plizzat

Hey everybody. One of my projectors went out(drivers side). I did some research and found it might be a bad ballast. Does anyone have a process of diagnosing this? I hear you have to take off the bumper to take the headlamp out. Thanks.

sillyboybmxer

just lift the car up and take the wheels off so you can pull the fender liner down and bend it out of the way.
you need a torx bit tool to take the cap off the back of the light to access the bulb. switch the bulbs from one side to the other first to see if the bulb is out.

plizzat

so the front bumper can stay on? Is it possible it's a relay or fuse I can check? Where would they be?

sillyboybmxer

yes the front bumper can stay on . you really only have to take that off to take the light assembly out.
highly likely the bulb is bad, usually a ballast will make the bulb flicker before it dies out

plizzat

What about checking fuses/relays? Ya it didn't flicker at all it was working fine then stopped. It wasn't even dim.

GranPrix

If it was a fuse or relay both lights would be out. Like silly said, swap the bulbs first.

plizzat

Thanks. Is there a writeup on this?

sillyboybmxer

https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/101...acement-guide/

plizzat

I Haven't attempted the swap yet but if it did turn out to be the bulb where would I find another oem one?

modifry

Actually, a blown fuse or bad relay would NOT take out both lights, as the low beams are separately fused. Same for the relays - one for each side.

Assuming he has a pre-DRL car, it's unlikely that one fuse or relay is bad, otherwise the bad side would be flickering.*
If he does have a DRL car, I would look first at the fuses and relays just because they are easy to check.



* Because of the way the S2000 is wired, if one fuse or relay is bad and you turn on the low beams, the HID on the bad side will flicker and both HIGH beams will come on real dim. The headlight wiring allows power to back-feed through the high beam filaments to the HID with the blown fuse or bad relay, but since the voltage is reduced by going through both high beams the HID flickers. You can test this yourself if you have a pre-DRL car. Wiring on the DRL cars is different so I don't think it will back-feed, but I never tried it when I had my '08. However, the DRL cars still have separate fuses and relays for each HID.