in the thread about DRLs, it was mentioned that the HIDs may only have a 900 hour life. Is this true? Anyone had to replace them yet? I'm sort of surprised; my expecation with bad understanding of the mechanism was that they would be very long lived, like 10,000 hours. (With 2 years of use, some people near the great white north might be approaching 900 hours of HID operation.)

-dB

 

I was thinking the same thing. 900 hours doesn't seem right at all.

 

No, it's not true, I read that was well, and I don't know where that came from.

HID's are the longest lasting lamps available in an automobile. Being in the lighting industry, I will say Metal Halide lamps will last 10,000 hours. I won't proport to say this is how long the S2K lights will last, because I don't know, But I'm willing to bet, the last thing working on your car will be the lights

 

My left HID burnt out when the car had 8,000 miles on it.

 

Well...I can't speak for incidentals, I'm speaking strictly in terms of lamp life, outside factors like corrosion, moisture, shaking like all hell is coming down will ofcourse adversly affect them.

but like I said, I don't know much, but I know lighting and I wouldn't lie to ya

 

That was just some stupid misinformation. No way that these puppies last only 900 hours.

 

Sorry, but that was my statement in the other thread. I've just re-read my post and just noticed that I'd left out a very critical '0'; it should have read 9000 hours of HID life.

Just to make sure, I've just finished reading up on some HID statistics, which confirm the average HID lamp life varies between 5,000 and 24,000 hours (depending on a number of different factors) - with an anticipated failure rate of HIDs on cars being around 9000 hours. Again, sorry if I scared anyone into thinking they'll be changing their lights out any day now. I've just given you another 10 years before you'll need to do that!

 

It's all good, 1Y. Typos happen. 9000 hours is more like it.

A better question: What hurts our HIDs?

Flicking them off and on really quick when they haven't even had time to warm-up fully? Use in extreme heat? What? Why? How?

Curious.

 

900 hours does not sound like much at all. . .

I had 38k miles on my '00 when I traded and never had a problem with the lights. . .lots of night driving in that car too! I thought the HID's lasted a lifetime!?!?!

 

WRS2K: Among the factors affecting HID lamp life include: lamp operating wattage, lamp characteristics, line voltage, burning hours per start, number of starts and the duration of the operating cycle each time the lamp is started; there are other factors, but they're mostly to do with manufacturing quality and materials used. Apparantly, over 50% of batch testing samples fail before their rated life expenctency.

Probably the only concern with our HIDs is the number of starts and the length of "on" time. The longer they're on between starts, the longer they'll last. Interestingly, HID lamps lose 10 to 40 percent of their rated output after 40 percent of their rated life