Firm
Member
I need some help with the factory HIDs in my wife’s 2006 Escalade. For some reason it keeps going through ballasts on the right side. Everything was working fine, then the right headlight just stopped working one day. I swapped ballasts with the other side and confirmed that the ballast was bad, in fact, every time I plugged in the original ballast and turned the lights on the fuse for that circuit would blow.
I ordered a Dorman aftermarket replacement ballast, and it plugged into the factory harness, despite having a significantly different looking housing, but it wouldn’t light up the bulb. I exchanged it for another aftermarket unit, which again didn’t work. So I bit the bullet and bought an OE unit, which lasted about 2 weeks before failing.
I am not an electronics expert at all, so thinking that there must be something wrong with the circuit causing the ballasts to fail, I threw in the towel and took the truck to a friend’s shop. He spent a ½ day tracing the circuit, checking the voltages, etc and didn’t find anything wrong. We ordered another OE ballast (at $500 a shot!) and it should be here in a few days.
Before I install the new ballast, is there anything I can do to protect it? Maybe wire in a fuse somewhere that would protect the ballast in the event that there is something going on with the circuit that was missed?
Anyone else seen anything like this before? Any thoughts?
This has been a great truck, we love it, but this headlight thing is getting ridiculous
I ordered a Dorman aftermarket replacement ballast, and it plugged into the factory harness, despite having a significantly different looking housing, but it wouldn’t light up the bulb. I exchanged it for another aftermarket unit, which again didn’t work. So I bit the bullet and bought an OE unit, which lasted about 2 weeks before failing.
I am not an electronics expert at all, so thinking that there must be something wrong with the circuit causing the ballasts to fail, I threw in the towel and took the truck to a friend’s shop. He spent a ½ day tracing the circuit, checking the voltages, etc and didn’t find anything wrong. We ordered another OE ballast (at $500 a shot!) and it should be here in a few days.
Before I install the new ballast, is there anything I can do to protect it? Maybe wire in a fuse somewhere that would protect the ballast in the event that there is something going on with the circuit that was missed?
Anyone else seen anything like this before? Any thoughts?
This has been a great truck, we love it, but this headlight thing is getting ridiculous
