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My headlights burning out solution

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by Cen, Mar 2, 2016.

  1. Cen

    Cen New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2016
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    Location:
    San Francisco
    Vehicle:
    2010 Prius
    Model:
    III
    We've had this problem start around the 4 or 5 year mark.
    Like many people, we used the opportunity to buy better bulbs. Which lasted as long as 2 months and as short as 1 week. Falling back to oem dealership installed bulbs got us 2 months of use. The dealership couldn't find any problems, but were starting to get annoyed that they had to keep replacing bulbs on their dime.

    We came to the conclusion that the failing was happening in the readying cycle or after the car is turned off waiting for autoshutdown. Problem, though, no fault could be found out of spec.

    Solution: We turn the lights on AFTER car is turned on, and turn them off BEFORE the car is turned off.

    4 months of no issues, I changed out the bulbs to those evil "high performance" bulbs to see if the problem would come back. It's been a year so far with no failures.
     
    DeliveringSmiles likes this.
  2. CR94

    CR94 Senior Member

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
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    Location:
    Northwestern S.C.
    Vehicle:
    2011 Prius
    Model:
    Two
    That's been Standard Operating Procedure pretty much since electric headlights were invented. I've had no headlight problems so far.
     
  3. Former Member 68813

    Former Member 68813 Senior Member

    Joined:
    Oct 3, 2010
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    Location:
    US
    Vehicle:
    Other Hybrid
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    agree.
    if that doesn't work, there is a revised harness fix for that. search under TSBs.