I had the message "left dipped headlight" appear and my left side HID light
went out on my 2002 A4. I took it to my dealer and without looking at it
was told that the bulbs never burn out but they've seen a lot of igniters
go bad, and you can't replace the igniter so you need a whole new bulb
assembly. That's fine, even though my warranty had run out back in April
I'd bought a warranty extension through them which I was told covered
everything my Audi warranty did (and I assume that would have covered this)

There was a lot of condensation inside the housing so I asked if the carwash
I'd got right before my headlight failed might have had something to do
with it but I was told that's normal and typically it will burn off when you
run your headlights. Odd, I hadn't recalled ever seeing any condensation
like that before, certainly not some that lasted at least 24 hours.

So I get a call today that they'd found my Audi warranty had expired and
that I had an extended warranty but that did not cover this and parts and
labor would be $785!! To say I was pissed was an understatement, good thing
I wasn't able to take the call and they had to leave a message.

So ignoring for a moment the fact that I was lied to about my extended
warranty covering everything my Audi warranty did, I will need to figure out
what to do about this. Is it true that the igniter can't be replaced,
assuming that is in fact the problem? Is there anything else I should check
for, considering they didn't spend any time diagnosing it to determine if
it might be something other than the igniter? If that is the problem, and
there isn't any way to fix it other than replacing the whole bulb assembly,
can I buy one for significantly less than the $785 I was told it would cost
and do the work myself? I'm not real handy with working on my car but I
imagine I can either figure it out and follow the instructions that hopefully
come with it, or have one of my more automotively inclined friends help me.

Thanks for any help or suggestions anyone can provide!

--
Douglas Siebert dsiebert (AT) excisethis (DOT) khamsin.net

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.

http://www.autohausaz.com/
has them for $125

I doubt very much that it would come with instructions.

The Bentley manual says the left headlight has to be removed (no room to
just remove the bulb out the back). To do that you remove the 2 screws on
top and loosen several turns 2 screws near the backside of the headlight.
Then it slides forward...

Don't touch the glass of the new bulb with your bare hands.

--Art



"Douglas Siebert" <dsiebert (AT) excisethis (DOT) khamsin.net> wrote

Douglas Siebert wrote:
I don't recall if the '02 models had adaptive lighting or not. If not,
then it should be as simple as replacing the ballast/igniter. When I
replaced mine (I have a '00 model), it turned out that the molded
connector housing (which was connected to the power and ground wires of
the car's electrical system) wouldn't fit in the new ballast power
connector (they changed it from 6 pins down to 4). I had to cut and
splice the power and ground wires and attach a new molded housing to
them so that I could connect them to the ballast. IIRC, the power and
ground connections were diagonal to each other: i.e.,

PG
GP

Where P stands for power and G stands for ground.

Otherwise it was a perfect fit in the housing.

You will need to take care of whatever is causing the condensation in
your headlamp, or your new ballast/igniter will fail as well.