Strange Headlight moisture sequence of events

T

tdawg183

Member
I recently went out of town for about a week and left my fx in the garage, the next morning after I returned I went to start it up, backed it out and saw and smelt a small whiff of smoke from the passenger side headlight area. I immediately cut the engine off, not knowing it was possibly headlight oriented, inspected everything and tried again an hour later. Everything was good upon second start up.

About a week later (and a few rain showers later) I noticed my passenger side headlight full of moisture and the HID bulb was out. There was no pooled water, just condensation. It has stayed almost identical in condensation level and even drop location ever since (about a month).

I pulled the bulb and it clearly needs replacing but other than that I have no clue what to do or how to diagnose this. Any suggestions?
 
Silicone can work, but it would be better to use the original butyl sealant. Have you ever had your headlight apart? If not, the sealant shouldn't be the issue since it almost never fails if left alone. Check the vents on the lower part of your headlight, those are to allow condensation to escape. If those clog, you will get condensation since it has no where to go, it will just pool.
 
Viperi said:
silicone around the lenses/ housing. the seal is gone
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Dude, that was the most uninformative post ever. I think that was a pretty obvious option.

shadow191 said:
Silicone can work, but it would be better to use the original butyl sealant. Have you ever had your headlight apart? If not, the sealant shouldn't be the issue since it almost never fails if left alone. Check the vents on the lower part of your headlight, those are to allow condensation to escape. If those clog, you will get condensation since it has no where to go, it will just pool.
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Good thought. I've never had my lights apart, only thing that I've ever done to them was change the parking lights to LED. I've also inspected around the edges (as much as I could without removing) and I don't see any signs of a bad seal. I think I'll just remove them for a full inspection this weekend.

I'm also thinking I may heat gun the edges where the seal is to recreate the seal if that is in fact an issue. I've done it before with previous cars so I understand the worry of melting.
 
the most obvious answer would be go to the dealer to buy a new set. What about you stop thinking out of your rear end and do something about it.
 
Viperi said:
the most obvious answer would be go to the dealer to buy a new set. What about you stop thinking out of your rear end and do something about it.
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Again, another obvious option.

please don't bother in an additional response. Part of why I'm asking here is because my "rear end" has already done something about it and explored the first options that you just spit out.
 
Did you replace the bulb yet? In my experience with moisture in the light, replacing the bulb will do nothing cause it's the ballast that is shorted. The FX light has the ballast at the bottom of the light so any moisture in there goes down and collects at the lowest point which is where the wiring going into your ballast is. try swapping bulbs from left to right to see if it is indeed the bulb, if it's not then you need to remove your frontend and take out your headlight(you gonna need to do that regardless if you want to reseal the lights) remove the ballast from the bottom and take it apart. clean everything with alcohol and a toothbrush to get out any residue and excess moisture. Make sure you clean the wiring connector that goes into the ballast since that is where the water collects.Dry out your headlight too of any moisture. With luck you can plug it all back together and it'll fire up again. If not then you need to buy a used ballast off of Ebay(around $50 last time I checked)
 
inky said:
Did you replace the bulb yet? In my experience with moisture in the light, replacing the bulb will do nothing cause it's the ballast that is shorted. The FX light has the ballast at the bottom of the light so any moisture in there goes down and collects at the lowest point which is where the wiring going into your ballast is. try swapping bulbs from left to right to see if it is indeed the bulb, if it's not then you need to remove your frontend and take out your headlight(you gonna need to do that regardless if you want to reseal the lights) remove the ballast from the bottom and take it apart. clean everything with alcohol and a toothbrush to get out any residue and excess moisture. Make sure you clean the wiring connector that goes into the ballast since that is where the water collects.Dry out your headlight too of any moisture. With luck you can plug it all back together and it'll fire up again. If not then you need to buy a used ballast off of Ebay(around $50 last time I checked)
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Good call, I haven't yet put a new bulb in but have 2 on order. I'll try swapping the bulbs first to figure out if I need to dive deeper into the moisture removal. I have had the back side of the HID bulb opened up over the past 2 days and (at least in the lense) pretty much all of the moisture is now gone. Somehow a bunch of moisture got in but was not getting out. I don't understand that.
 
For me I had a bulb not seated incorrectly and moisture dripped in during a heavy rainstorm. Reseated it and it was fine but I've had the ballast short out twice now due to moisture inside the light. Both times I took the ballast out and it was completely wet with moisture. I don't care for the design of the light with all the water just going straight into the ballast through the plug in connection but hey, the light is designed to be a dry unit so I guess that's my failure in logic.Even drilling a few holes in the bottom of the light to aid in drainage won't work with how the bottom of the light is designed to drain moisture straight into the ballast. As far as figuring the where the moisture came in from....like everyone else said try look at the seal(granted it's hard to see) look for cracks in the housing and check as you remove the lights that each bulb is seated completely(that would be the first suspect if you changed bulbs, that it didn't seat well) worse comes to worse then do like Viperi said and run a bead of silicone around it. Good luck
 
tdawg183 said:
Dude, that was the most uninformative post ever. I think that was a pretty obvious option.
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Ouch... rather too strong a response man. Viperi had quad projectors on his headlights so I'm sure he's no stranger to headlights issues.

Hope you have this issue resolved.
 
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