Chisand

One of my Xenon lights is out and it doesn't seem to be the bulb. I replaced it with a new one and then swapped with another and nothing seems to work on that side!

What confuses me is in the searches I have done I seem to see mention of a ballast and and an ignitor being possible issues. Wouldn't the ballast and the ignitor be the same thing? When I called MB parts they said that they don't see any ballast or ignitor but they have a controller for $500! Any ideas what to do???

yeuchau

if you swapped bulbs from both side, and it still doesn't work, then it could be the ballast. I wouldn't buy it from dealer. For $500 you can get a depo projector and a set of new HID kit.

Chisand

Is the ballast the the silver metal box mounted under the light? I've seen pictures of a black plastic box attached to the socket for the bulb but I don't know where it is, is it inside the light housing?

You said to replace it with depo lights and I keep on seeing this mentioned in other threads. What is a depo light (what does depo mean)? Is this an aftermarket light? If aftermarket I have heard that some of these have serious problems like not being water tight...

Rev 2 Liv

Different. igniter sends the initial surge of electricity needed to create the arc. Ballast regulates the electricity necessary to maintain the arc.

The controller is the same thing as the ballast in MB parts catalog. Since Philips is the OEM vendor, buy it 3rd party since it's a direct fit just w/o the MB premium.

The ignitor is built into the headlight assembly and therefore is not listed in EPC and is not considered user replaceable by MB.

You can swap ballasts as a first step towards troubleshooting. If the problem still exists, then your igniter is lazy. My passengers side HID is/was lazy in that it wouldn't always fire the first time. Sometimes it would take about 1/2 hour before it fired, sometimes never. It turned out to be a faulty ignitor. Malfunction on display most of the time.

My steps:
1. Swap bulbs (Same issue)
2. Swap ballasts (same issue)
3. Grab heatgun and pry away lens cover to install new ignitor.

The Bosch ignitor cost me $40 on eBay, but since it's built into the headlight assembly, you'll have to grab a heatgun and pry the clear/frosted lens cover away. After that, it's plug and play for the new ignitor.

BTW, be mad at Bosch for bad QC and MB for efficient packaging, but not user friendly servicing.