bruistopher

I'm having a problem with my HIDs. I have 99 Acura TL. The problem I'm having is when I'm driving and I make a hard right or left my driver side low beam goes out or if I hit a bump in the road the driver side low beam goes out. The passenger side works perfectly.

So what I do is. I turn the headlights off and then turn them back on and the driver side low beam begins to work again. It will flick off 3 times and after I turn the headlight off and on 3 times the driver side headlight works and doesn't go off again.

It's worse when it's raining. If the drivers side goes out and I flick it off and turn them on. Both headlights refuse to come on. I have to flick them off and on 3 times for them to come back on and then there good for the rest of the ride. This situation only happens in rain.

What could be the problem? The HID bulbs, the headlights themselves, the fuses or relays, or bad wiring, or the ballasts and igniters?

I'm using Excelerate bulbs and stock OEM ballasts and igniters.

victus1

You will need to remove the ballasts and the bulbs from their housings to troubleshoot this problem. Once removed, hook up each ballast+ignitor with a bulb directly to the battery with small jumper wires. Then tap on the ballast or the bulb base to create a "shock" condition, like going over a bump. Try it with the other bulb....see what happens.

01tl4tl

here is the simple answer--its time to replace the ballast and ignitor
Do you get moisture inside the headlight housings? that kills the ballast system

forget oe,,see www.hidextra.com one of our sponsors
they sell the entire setup --with bulbs-- for only 59 us dollars!
or buy just 2 ballast and 2 capacitor/ignitor cables and use the bulbs you have

I would order it as the `kit` and have a spare set of bulbs on hand
may save your road trip,,or a fellow ziners weekend,, by having spares!

bruistopher

01tl4tl,

Is the HIDExtra.com kit plug and play with the harness already on the vehicle? I don't see any moisture in the headlight housing itself. How can moisture get in away? Why is that if I switch of the headlights 3 times off and on and after that the bulbs are lit for the rest of the ride. It's only when first starting them up is when the problem exists.

01tl4tl

the hidextra kit needs you to cut the OE connector off behind the headlight and splice 2 wires, or add a connector to car end of the wire- to the 2 leads from the new ballast (which comes with a spade connector on the wires but not the other half for car side,,parts stores carry them

Other than that, its p&p ,,your headlight switch and stock fuse/relay operate them like normal

the multi flicking issue: my belief,, having seen inside a bad ballast with electronics corroded:
is the voltage isnt enough to fully ignite the gas in the bulb
So it goes back off
flicking the switch causes a voltage spike/jump every time, the ballast and capacitor work together to cause a brief 20,000! volts to ignite the gas
then it runs on reduced power,,,
hence the `Danger high voltage`- `do not touch!` warning sticker on light housing

a few `hot shots` get the bulbs to be fully lit
then faulty power signal from ballast cant supply operating power and causes it to go off again while driving

If someone hit you with a Tazer 3 times in a row, you would probably get to work too!!

The night I had BOTH lights fail on the freeway and flicking wasnt helping,,scary~
next day ordered the kit,,
had put up with the prob for months thinking it was hard to fix,,
but easy install was the real world~

Moisture gets past a weak seal for lens to housing,,large number of complaints and a diy on the prob and fix exist here.
I bought new blacked out housings when it happened on my 01

Car washes are hard on it too--pressure water gets past seal.
On the bottem of housing is a wire access/drip hole just for this prob
but moisture eats the electronics of ballast,, thats sitting under that hole!
it also kills the capacitor/ignitor unit

the kit solved the problem 100% and gave back an amount of light I cant believe!
low power thru system can make the best bulbs run dim

suggest 5000k bulbs and no higher,,stock was 4300,,5 has more blue but still tons of white
I had kaixen 6000s for 4 years and thought they were great, till swap to 5s,,
which win hands down for `seeing the road` with

totaledTL

See https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...llast+inverter

bruistopher

Thanks for the replies guys. My project will be to take the HID system out the car and see how it works or how it's working in the car.

Today I experimented with the car. I went to work today and as I said before in my OP. I would turn corners quickly or sharp and the driver side HID would go out. Well this morning I'm driving and as I approached the turns, I turned normally or slow and then proceeded and noticed the driver side HID stayed on. I even had the HIDs on while going home today after work and did the same driving into and coming out of corners like I did this morning and the results were the same.

So my question is, why does the driver side HID, go out when I make a fast sharp left or right turn but when I come into the turn slow and normal the driver side HID stays on. And I also went over several bumps in the road today and the lights remained on.

This is odd and weird...

01tl4tl

thats just how it is
You can keep screwing around or spend 60 bucks and fix the problem
once and for all

Mine was doing all the strange things as it failed, one light go out, next time the other..or the same, sometimes fail during turn or bump, others going down smooth road
Could be 30 minutes into drive, or 3

Once the elctronics inside the ballast and capacitor/ignitor get wet- they rust
Then nothing gets the correct signal and you have problems

benny-r

My 2000 Acura TL has a similar problem too, except my HID's go out out of no where, for example I start the car and sometimes before I back out the HID's go out and lights go light purple and then the driver side light goes completely out

I love my TL, but I hate this problem

victus1

This is called "extreme" color-shifting and is normal when the HID bulb is at the end of its life. All you need are new bulbs. HIDs will continue to color-shift towards the violet end of the spectrum during their service life, and their brightness will diminish by half by the end of their life. You will notice a big difference with new bulbs.

01tl4tl

you may have both problems
DO you get moisture inside the headlight lens?

even if not, I would spend 60 dollars (before discount) on a decent kit from hidextra.com, that comes with good quality bulbs too!!
These parts do wear out,,our cars are 10 years old....

for the effort to pop the plastic nose off (makes bulb change easy by removing housing) you can install the entire kit and have the car back in service in a few hours

I agree pink/purple is the age death warning,,but usually keep running once ignited
When it wont come on at all,,,,definetly dead