Doing It Right.

I hate seeing my baby go under the knife. And by "my baby", I mean my car, of course. I've probably taken her front bumper off four or five times in the past month alone, and yesterday I went in again to diagnose exactly what the problem is. Late last week, I noticed that my left headlight would flicker and then shut off completely whenever I would hit a bump or a rough spot in the road, and then turn on again momentarily, only to shut off again upon the slightest bit of discomfort, and as of Monday, it wouldn't turn on at all! After an hour or so of playing around with the cables and connectors, I finally discovered the culprit: a bad ballast. The bulb ignited and stayed on perfectly fine when I hooked it up to the passenger's side ballast, but wouldn't even give me a spark when connected to the driver's side.

So, looks like I'm going to have to send an email to the company that I got my HIDs from and see what they can do about it. To be honest, I'm not expecting much - this was my fault, as I didn't secure the ballast well enough when I installed it the first time and found that it was loose when I took a peek underneath the hood. I am currently loathing myself, as I always seem to mess up on things the first time around. But hey, as long as I do it right in the end, yeah? AND, since I've only had them for about a month or so, the warranty should still be valid and with any luck, I'll have a new ballast in no time. Until then, I've hooked up my OEM halogen bulb to my driver's side, just as a temporary fix, so if you see a blue Celica coming up on you from behind with one yellowish-white headlight and one pure-white-with-a-hint-of-blue headlight and a license plate that says "ASN", feel free to give me a honk and a wave!