Replacement Xenon bulbs

I replaced my xenon bulbs with Osram CBIs, and replaced the inner reflector bowls at the same time. This is probably not something you can normally do, but I found a guy in Poland (I think), selling remanufactured reflectors. I can dig out his details if you want? They do go cloudy over time.

After doing the swap, the difference was night and day. Much brighter and more even spread of light.
 
I'm into that, not too into the ball ache of pulling the bumper, lights, then splitting them to do get the projector out.

Only managed to get hold of one bulb from euros today, got the other on order. Replaced the poorer one of the two, before and after measurement saw triple the lux with the new bulb, looks really nice. It's dry tonight but I drove it on some unlit roads and there is a marked improvement, should be a touch better with the other bulb replaced too.
 
So these damn bulbs are continuing to be a problem for me. I ended up getting Lucas bulbs from ECP because they didn't have the Philips ones. That said, couple of weeks later the drivers side bulb started turning a pinkish yellow hue. I took it back and they replaced it for another one. Now not much longer than a week later, the same thing happened again.
So it looks like I either have a faulty ballast or I've had 2 faulty bulbs. Those of you that are more experienced with this kind of thing, which of these scenarios seems more likely?
 
No, just the drivers side. Tempted to swap the bulbs around but don't want to blow another one if it does turn out to be a ballast issue.
 
Clarkey said:
No, just the drivers side. Tempted to swap the bulbs around but don't want to blow another one if it does turn out to be a ballast issue.
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if it's one side then I can see the ballast being the issue.

get a multimeter on the ends and see if it's overpowering compared to the good side and burning the bulbs out.. wouldn't surprise me.
 
grudas said:
if it's one side then I can see the ballast being the issue.

get a multimeter on the ends and see if it's overpowering compared to the good side and burning the bulbs out.. wouldn't surprise me.
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Don't do this with a regular multimeter, you'll probably blow it up.

It looks like D4S bulbs don't have a built-in igniter. The only easy way to determine where the fault is, is by swapping ballasts/igniters. You could try the dead bulb on the other ballast but it's probably toast.
 
Howard said:
Don't do this with a regular multimeter, you'll probably blow it up.

It looks like D4S bulbs don't have a built-in igniter. The only easy way to determine where the fault is, is by swapping ballasts/igniters. You could try the dead bulb on the other ballast but it's probably toast.
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yeah good point.. they're probably over 1k volts
 
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