Hi all, About a year ago, I started having the all-too-common intermittent HID problem on my '07 Prius. The dealer wanted $300 to replace the bulb, so I brought the car to my local mechanic. It actually turned out that since the mechanic had no idea what he was doing, it cost about the same as the dealer would've charged me. Anyways, that same bulb went out again and the mechanic couldn't figure out why, so today I brought the car to the dealer. Since I had gotten work on the headlight done by a third party, and my car was at 51,000 miles, Toyota wouldn't honor the class-action suit. I got in a huge fight with the dealer and the customer "experience" line, but neither wouldn't budge. In the end, I just wanted a working headlight, so I just told them to go ahead with the work. The light is working now, but the new bulb is definitely a different color than the old one. The old bulb is a bluish-purple, and the new one is much whiter. Is this normal, or is that some sort of sign that my old bulb is going to give soon? Did Toyota change the color temperatures? It's not that big of a deal, but it is a little annoying that my car has different colored headlights now.
Your old bulb is not long for this earth. There should be no blue color to the stock bulb. YouCan but replacement bulbs for pretty cheap on ebay and DDM Tuning. I can't post links from my phone.
As HID headlamps age, they do get bluer in color. It may not be that your other bulb is not long before failure, it may just be the difference in their age. Thats why you should always replace bulbs in pairs.
I meant not long for this Earth in terms of needing to replace it due to reduced illumination, We just don't see well with blue light. You bring up a good point though. I tried to install a new 5000K bulb and it appeared much more yellow than my stock bulbs with 130,000 miles worth of driving, 3/4 of which I had the lights on. My stock lights now match my new 35w 6000K HID foglights almost perfectly.
The light output they put out isn't the issue, its how the light appears when looking at the car. I've never seen anybody need to replace an HID bulb because they had reduced road illumination that bothered them...
My opinion on reduced illumination is based on years of experience with florescent and metal halide lighting systems for plants and coral reef aquariums. In these cases lumens do change and spectrum output can shift as bulbs age. A quality metal halide bulb usually lasts no more than a year or two before needing to be replaced. It hurts when the bulbs are $50-$100 each. Are HIDs exempt from these issues? Ultimately, if the light shifts to a bluer color then visibility will be reduced.
Sure visibility is going to be reduced, but the effect is very slight. I replaced my HIDs on my old Lexus at around 150k miles, and while the new ones looked brighter from the front, and less blue, the light output from behind the wheel was about the same. Would I pay to replace older HID bulbs that haven't failed? No.
