Hi guys,

anyone experienced this before ?? --> my passenger side headlight turns redish and it's not bright white any longer,
within 10-20 seconds after the lights are on.

Is it the bulb or something else that is faulty ?

Any ideas ?

10x in advance for your help

 

Xenons or not? Xenons I assume, since it happens 10-20 seconds after the lights are on. A quick and easy test might be to get another bulb, or simply switch the bulb from the good side to the bad side. That might eliminate factors on whether it's the bulb or the base or something else.

Any pics? That would help.

 

Xenon lamps tend to go redish when they are on the way out. New lamp time I think.

 

You need a new bulb mate, same thing happened to me as you described. Definately the bulb.

 

That's a built in design feature to give you plenty of time to get the new ones ordered and installed.

This same thing happend to our 2002 X5 a few months ago. Rule: You never replace only one of the lights -- you replace them as a pair. I ordered the new ones directly from the manufacturer's web site, not through BMW. I only had to put in the model year and month of production and it automatically told me the appropriate bulbs.

Also, this may not be applicable to the E60, but if anyone else has an X5 out there, learn from our mistake! They had to take a whole bunch of stuff of the entire front of the car just to get to the bulbs (which, really ... WHYYYYYY ... ). Only ONE month later one of the turn signal bulbs burned out and we had to pay for all that labor over again to replace a $.79 cent bulb. Not pleased --- we wish they had suggested to replace ALL of the bulbs while they were in there. In this case suggesting that we spend a little more money would have been the smarter idea. Sure, the xenons are expensive but none of the others were/are. Again, not sure how this plays with the E60, but convenience tells me to at least consider it as a time-saving if not money-saving option.