer look those emitter. it’s reminds me Oslon Black Flat construction, but after seeing its die i’m pretty sure its Nichia style as I usually seen at Japanese cars.
Probably its a custom package, because no other marking beside Valeo bla…bla…bla…
its 4 row emitter in series configuration and when we look at Nichia website, it’s “match” with this NC4W121AT in term of die dimension.
The other component near emitter just an Capacitor and Thermistor.

This is flex cable wiring, just beware when you tried to feed this emitter using an constant current led driver since it have a common cathode topology.
make sure your driver is having “Ground Reference” at Cathode output.

Fan, Made by Panasonic. Its rated 13.5VDC @ 0.07A, it draw about 60mA @ 13.5VDC when I try to feed it with my bench supply. Using different COLOR for CABLE for each input/ouput, Thank you Japanese Engineer !!!

While the fan is running, I try to measure “tachometer” and got about 167Hz output ( I forgot to change 10x probe setting at my Scope).

Since this led projector came without driver, i did a simple test as usual. Set my Bench Supply to Constant Current 0.8A output .I think its safe point to start, since in datasheet its have 1A recomended drive current.
Run it with 27 deg Celcius Ambient Temperature, and got temperature about 44 deg celcius after 1 hour. With my poor calculation I think its safe to drive this emitter 1A for eternity 🙂

Move to its beam shoot. Sorry for flipped image.
Drive it with 1A which about 29 Watt for Low Beam and 15 Watt for High Beam.

Low Beam, Right side emitter.

Low Beam, Left side emitter.

Low Beam, all together.

High Beam have a crazy blue color shift.

I’m still using a fix camera setting, so you can compared these output to BMW 2 series directly.
And judge by yourself which one is better.
Thank’s to Irvan Fatwa Negara for lend me this led projector.