Driver low beam not working

You should buy them and replace them in pairs. You can keep the passenger bulb as an emergency spare bulb, but you might end up needing to replace it soon anyway, if you only replace the driver's side.

FYI, the passenger side lowbeam bulb is a PITA to remove and replace. It's really tight in there. I always remove the bolt and clip holding the air intake hose and bend it out of the way for easier access to the passenger side headlight bulb. Even when you think you have it in properly, turn on the lights and verify that the beam is normal and not really dim, indicating that you probably installed the bulb off-angle and it can melt your headlight housing if not correctly installed straight on.

Also, FYI, don't touch the bulbs with your fingers/hands as the oils left on the glass bulb can cause hotspots and cause premature failure of the bulb(s).

SM-G781V ?

 

It's easy to get confused. Everyone makes mistakes.
You didn't waste anyone's time.
There are certainly other people who have or are having a similar issue.

 

Parking lights are separate from daylight running lights

 

You will find the high intensity halogen bulbs have 1/10th the life of the standard factory bulbs. Sylvania Basics may last for a couple of years instead of a couple of months.

Which is why some of us changed our low beams to quality LED retrofits. Good life and high intensity in the low beam where you need it.

H11 H8 H9 LED Bulbs 100W 10000LM 6000K | LAair Series, All-in-One Desi – Lasfit®

 

Application:
HID and LED bulbs are street legal in the USA for Fog Light use only. Not compliant with DOT / FMVSS108 and not street legal in the USA for Headlights. Legal for off-road use in Snowmobile and ATV headlights and off-road racing use only auxiliary or forward lighting. International street legality varies by country. For detailed clarification on street use, CLICK HERE.
Note: This usage regulation is not unique to Lasfit bulbs. All LED and HID bulbs from all other brands, regardless of marketing claims, are prohibited from street use in halogen headlights in the USA.

DOT/SAE/FVMSS108: NO (NOT STREET LEGAL IN HEADLIGHTS IN USA)
HOMOLOGATION ECE: NO

 

That's frustrating, and of course it's an example of "thing that's not legal yet all because the regulating agency just hasn't gotten around to adopting standards for it". On the bright side, SAE does continue to do work toward filling that gap:

https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2024-01-2230/

I posted more about that work a while back, only I haven't been able to find that post now. If I remember right, it seemed like updated standards might not be far off in 2019 or so, but then COVID happened. Maybe there's still hope for this silly state of affairs to get corrected before long.

 

Which is the reason you go with quality in LED replacements used in a halogen reflector assembly.

There are cheap versions that don't maintain the halogen beam spread which can blind oncoming traffic even when used as a low beam. There are cheap versions that overheat and don't last. There are cheap versions that produce rf interference that can disable tpms systems or disrupt communication busses. The better versions solve those concerns and normally specifically call out their solutions.

Of course there are factory LED headlights for our gen3s but they require new harnesses and headlight housings. Virtually all recent cars have factory LED headlights which are the white versus the yellow lights.

You are more likely to get a ticket for driving without lights or with the highs constantly on than for running retrofit LED low beams.

To say better clarity for the driver and extended life for a hard to replace part are not worth the extra cost is questionable to say the least.

 

See post #29, copied and pasted from THEIR web page....

 

Yeah. it's frustrating ... obviously the only sticking point is whether the light distribution is ok, so what you want is to buy one that gives an ok light distribution, only SAE has not yet produced an official test for that, so to date you can't buy anything that's actually street legal under FMVSS, even though some products would probably qualify if an official test existed.