terror83

I have a 2004 ES330 with the OEM HID’s. I parked in front of my garage tonight and I noticed the driver side headlight has a nice sharp cutoff line but the passenger side doesn’t, it’s distorted. The headlights are OEM and have never been replaced and the lenses are nice and clear too. Any ideas as to why the passenger side doesn’t have the same sharp cutoff as the driver side?

crwys

Probably not the response you are looking for but I have a similar issue after doing a retro fit on my 99 headlights. Passenger side was nice and crisp, drivers side was not and noticeably not as bright. The headlight looks clean and clear, I did a restoration kit anyways, no improvement.
Pulled a headlight from the wrecking yard and that fixed the problem slightly.
I then tried out the headlights with the lenses removed and they both performed the same so the problem definitely lies within the lenses for some reason. I've been looking into replacing my plastic lenses with a glass cover if possible.

XenonDepot

iTrader: (11)

While it's far more likely that your passenger side headlight/housing/etc is messed up somehow, you could try swapping the two Bulbs to see if you possibly have a Bulb issue of some sort. If it's a screwed up bulb somehow causing this problem for you, at least that's a less pricey fix, and you can find D2R HID Bulbs in lots of places.

~Robert

terror83

Ahh ok, makes sense. I wonder if the slightest scratches on the lens can cause such a thing? Not saying my lenses are beat, but you know the very minor swirls that happen to plastic over time, etc. Looks like I'll tough it out for now since I don't want to deal with trying to swap the healight/lens out.

terror83

The bulbs are brand new authentic Philips 85126 D2R bulbs. I didn't try swapping them around when I was done since it's kind of a pain to get to the bulbs on this car and I didn't think it'd be an issue since I replaced both bulbs at the same time. It's not super distorted/crazy glare, but my OCD doesn't like it, haha.

XenonDepot

iTrader: (11)

Another step we can recommend is making sure the light is properly seated in the housing. I've seen enough times where it wasn't and caused the pattern or light output to be off.

Danny

terror83

That makes sense. I'll have to double check that.

Btw, do you guys offer an H3 bulb that'll match the Philips 4300k output? And the Philips 4300k will color shift after X amount of hours, correct?

XenonDepot

iTrader: (11)

We don't have anything that would be a perfect match but here are the H3 halogen bulbs we have. As for the color shift, yes they can color shift up to 4700K after about 100 hours of usage.

Danny

crwys

Hey XenonDepot, not sure if you know the answer but im not sure who to ask about this... Do you know if its possible to buy the headlight lens new by it self installs of the whole headlight assembly? Im seeing new headlight assemblies costing about $200 for 97-00

XenonDepot

iTrader: (11)

If I understand correctly, you want to get the lens of the headlights instead of the whole headlight housing? If so, not sure if I've ever seen that before. Additionally, it would involve a bit of work to remove the current one and install a new lens.

Danny

terror83

So I'm having another issue;

I replaced both bulbs last Wednesday with authentic Philips 4300k bulbs. Thursday, they worked fine but when I was driving home from work Friday night, the passenger side turned off. I turned the lights off and back on and it turned back on. I turned the lights off, waited a few seconds, turned them back on and the passenger side didn't turn on. I turned them off and back on and it turned on again and I left them on for about 10mins and they stayed on. I swapped the passenger side bulb with one of my old Philips bulbs and it turned on and warmed up fine. I put the 4300k bulb back in and now it's working fine but I noticed it doesn't warm up like it used to. Before I had this issue, both new Philips 4300k bulbs warmed up fine and went through the color range until fully warmed up. Now, the passenger side seems to warm up a lot faster than it should. Any ideas on what it could be?

I never had this issue or any issue with the old Philips bulbs but I decided to replace them since they were old and had turned blue.