Headlight Problem - looking for advice/ideas

D

discopete88

Member
 Den Helder
Good Evening,

The passenger side headlight on my 2006 Z4M roadster has stopped working. It doesn't come on at all at the moment. Now, as the drivers side is working fine I have so far worked out that neither the bulb or the ballast seem to be the problem through a process of elimination and swapping the parts from one side to the other. Although, it was a bit of a long shot I decided to check the fuses out they seem to be fine as well.

Can anyone please advise where the problem may lie?

Also, as a side note, my car had some repairs done recently after somebody drove into the back of me during stop start traffic on the M6. The car went into a repair garage near Southampton which seemed to only have Aston Martins, Jags and Land Rovers in, so I was pretty confident that they would do a good job, which they did. The interesting thing is that when I went to pick the car up a week later the owner came out and made a point of telling me that a lot of his other customers and the guys who worked for him were very interested in the car, which was nice! Just thought you all might find that interesting.

Anyway, like I said, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

Pete
 
Just one question at this stage. Did you remove the bumper, lights off and take the ballast off the base of the lights to then swap them side to side?

There are 3 key components of bulb, ballast and igniter that need the side to side swap over.
 
Apologies, I meant igniter, not ballast (which I had forgotten about). Guess I'll need to take the bumper off and swap the ballasts over in order to eliminate that.

Thank you very much for getting back to me though. I shall update this post once I've done further investigation (probably during the week).

Pete
 
Have you had any misting? If condensation gets in the light it puddles in the base and drains into the ballast- 9 times out of 10 killing it. :headbang: luckily they are cheap on eBay!
 
No, I actually have some misting in the other headlight. I'm using the hairdryer method :headbang: until I find out why it's misting or source a new headlight.
 
discopete88 said:
No, I actually have some misting in the other headlight. I'm using the hairdryer method :headbang: until I find out why it's misting or source a new headlight.
Click to expand...
Best way to get rid of misting (if cars not a DD) is to take the headlight into the house for a few days till its fully dry.
 
discopete88 said:
Apologies, I meant igniter, not ballast (which I had forgotten about). Guess I'll need to take the bumper off and swap the ballasts over in order to eliminate that.

Thank you very much for getting back to me though. I shall update this post once I've done further investigation (probably during the week).

Pete
Click to expand...

The ballast is the most likely cause. Make sure you photograph and mark the headlight position so you realign correctly.
Hope that fixes it for you and you can just order a replacement part.
 
If it is the ballast buy second hand from eBay- much cheaper and loads on there as they are a part used in various car brands not BMW specific.
 
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