HID failed

[SilverBuffalo]

Coming home from a days ride, it was late, dark with light rain when I got of the interstate,
I had all of my forward lights on, PIAA's, Motolights and HID low.
another two miles down a city street I stopped in the left turn lane
and "noticed" my lights "changed" two blocks and I was home,
no low beam.

The next day I checked the fuse (it's wired direct, no relay) and confirmed it was getting power,
not much else to do for troubleshooting,
switched low beam back to the stock bulb
(less than 10 minutes using Joes method of reaching up and under)

Then I got online and ordered another unit from CQ,
a hundred bucks and two days later it's in my mailbox. (great service)

So I swap components around, ballast, igniter and bulb,
confirmed it's the bulb that's bad, that would not have been my first (or second) guess.

The way mine is setup the bulb lights up twice at every start up,
don't know if that contributed to it's short life? (2 1/2 years)

But then, when I removed the unit from my totaled 2002 I was marveled that it still worked
considering the Elk shattered the headlight lens.

Has anybody else had to replace an HID bulb?

[sheldan2]

not yet, but almost 2 yrs old

[mwnahas]

The're rated around 2 or 3 thousand hours. How many hours do you think you had on it?

[dshealey]

--------------------------------------
Has anybody else had to replace an HID bulb?

Yes, two of them. One on the LT, one in a car. On both, the bulb had turned black in the arc chamber. I think that is probably a sign that the hermetic seal around one of the wires in the glass failed enough to let
oxygen in, or the Xenon gas out. The car one was pretty old, the LT one was less than a year old. Like anything else electrical, there are occasional early failures.