Howdy y'all. Bought a 2003 G35 coupe a couple weeks ago.

It had working HID’s but I swapped the old yellow headlights for some new aftermarket ones (identical to OEM). Everything jived except the driver side HID immediately stopped working. Assuming I burned it out in the transfer, I bought new bulb.

Seemed to work, but later that day it would flicker before turning off. Read the forums here, and decided to replace the igniter/ballast today.

Same thing happened. It worked perfectly, then after a bit of driving it flickered and turned off for good. Switching from on to auto, it will turn on for a second before turning off again, so the bulb appears to work.

All other lights are working (running/high beams/blinkers/passenger HID).

Any idea what I should try next? Could the wiring on the new headlight (from the ballast to the harness) be the culprit? Any help appreciated.

 

Swap the bulbs to see if thats the problem. If its not the bulb, then its the ballast.

 

This is the point where you start swapping parts from one headlight to the other to try and identify what's going on. If you swap everything and it still isn't working right on that one side, it's something with your car's wiring not the headlights.

 

Thanks guys. I don't know why the first two ballasts failed, but as you suggested it was the ballast. Third one was the charm!

 

The ground for the headlights is in the engine bay on the front of each wheel well, I suspect you have a poor ground which is causing the ballasts to prematurely fail. Unbolt the ground, wire brush the terminal clean, wire brush the threads of the bolt, GENTLY wire brush the chassis (use tape to mark off the area so it doesn't just scuff everything to pieces). Next apply a light coating of electrical anti-oxidation great (not dielectric) such as ilsco DE-OX, you can buy it at home depot or any auto parts shop should have small packets of anti-oxidation grease, bolt the lugs back down to the chassis, done.