Xoutpost.com - Factory low beam HID issue

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- - Factory low beam HID issue (https://xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/x5-e53-forum/86057-factory-low-beam-hid-issue.html)

Guys I just dealt with this on my pre-facelift with Hella Gen III ballasts a few months ago.

The OEM Hella ballasts are very sensitive to aftermarket bulbs, I bought a set of aftermarket Morimoto bulbs to replace my colorshifted Philips bulbs, and the Morimotos would consistently fail to fire up on startup, at least on one side and sometimes both. I swapped bulbs side to side, etc, same problems.

I bought a NEW Genuine set of Philips 85122 bulbs, and everything works perfectly. It's the fact that you're using aftermarket bulbs with the OEM ballasts in my opinion. Put a genuine Philips or Osram bulb in, and you won't have that problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielsan (Post 959803)

A factory bmw xenon setup has the ballast mounted underneath the headlight and the igniter [is small silver squarish shape] is attached to the back of the globe, the igniter and ballast are attached by a thin cable.

An after market setup has the ballast and igniter in the one package and a thick cable from it to the back of the bulb.

Swapping the ballast/igniters around is no more dangerous than a globe.

Not quite. Gen 3 Hellas (the ballasts used in pre-facelift X's) have their igniter integrated into the body of the ballast. What you are describing are the gen4 Hellas, that were only used on facelift (04+) models.

To the OP, where did you get the bulbs? If it was from eBay, or any place of the sort, I'd suspect they are indeed Phillips knock-offs. Something like 80% of all "Phillips" d2s bulbs found on fleabay are not legitimate.

Older ballasts, and aftermarket bulbs has long been known to cause issues....they just don't seem to like each other.