Hey guys,
I know this is a common problem on b6/b7 s4’s, My left headlight is currently has a spastic flicker. Which leads me to believe its a faulty ballast.
I’ve done a little searching and haven’t had much luck. The cheapest Ballast I have found is $350.
Does anyone know of another ballast that works?
Thanks in advance.
Chrysler used the same ballast in the 06 SRT8 300C.
I forget the part number. I paid about $140/ballast. I’ll see if I can find the part number for you.
Here you go : The Chrysler/Mopar part number is: 5139061AA
I had found it on a mopar site, for cheaper than a local dealer, but they got it in one day, for no extra charge.
The only thing it doesn’t have is the plastic/rubber that goes around the ballast in the headlight, but you can reuse it.
And its 100% plug and play?!
Only true on the B6’s. The B7’s require some fairly intensive surgery/parts searching to make them work with that ballast.
Also, I’d bet a coke (to reference saki) it’s a bulb over a ballast. 90% of the time it’s a bulb that will fix your problem. The root of the problem may still be the ballast (i.e. it may have caused the bulb to die somewhat prematurely), but usually a new bulb will fix your problem and last at least a year if not several years.
You can buy new bulbs for pretty cheap if you search around, or it may be a good excuse to go aftermarket which I recommend DDM (I went with 6000k which is pure white). I’d say go aftermarket if you like the look, then if it doesn’t solve the problem, you know exactly what it is and the new bulbs weren’t a total loss as you still want the look.
Search “fly300kts” on AZ, he’s done some GREAT research and problem solving to the issue. If you’re a B7, it’d probably be cheaper to just send your ballasts to him and have him repair them rather than buying a new oem one.
Which DDM kit did you go with exactly Maddog??
Really? I didn’t know there was a difference in the headlight. It was the exact same “slim” ballast that was in mine. Didn’t know they changed the headlights between the B6 and 7
Well, thanks for teachin me about that. Learn something new everyday!
^Yea there’s a whole thread on AZ about those chrysler ballasts. It all depends on which ballast is in your car and what your car came equipped with (non adaptive, adaptive, etc). For the most part is B6 vs B7, but some of the early B7’s are a toss up, and there’s a chance that it’s more compatible on the A4’s than S4’s due to options. I’m really going on vague memory for that part though.
The best way to know for sure is just pull your headlight out and then pop your ballast off the bottom of the headlight. Then you can tell if you have the 4 pin harness (which matches the chrysler) or the other harness (it’s either 6 pin or more, don’t recall for sure) which won’t work.
There were even some people that found the 4 pin plug and were soldering them in place of the non-4pin harness to make the chrysler ballast work, but now no one can find that 4 pin harness anymore so it’s not an option.
For the DDM, or any supplier, all you need is your actual headlight bulb type (I think it’s D1S, easy to find out for sure). You can’t replace the ballast in the headlight with an off the shelf aftermarket one. So I was suggesting you just buy a new set of bulbs (I’ve used DDM b/c I wanted a different light color, i.e. 6000k, or just buy an oem equivalent if you don’t care about that).
The DDM “kits” are for fog lights and non H.I.D. components to take a traditional halogen setup and put a H.I.D. setup in it’s place. Of course this doesn’t use a lens and cutoff beam like your headlight does, but I love the look of matching H.I.D. fog lights (even if they’re technically less effective for fog situations).
isnt 6k K more bluish white, 5.2k K is pure white/highest light output
It REALLY depends on WHO makes the bulb. That’s why I always recommend people go with the same manufacture if they’re going to eventually do both or anything else etc. I’ve had good luck with DDM and they offer a wide array of products with lifetime warranty on their signature kits which is nice for a part like this which often is known for being cheaper or poor lifespan.
With DDM, 6k is perfectly white in my opinion (after initial burn in of ~48hrs. all H.I.D. bulbs need a little burn in time to reach their true color). But I’ve seen some 6k bulbs from other manufactures look like oem 4300k, and I’ve seen other 6k bulbs look like 8k+ (8K is more blue, 10k is blue/purple). So yea, depending on the “6k” you saw, it certainly could look like that. And technically on the scientific scale, 5.2k is may be perfectly white (I really don’t know, each company puts up their own marketing scale haha), but that’s not the result with the DDM ones. I actually owned some 5k & 6k from them at the same time, and the 5k had a slight bit of yellow tint to them in comparison to the 6k.
Also, from what I understand, oem 4300k technically has the highest light output. Moving in either direction decreases light out put. Going to 5 or 6k won’t kill it that much, but going to 8 or 10k definitely will.
Another thing to remember, wattage also affects color to some extent. More wattage usually washes out some of the different color range from what I recall. But again, I’ve had good luck matching up the DDM 35W 6k fogs to my DDM 55W D1S 6k main headlight bulbs. Many people with other manufactures don’t have too good of luck matching fogs & main beams b/c of the wattage difference even though it’s the same bulb & color from the same manufacture.
yeah I was thinking from a scientific/physics standpoint on the color temp, I think 5.2k K is white but since our eyes are used to seeing yellow light from the sun, our eyes probably pick up 4.3k K better
^It might also have to deal with the refraction point of the different light temps. That’s why (as I understand it) fog lights are intended to be 2-3k so that they’re yellow. Apparently the 5-6k white light will refract backwards much more in dense fog than compared to the yellow color. This could be due to a ton of different factors and I got no clue (maybe the yellow doesn’t travel far enough to reflect all the way back, or maybe the yellow is a different rate that can pass through better)?
color temp is related to black body radiation, a 100% black (so emissivity=1) body will radiate light at a specific wavelength depending on its temperature (all bodies do this, but a black body doesnt have its output skewed because it emits a full spectrum of photons). So a black body at 5.2k Kevlvin (about 8900 *F) will radiate light at the same frequency as the sun in a cloudless day at noon. Because our eyes interpret the yellow light from the sun as white, these will look white (if we had a red star evolution may have pushed us to adapt to the red light, which would appear as white).
So basically color temp relates a physical constant (black body radiation) with physiology (how our eyes interpret photons)
I just had both of my headlights repaired. I had the flicker from both headlights and the dipped headlight error.
I sent them to the user Fly3000 from AZ and he repaired both ballasts for $60, serviced/replaced the components in the headlight assembly, replaced the melted chrome housings and did his LED strip thing and clear corner mod. I also replaced the headlights themselves with 6000k units as Fly3000 said that bad ballasts can cause the igniter in the bulbs to fail and bad bulbs may cause the ballasts to fail. Replacing just the bulbs may fix the problem, but it is just temporary fix.
So in the end, I had both my headlights repaired and upgraded for less than the cost of repairing them alone with factory parts.
I have a B7 btw with bi-xenon.
^^^^
Before and after pics would be cool…cough cough ;D
Yea, fly knows his stuff and does vey good work. His prices aren’t what most would call “cheap” (but that’s a STEAL on the ballast repain imo), but when ytou look at price compared to oem, it’s a no-brainer.
As mentioned, the bulb swap is often a “temporary fix” but for most, that “temporary” is 1-2+ years. Before he was offering his services, it was a $400 part per ballast for the B7 guys. That’s why I often tell people to just throw new bulbs in. Also most people don’t like the idea of pulling the headlights out and shipping them away for 2 weeks as shipping isn’t cheap and it’s a fair bit of downtime.
Related info - I just replaced both my D1S bulbs and ballasts with OEM parts…still have the dipped headlight issue. I’m stumped. Anyone have ideas? I can scan with vag for the error code but the DIS stated Left Main Light out and gives the dipped headlight warning too sometimes.
I found out you have to code the new ballasts through VAG to have it recognized by the ecu. Just did that AND…it still didn’t work. FML. Hopefully I’ll figure this out sooner than later, at that point I will be able to help anyone with this same issue lol.
Try swapping the bulbs from side to side and then the ballasts if the problem doesn’t go to the other side just to make sure. I have had both bad new bulbs and ballasts out of the box before.
That’s my next step, thanks Jimmy. Not looking forward to basically redoing the job in this heat again but I have to. My oven, I mean garage, gets brutal in the summer. Even at night with the huge fan I have in there and windows open etc.
I feel your pain. My lift is outside in the hundred degree weather and I want to work on my car really bad right now. It would have been nice to try out my new welder too but that was not happening today or tomorrow.