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2004 Mazda3 Xenon Bulb problem

3K views 0 replies 1 participant last post by  TheMightyMazda 
#1 ·
So I bought my first Mazda3 a couple of months ago, and noticed when I got home that the driver’s side low beam light was burnt out. Not knowing much about the special HID Xenon bulbs, I went ahead and ordered 2 of these bulbs on rockauto.com (just in case the other was near dead as well, always good to have a replacement anyways). While I waited for them to arrive, I watched some Youtube on how to replace them. WOW! You gotta take the entire bumper cover off just to change the driver’s side low beam.

Long story short, I changed the bulb and it worked for about 30 seconds. I switched ballasts from left to right, nothing. I switched bulbs, the “bad” bulb worked fine in the other side. I concluded that it must be the wiring to the bulb, which was a little dirty inside. After cleaning the plug out with some rubbing alcohol, it fixed the problem for another 30 seconds. So I set to shopping for that plug. Couldn’t find it anywhere online (rockauto, Mazda dealers, auto parts stores, eBay, I even looked at junk yards). I gave up for several weeks and just didn’t drive at night. Then, when it got to be annoying, I decided to look again. I did more research. The wire was called an HID ballast ignitor. The part number on my 2004 ignitor is W3T11472. I was able to find nothing online when I searched this part number several weeks earlier. But when I added ballast ignitor, a few similar results came up. I found myself at the GWA auto parts website. Part number W3T110571 was listed to be a replacement part for my car. Just to make sure I didn’t buy the wrong part again, I contacted them to double check. This time I took my bumper cover off before ordering a part. I removed the ballast ignitor and compared it to the one online. It looked the same except for a few different colors and one had a rubber boot to go over the plug on the ballast side. Different part numbers made me suspicious, but they replied that it would work in my car. It wasn’t an expensive part, so I ordered it. Now a week of sitting in the garage with the bumper cover off. The part arrived, I installed it, and IT WORKED!

$86.31 to fix a $27 fix, but hey, that’s how you learn. Anyone else had the same issue?
 

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