Dead Retro

[mitchigan]

Guys,
Can anyone help me out with why my retro's wont turn on? It's been cold (teens) here in Michigan the last 36 or so hours, I also took my car through an automatic wash yesterday afternoon, but then parked it right into my garage afterwards. The lights were still fine and the car looked dry. This morning the pass. side was working, but not the drivers side. After driving to work and school and turning it off along with the engine, and then back on, only the drivers side worked. I did it again and then nothing on the lo beams.   hi-beams work and so do signals/parking. I have matsushita OEM ballast. I need some advice because its too damn cold to be working on my car. I hope it's just the cold, but this shouldnt be happening to OEM masushita ballasts. TIA.

[CrackerTeg]

Relay harness installed? Or straight off factory wiring?

[AV6NHBP6SPD]

matsushita is not waterproof so could be that water got in there

[mitchigan]

Relay harness installed? Or straight off factory wiring?

Relay harness, fuse still good.

matsushita is not waterproof so could be that water got in there

Matsushita is not waterproof??? but I've taken it to the wash so many times since winter started here. If water did get in there shouldnt the problem have happened right away? hmmm just seems hard to swallow that. wish it wasnt so damn cold so I could go check. So is the cold ruled out then???

[Mike]

Maybe the water got in there, and then when it froze the expansion caused an issues.

[thisaznboi88]

check your relay harness fuse. I had that problem a while back. like that one day the whole hid died and I skip 1 day of class trying to figure out what happen. anything thing u could do it is connect the ballast directly to the battery using jump cables and see if it will fire. If it doesn't fire it will be the ballast. GL man.

[timot_one]

If you're using a relay harness, does each ballast have it's own relay, or is there only one relay for both ballasts?  Here's what I would do to test this.  Check the harness with a DMM to make sure you're getting 12 volts before the ballast.  If that checks out, you may want to try swapping the bulbs.  If the problem moves from right to left, then it's the bulb.  If the issue remains on the right side, then it's the ballast.

[Mike]

I believe he said both sides are dead Tim.

[CrackerTeg]

As of the OP it was both. It started with the pass. side then moved to the driver's side. Misha may be right about the ballasts not being waterproof and he could've fried them. He could also be running one of those plug and play relay harnesses that only have one relay to fire both sides. There's some details missing here. I guess I'm glad I'm running DDM ballasts with my setup so I don't have to worry about waterproofing. One thing I forgot to ask, where are your ballasts mounted Mitch?

[timot_one]

I didn't catch that one where the problem moved from the PS to the DS.  I guess I should have read it again after having my morning coffee.  I'd still like to know more about the relay harness before making any more assumptions.  My guess is that it's in the harness somewhere.  If you have two relays (one for each ballast), then the relay probably got damaged by the water and cold temperatures.  This is merely speculation, but since a relay is an electromechanical switch, it can fail.  I've PMed you my number, so feel free to text or IM me when you have time to troubleshoot this problem.

[JC04accord]

Same thing happened to me today.  Right side TSX ballast seems to be dead.  YAY!!

[mitchigan]

POS!!! Facker! This is what happens when you try to work on your car in 10 degree F weather, on a time crunch. Broke about 4 of those special plastic push screw and stripped both the phillips one while I was trying to remove my front bumper.

Can anyone tell me how to test if the xenon bulbs are dead or if the ballasts are dead? My DMM probes are too fat to fit into the ballast adapters, unless they were really reading zero. I also determined that the relay harness was fine so it boils down to the bulbs and/or ballast. If I can determine that the bulbs are fine then its the POS ballasts. 12V rail on the PC???

As of the OP it was both. It started with the pass. side then moved to the driver's side. Misha may be right about the ballasts not being waterproof and he could've fried them. He could also be running one of those plug and play relay harnesses that only have one relay to fire both sides. There's some details missing here. I guess I'm glad I'm running DDM ballasts with my setup so I don't have to worry about waterproofing. One thing I forgot to ask, where are your ballasts mounted Mitch?

Ballasts are mounted under the headlights with 3M double sided tape which amazing works well contrary to what others say. The relay harness is the "plug and play" single type, but I determined that the Vsource read 0 when the headlight switch was off and then >12V when the switch was on so the problem occurs after that in the circuit.

[timot_one]

I'm not sure if you can test the bulbs for continuity.  I'll have to break out a set of D2S bulbs I have lying around and see if it's possible to test for continuity.  If you need new bulbs, let me know.  I have a few sets.

[mitchigan]

Dead ballasts... both sides amazingly. could be water, could be the cold, could be both. Was able to test my bulbs in my neighbors TL, so that ruled them out. Now I need to prevent this situation from happening again. Are there any ballast that are waterproof, cold start, lifetime warranty, etc. out there???

[timot_one]

I've never had any problems with my Philips Gen 3 ballasts.