Last week a co-worker of mine told me my right headlight was out. I drove to the Acura dealer and left told me to turn on my lights and it worked for them at the time. They said they can't do anything since they are on. Well I took it back this Friday and showed them the problem. The light will come on and stay on for about a minute and then it goes off. You can turn the lights off and back on and it works for a while before it goes off. I left my car at the dealer for the day and had the tranny fluid and brake fluid changed and I was going to have the headlight fixed.

I bought the extended warranty at Carmax when I bought the car and it says it will not cover the light bulb and I understand that. The Acura dealer recommended that I replace the bulb, the ignitor and the converter (I think I have the names right of the parts, but I may be wrong). The Carmax wty people said on Friday they won't cover anything because they said the rest of the headlight stuff is connected to the bulb which means it will cost me $944 to replace eveything for my headlight. To shorten up the story a little . . . I am taking my car back to the dealer again on Monday because they ran out of time to fix it on Friday because of all the phone calls between me and Carmax and Acura and Carmax. I am still arguing with Carmax with what should be covered. I will pay for the bulb if it is bad because I know it is not covered, but the papers I signed doesn't excluded the rest of the headlight components. I will probably have to pay full price and then fight Carmax after the fact because I need my light fixed to drive at night so I won't get pulled over.

I don't really have a question here, but I wanted to vent and say how crappy the extended warranty is at Carmax. Thank you for your time.

 

if it is just the bulbs or the ballasts get a set from the internet, don't buy them from the dealer..

 

There's no way you should just replace everything at once!

Swap the lights with each other. Put the side that won't work right into the side that does and vice versa. See if the swapping of the bulbs causes the other light to do that. If it does, it's the bulb that is bad. If the same side still acts funny, it's the ballast.

 

Same thing happened to me, one of my lights went out.

So you have the light itself, the ignitor and the ballast. What I did was swap parts with the known good light and it turned out to be the ballast. I got one from acuraparts247.com for like $180. You'll have to take the font bumper off but it will save you some cash at the dealer.

 

get a good lawyer.

 

i doubt its the light if it comes on and stays on for a minute.

 

Quick update. I have both of my headlights working now. The warranty people said they will cover everything over the phone after arguing with them a little. The total cost was just shy of $700 and I am suppose to be reimbursed for about $550 (I will have to pay for the new bulb and a $75 deductible). I will send in the claim and see what happens. The only bad part is that my new new lights shines a little whiter than my older one. I may replace the other one just so they match. I will check it out when it gets darker so I can tell better. I may even take a couple pics to post on here.

 

you should always replace bulbs in pairs

 

Well I received the check in the mail today to reimburse me for about $530. Glad I argued with them a little since they didn't want to reimburse me for anything at first. End of story.

 

glad it turnout OK , score one for the consumer !!!

 

cool. thats how customers should be treated with warrentys especially since the warrentys are so dam expensive. if you did not get it fixed just yet i was going to suggest you just buy another whole hid kit for like $200. you can get them all over for the whole set for like $200ish. plus you can get different kelvin temps if you wanted. but glad everything worked out.