Has anyone had a ballast go bad?
I'm a bit frustrated here. I'm working with a shop that is a friend of a friend. They are at least 35 minutes across town from me which is a pain in the ass and something I don't have time for. But I didn't know that until I got in the door.
I know very little, but I wanted to upgrade from the halogens. I bought the Silverado kit mentioned here. 35w, came with XB Igniter, H11B 5500k, HD Relay and Capacitor link. I don't really know what any of that is other than I know the Igniter is the Ballast and I think the H11B are the bulbs. So bear with me.
Guy tells me that they installed a similar kit and there's a flicker issue (well known here) and that he had a guy driving home from Indiana call him and say his headlights were out and had to drive home with no headlights. He had to order some relay or fuse or some shit (clarification - it was capacitators) and then he could install it on a separate switch to ensure they wouldn't go out on me. My buddy trusts him so I trusted him. $150. Fine.
It took 4 ******* hours and he hooked them up (actually hooked them to the same switch my buddy installed for my vLED fogs). They worked just fine. If I wanted my fogs on as DRLs I had to turn the light knob a click to the right and turn on the parking lights and it also would turn on the HIDs. But that was fine.
The other night, driving home at night, they wouldn't go on period (HIDs only). I had to drive home with my high beams on because I didn't want to get pulled over for no headlights.
I made arrangements to get it back in their shop today because I already paid them, and buddy gave me his truck as a loaner because he felt partially responsible. They tell me it's ready and the ballast was bad. They replaced it with an extra ballast of a different brand they had handy, and I would need to get a new ballast from TRS. Then of course I would need to trek across town again next week to have them install this for me. Great. Awesome use of my time.
So I go to pick up my truck, and they give me the story, and I of course go to test my lights before I drive off, and the driver works, but the passenger doesn't. Awesome. I tell the guy at the desk, he pulls the tech over that did the install. They see and agree to swap out with ANOTHER generic ballast they have. Ugh.
He got it done in like 10 minutes. I called TRS and told them the ballast was bad and they asked me all kinds of troubleshooting questions of which I had no idea how to answer. I wanted to put them on the phone with the tech but he was working on my truck and I had to get the F out of there because I had a work call I had to host. So I give him a piece of paper with my name, the # to TRS, the Order #, the parts and explain to him they need to call and explain the issue and how they determined it was a bad ballast. He tells me he will call right away and explains that he isolated one light to one ballast and it was fine, then put the same light on the other ballast and the fuse blew or something. Then he tried again and same thing. Whatever, just call them please.
I don't hear from them and I call later. He never called TRS. Guy assures me he will have him call right away. Calls me back 5 min later and tells me TRS is closed and they will call first thing in AM. Awesome.
Then I get home, and I went to go pick up some food a few hours later. The driver's side light is out and the passenger side works. I turned the switch off that the fogs and HIDs are hooked to, and turned it back on and they both fired up.
I'm sorry for the long post, but does this sound like a ballast issue? I just want this resolved and reliable.
EDITED FOR UPDATE - TRS wants pictures of the ballasts in order to issue a warranty replacement. The shop told me that they mounted the ballast for the passenger side somewhere where they would have to remove the bumper in order to get a picture of it. What the ****. They want to charge me labor for it. I'm going to press for my $150 back and take it to the shop mentioned in the post below. I might look into swapping out for LEDs.
