Replacing xenon bulbs with regular headlamps?

ripplyuk

My partner's car just failed the MOT, in part due to a fault with the headlamps. They both need to be replaced but this seems very expensive as they are xenon (not sure if spelt right!) bulbs. His idea is to replace both of them with normal headlamp bulbs ie: changing the whole unit. We're wondering if this is possible, or if it will work out just as expensive as buying the xenon bulbs. Any advice would be appreciated. The car is old, with huge mileage, and he is reluctant to spend a fortune just on some bulbs for it.

molerat

He can probably get standard headlights fairly cheaply from a breakers / ebay. There may be some wiring to do after removing the HID kit. What car is it ?

force_ten

who put the kit on the car

from what you said about MOT fail for the lights would suggest to me that somebody has fitted an aftermarket HID kit to the car but left the halogen reflectors which is illegal hence the MOT fail

if it is an aftermarket HID kit with the original reflectors then it wont be to big a job to get the lights converted back to halogen lights

ripplyuk

It's had the same light bulbs since he bought it years ago. The MOT fail was due to one of the bulbs not working at all and the other being too dim. He knew about this before taking the car in but wanted to see what else it failed on to work out if repairing it is worth the money. It failed on a couple of other issues but nothing major or expensive except these bulbs so he just wants them replaced with standard cheaper ones.

ripplyuk

molerat wrote: »

He can probably get standard headlights fairly cheaply from a breakers / ebay. There may be some wiring to do after removing the HID kit. What car is it ?

It's a Renault Laguna dynamique 2003.

force_ten

do you know if it is factory fit OEM lights on the car and if so do you know what is wrong with them?

the one that has failed is it the bulb or is it the ballast that has gone faulty?

if you do want to get the HID lights off and fit halogens then have a look at E bay and search for lights for your car, depending what car it is they may still be expensive

and it will need some wiring work to swap from HID to normal lights

DUTR

ripplyuk wrote: »

It's a Renault Laguna dynamique 2003.

The kit to convert back to Halogen's may cost more than replacing the bulbs.

ripplyuk

DUTR wrote: »

The kit to convert back to Halogen's may cost more than replacing the bulbs.

Thanks for the link. £35 each would be great. He's been quoted around £200-250 for each. I think it needs the whole unit replacing which would account for that.

force ten, we believe they are factory fitted but can't be sure as the car was bought used. We aren't really sure if the problem is the bulb or ballast. Neither of us know anything about cars. The mechanic just says to replace the lights.

force_ten

ripplyuk wrote: »

Thanks for the link. £35 each would be great. He's been quoted around £200-250 for each. I think it needs the whole unit replacing which would account for that.

force ten, we believe they are factory fitted but can't be sure as the car was bought used. We aren't really sure if the problem is the bulb or ballast. Neither of us know anything about cars. The mechanic just says to replace the lights.

from what you have said now it sounds like they are factory fitted

I am not that familiar with renault zenons but again have a look on e bay and see what you can find second hand, the xenon lights have a ballast unit and the HID bulb and you would really need to know which part of the HID system had failed, you could go and buy new bulbs and find they still don't work as it is the ballast unit that has gone faulty

i would say that the £250.00 a side is for complete replacement units rather than trying to fault or fix what you have got

ChumpusRex

The Renault Laguna 2003 with HID lamps, takes D2R bulbs.

Cheapy no-name brand bulbs can be got for about £15 each online.
Decent branded bulbs (e.g. philips) can be got for about £60-100 a pair.

Cheapies do tend to work OK, but you'd probably only get about 2 years use out of them, whereas you'd likely get about 4-5 years out of quality bulbs.

The difficulty may be installation of the bulbs. I'm not familiar with your car, but I know on some cars you have to take the wheels off, and remove all the wheel well linings to get to the lights. So, unless you're good at DIY, you may end up paying someone for 1 hour's labour.

The other issue with HID lamps is that there are 2 parts - a bulb and a ballast. The ballast is more expensive than the bulb, but generally very reliable. Expect to pay about £100-150 for a new ballast, assuming that the ballast is replaceable without replacing the whole headlamp sealed unit (could easily cost £500-600 for a replacement HID unit).

At dealer labour rates and mark-ups, £200 would barely cover changing a bulb, never mind replacing a ballast or a whole lighting unit.

Depending on how fancy your headlights are there may be problems replacing the whole unit with a regular halogen unit. HID headlights require automatic beam levelling and height adjustment. Halogen headlights don't need this. You may find that your dash lights up with error messages and fault lights if you change the headlight unit (but this depends on your car, and I'm not familiar enough with yours to know if it would complain).

ripplyuk

I have a feeling it's not going to be as easy as we hoped. I think we'll have to speak to the mechanic again and find out if he knows exactly what needs replacing. Hopefully it's not the whole unit. The car is the type where the wheel has to come off to access the lights and we'll have to pay for the mechanic to do it all. Maybe we should take it to a Renault garage to find out what's wrong. We're using a local mechanic and I'm not sure if that's best with electrical stuff. Though, I dread to think what Renault would charge.