headlight ballast

[aqua0]

hi all,

Occasional flickering headlight which throws up a warning. Turn lights off and back on, warning disappears until the next time. Sometimes many journeys apart, other times it can happen repeatedly on the same journey.

It's been in with Mike and he's struggling to figure it out with it being an intermittent fault, and I've never managed to get it in to him when the fault is active

Having managed to get a replacement ballast (which is what I'm assuming it must be given that nothing loose or obvious has been found, and the bulb works) I was planning on swapping it out just to either confirm that's what it is, or rule it out.

Where's the ballast located, and what's the easiest way to get at it? Is this a bumper off job? I'm too old with fat hands to be fighting through the wheel arch access.

 

[paddy wright]

It’s on the bottom of the light. Number off and headlight out, easy enough job. Then it’s simply plugs in.

 

[paddy wright]

. It’s on the bottom of the light. Number off and headlight out, easy enough job. Then it’s simply plugs in.

 

[aqua0]

@paddy - by 'number off' I assume you mean bumper?

 

[paddy wright]

@paddy - by 'number off' I assume you mean bumper?

Yes sorry- silly auto correct. Good how to for removal here https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1071

 

[kis]

It can often be a process of elimination. If you swap the ballast and still have the issue, you know it’s the igniter or bulb.

Be interesting to know what the problem is… keep us posted. I would have thought ballast and igniter would either work or not. So my first go-to would be to swap the bulb.

 

[chanlon1]

I renewed an igniter recently. Sometimes my full beam worked, sometimes didn’t. Sometime the dipped beam, sometimes didn’t.
When I removed the igniter and took a look inside you could see burn marks. Something had caused a problem that meant the bulb had a tendency to fail sometimes.
I bought a new igniter off Eurowagensltd1 on eBay for £66 and the problems have gone away.

 

[kis]

Glad you sorted it!

Always worth having spares… I’ve personally collected lots of strategic spares for mine :lol: :rofl:

 

[horseless_carriage]

Before buying and swapping components you might want to take a look at the wiring inside the headlight. A while back I had some issues with an intermittent high beam which was caused by one of the wires rubbing against some of the metal in the headlight and shorting out periodically. The wire routing and strain relief inside the headlight is pretty sub par.