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2015 lexus RC350 AWD


darrylsw40

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Luxury cars with original HID systems generally develop a headlight problem due to water seeping into the ballast that's located on the bottom of the headlight system. 

Fix:

You will need to replace the ballast. It could be the HID bulbs but that's unlikely. 

Tips: 

The most difficult part of the job is removing the bumper and reinstalling the bumper correctly. If you don't tape up the fenders and take precautions, you still scratch up everything and the bumper will start to make noises when turning because the clips/nails/fender linings don't line up.  

With installing the ballast, cut the main ballast wire to remove if theres no room to come out. Don't cut the small black wire. Unclip it. 

Order the part off of ebay and get one made by Denso. It's around $40-$60. 

Regarding warranty, go to the dealership and talk to the service manager. They may or may not uphold the recall on the headlights since it may be past the warranty. I've had my replaced once by the dealership under warranty and they were very nice about it. When it failed again, it was past the warranty and they didn't uphold(even then they were very nice about it because I just needed to provide a picture of the condensation but didn't have a pic at the time).

Last tip is to make sure the power plug is plugged into the bulb correctly. You may think its on but its actually loose. And if you happen to turn the headlight on, it will fry your battery. This happened to me. Lol. So take a practice round and install the plug on the HID bulb while its outside of the headlight housing. And when you reinstall the headlight, don't mess around with aiming and try not to mess with the original positions of the optics. Just screw the entire housing back on the car. 

Your drivers side headlight may also be failing as its just a matter of time. I'd replace it at the same time also so you don't have to remove the bumper again. 

If you are just replacing one side, you may not even have to take off the entire bumper. Just remove all the clips and leave just the fender clips on the other side so that you don't bend the bumper trying to make room for the headlight to come off.  I'm not sure how good an idea this is because you might end up bending the attachment points on the other side. 

Taking all of that into consideration, you can probably see why my new Lexus never sees rain, snow, or extreme weather conditions. lol.

The new ballast will be more yellow and a bit brighter. This is normal as it takes in some burn in time.

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I also forgot to mention, you don't need to unplug all the wiring!

There is a large relay on the side of the headlight when the bumper is off. It has a large white clip. That white clip leverages itself to push the relay apart(you can't unclip it any other way). So don't be afraid to push that white clip a 180 turn to the left. 

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