from my understanding, you can't just buy a whole new HID kit for our cars, thats rom suggested to find one at the junkyard. I already made my appointment today at the dealership to get my headlights and grounding fixed under the TSB. Tony was able to give me the document for the TSB and after I read it, I saw that I was experiencing the exact same symptoms on it.

 

Just a recommendation, but if you take your car into the Lexus dealership with any problem like this, make sure you put the stock bulbs back in or they will try to blame you for it and charge you $2000 to replace the entire assembly. I told them to F off and had an independent fix it for $150. There was a short in the wiring harness of mine.

 

yeah, i am not sure if you can get just the ballast from dealership. and if you go to junk yard and try to get just the ballast, they probably make you get the headlight as well

 

so I changed my low beams back to factory tonight since im going to bring it into the dealership wednesday. I started my car and now both sides are working fine. I have not driven the car around yet to see if the problem still persists though. When I pulled out the aftermarket bulb from the problematic side (driver side), I noticed a brown burn mark in the middle of the bulb. Could this have been the issue? Should I cancel my appointment for Wednesday? Here is a pic.. maybe yall could tell if it is a burn out or not.. What do you think?

 

for the people that are having this problem, are you swapping your bulbs first to make sure its not the bulb? seems like not many people are trying this.

 

Whats that TSB? Any link? Or document available?

Yeah, that one seems more likely for me as well. Hopefully by Thursday I shall have news.

 

The yellow solids inside the bulb is halide salts, every HID bulb contains a small amount of it. That brown one on the right looks pretty burned, looks like what happens with a weak ballast causes the bulb to flicker.

 

So do you think it is an issue with the ballast or was it the bulbs? I know that some low grade aftermarket bulbs could do that to you. I personally bought ebay bulbs before and one side died after a month or so. The ones I pulled out of my car aren't brand name bulbs. I actually cancelled my appointment because after I put the factory bulbs in, the issue went away. Im thinking I should wait until a problem like this arises again, and then take it in to the dealership.

 

Some aftermarket bulbs are not fully compatible with certain ballasts. Sometimes they cause the bulb to not fully ignite and micro flicker which kills the bulb/ballast in a hurry. I work at Nissan and some of the 350Z customers were having a similar problem with the cheap ebay HID replacement bulbs with factory ballasts. Possibly because power input requirements are different then factory originals. The aftermarket ones are typically used with higher power aftermarket ballasts and ignitors so maybe thats where the problem spawns from.

 

Does anyone have the TSB # for this issue?

 

bump for tsb # pls.

 

where what i found. tsb number is in bold

SB0047-08 JUL 08 Lighting - HID Headlamp Diagnostic Tips

 

This happened to me with my cheap ebay set. Switched to Garax and never had a problem since.

 

That looks like its going very soon, our bulbs don't last more then 50k miles. 99.9% having problem with they're headlights need to change they're bulbs. I had the same exact problem, here in new york every third person with a GS has one light working one not. Its a very COMMON problem. Change you're bulb, go on ebay for cheap replacements oems.

 

The bulb on the right actually already burnt out on me. I switched back to the OEMs and now everything is all good.. I ordered a pair of 6k garax from CLT.. based on what everyone is saying, these are the way to go for an after market set. I'm pretty sure the previous bulbs that were in the car were from from eBay since the package had some unknown brand name..