Time to change HID's but I'm confused!!!

Hello, I just registered.

I have a 2006 Prius with about 75K miles on it. Yesterday while at the dealer to have the 12-volt battery checked (I had run a self-test and it showed a low voltage) I noticed the driver side headlight was shining white and the other one was yellow. I asked a maintenance guy about it and he said he couldn't see the difference! Nor did they find that the battery was weak. But tonight, the passenger headlight died.

So my questions are, generally: 1) do I need to replace the bulbs, the 12-volt battery, or both? 2) how do I find out what kind of bulbs I need? I understand that having the bulbs changed at the dealer is outrageously expensive, so I'd rather try to do it myself, but I don't know if mine are HID or some other kind.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention above, the reason I ran the self-test on the battery was because the alarm was going off for no apparent reason in the middle of the night - somewhere I read that this could be because of a weak battery.

 

And? What was the voltage when you ran the "self test"? An 06 Prius w/75K miles will likely need a 12 volt replacement now, if not soon.

http://priuschat.com/forums/knowled...andard-optional-equipment-some-countries.html might help you determine what you have. Without doing that, if you have HIDs, the lights should be whitish or bluish. With HIDs, when you turn the high beams on/off, you should NOT see a second set of lights turning on/off. Instead, you should see that a mechanism move backwards/forward.

http://lusciousgarage.com/blog/2010/01/ shows HIDs being changed w/o removing the bumper.

 

If you have foglamps, you have HIDs. They are $54 each on Amazon, Philips D4R. Don't buy the cheap Chinese replacements. If you don't have foglamps, you have conventional bulbs. As cheap as $10 per pair at Walmart. Either way, best practice is to replace both sides at the same time and keep the working bulb as a spare. Wear nitrile gloves when handling HID bulbs because the oils on your skin could cause the bulb to crack during operation.

Don't go to the dealer, they will rip you off on the cost of the bulbs (2 x $150) and labor (1+ hours).

 

Battery voltage reported by the car's computer was about 0.3-0.4V lower (with & without load) than it should be according to the info I had.

Thanks to both of you for your responses! I truly appreciate it.

Chris