Hey,

So I noticed when driving my headlight flickers on the passenger side. It doesn't always flicker, but usually when it does it occurs when I am taking a corner. It can also happen when driving straight but it's less of an issue. (FYI, these are factory HIDs, not cheap kits)

I noticed this happening in about March of this year. Eventually one of my bulbs began to fail (turn purple) so I had thought maybe the flickering was due to the bulbs as it was happening on both sides too. After changing the bulbs, the flickering did go away. Fast forward a few months to now, I am getting the flickering again, but on the one side (right side). Honestly, if you blink you might end up missing it. It's quite intermittent at the moment. I wonder if the weather is making what might have been an existing issue, more pronounced? Being as we are going into the cold again, where the last time I experienced this was getting out of the cold.

Yesterday I checked all the connections to the headlights. Everything looks good to my eyes. I put everything back and today when driving the flickering seemed a bit more frequent actually. I am now thinking that maybe if this flickering is due to ballast failure, then this is what caused my old bulb to fail. Having said this, I don't want my new bulbs to fail because they are not cheap at $260/pair for OSRAM HIDs. I also just like my car to be working right and this is frustrating lol

Anyone experience this? Is this ballast failure? Being as the issue seems intermittent, I am afraid to shell out for a new ballast in fear the issue persists. I also considered taking it to a shop, but with the nature of it, it seems futile as they'll likely not even have it happen when it's with them, or they won't really know how to diagnose this and have my replace things and I could be back in the same predicament. My only other choice it seems at this time is to wait until complete failure and go from there. I just hate my **** tripping out.

This YouTube video captures what's happening to my car. This person's issue is a bit more pronounced than mine, and mine doesn't have the sound effect that his does. My flickering is a milder version of this:

 

What is that noise accompanying the flicker?

 

what you could do to rule out the ballast/igniter on the cheap is to swap the ballast OR igniter from the driver's to the passenger side. if the problem follows, then you've identified the culprit and can just buy that new part. I have a gut feeling it might be the igniter and not the ballast.

 

I would just use another brand HID bulbs, I use some amazon previous lexus with HID and had no issues. 5k is a good temp.