Hi Everyone and a happy new year to you.

I bought myself a 2003 x-type for Christmas. After replacing ALL the intake manifold gaskets, I discovered both headlights on the passenger side work only occasionally. Sometimes they are on, sometimes not. The brights work all the time, but when I have the headlight turned to normal especially after the car has been sitting, the whole right side is dark. If I get out of the car and give them a good Arthur Fonzerelli hit with my fist (Think of the jukebox in Al's Diner) they come on and will stay on until I let the car sit for a while. Any Ideas?

 

ddsand, it is sounding like the ground wire for the headlights is failing on you and you will need to access the back of the headlight assembly. Once you get that access, you can remove the plug to the headlights and then look for discolored/charred plastic there. You can also look at the pins and see if you spot a pin that is dark in color (they should be a silver color). If the pin is dark, you can use a screw driver or sharp knife/exacto blade to clean up the surface to get the silver color back. Do not forget to do the other side of the plug too or you are simply only fixing half of the problem.

If the plug looks good, then you will have to look inside the headlight assembly to see if you can spot anything abnormal.

The only other possibility that I can think of is that the ground wire has gotten loose that is directly under the headlight assembly. You can give that a check to make sure it looks good.

On a side note, do you have the halogen headlights or the HID headlights. If you are not sure, do not worry. Open up the driver's door and look between the door hinges. Do you see a silver/white sticker there that talks about "High Intensity Discharge lights"? If yes, then you have HIDs. If no, then odds are you have the halogen headlights. This does change things slightly in the possibilities as the ground wires between the two headlight assemblies is a little different.

 

Hate to say it but sounds like a loose or corroded connection inside the headlight.
If you remove the two dark grey covers you should be able to inspect them.
helps if you have small hands.

you may have to remove them to fix which does involve removing the front bumper cover.
plenty of info here on how to do that.

I do recommend if you are removing the lights its a perfect time to do a HID upgrade. (best upgrade i did on mine)

 

Thank you Thermo and Paulc732, I will look into that tomorrow. I checked for the Sticker Thermo recommended and did not see it. So I guess the upgrade is in the future. Any recommendation for a reliable conversion kit. I have read 6000k is the color to get.

On a side note my dear wife was amazed at how fast your responses have been. Thanks for all the help and advise everyone gives on this forum.

 

My 2002 does not have the sticker but I have the OEM HID variant on my car. The surest way to tell is once the cover is off of the low beam if the plug goes directly to the bulb it is non-HID if you see a square box mounted to the bulb that is the factory igniter for the HID system.

 

Thanks Avern1, I will look after work today.

 

Just wanted to finish up this post. I know that sometimes when we get to a resolution we forget to update. I took off the back of the light and cleaned the bulb and connector. It has not gone out since. Maybe just that we are now in dry weather again. Anyway, no further problems.