2000 i30 low beam replacement

[Mister 26]

I had my right low beam go out today, it's the factory headlight. I know very little about replacing these, thus the post.

Is it possible/practical to replace the bad bulb w/o replacing the entire unit, or am I biting the bullet on a new headlight?

Sorry for the stupid question but I've never owned a vehicle with HID bulbs before.

[Daddygonz]

If it's halogen. Your replacement bulb is a 9006. If it HIDs it will be a d2r. http://www.ehow.com/how_2630_r....html

[Mister 26]

Thank you for a very concise polite reply. As I'm not sure which bulb I have, can someone please say which is factory, halogen or HID?

[Beancooker]

Halogen is the factory replacement.

[MattB]

Is your car an I30 or I30t? If it's an I30t you need a D2R HID bulb. IIRC the manual actually says to take the car to the dealer for replacement of it.

[Beancooker]

Yeah, but the manual of the Maxima also says to take the can to the stealership for fog light replacement. They just assume that we won't want to get under the car and pull that crap apart. It is a PITA, the first time you do it, but it gets easy after that!

[Mister 26]

Is your car an I30 or I30t? If it's an I30t you need a D2R HID bulb. IIRC the manual actually says to take the car to the dealer for replacement of it.

It's an I30T. Does this make replacement more difficult?

[MetaOrbit]

It's an I30T. Does this make replacement more difficult?

It's a little more difficult, but not impossible.

Since it's an I30t, it has HID, so the low-beam bulb is in fact a D2R.

If you look behind the headlight you'll see a silver metal thing screwed to the back of the headlight behind the low beam.

Basically, the idea is, you need to unscrew that (it's called an igniter) in order to remove the bulb. Once you have that removed, you'll have to twist off the connector from the igniter that's attached to the base of the bulb. Then you'll have to push a spring clip out of the way (looks just like an unbent paperclip) and then you can pull the bulb out. Reverse the process to put the new one in.

Now, if you can do all this with the headlight in the car, you'll probably save some time and work. Most people can't, so the other option is to do the same, but take the headlight off the car in order to better access that stuff.

To do that, remove the two bolts at the top of the headlight when you have the hood open. Remove the bulbs/wiring you can from the back of the headlight. Then, go under the car, remove the splash shield under that side of the car, look up, above the foglight, and you should see one more bolt holding a small bracket of the headlight to the fender. It goes in horizontally rather than vertically. Remove that, then pull the headlight out from the front of the car. It's clipped in at the bottom so you'll have to give it a tug to make it come loose.

Good luck.

[Mister 26]

Thanks once again. Replacing the bulb w/o removing the headlight sounds easy enough, so I'll give that a shot first.

[audtatious]

Here you go, straight from a FSM:

http://www.nicoclub.com/Matt/I30-HID.pdf

[Mister 26]

Here you go, straight from a FSM:

http://www.nicoclub.com/Matt/I30-HID.pdf

WOW, nice! Thank you!

[Mister 26]

Ok so I spent some time today looking for a D2R bulb (local stores and online) and came up empty. The only place that I haven't checked yet is the dealership (last resort). Is this my only option?

[audtatious]

Look at ebay. I would suggest getting a pair and replace both of them at the same time. If you want to change for more color, 6000k works well.

Here's a search that brings up a lot of places selling bulbs:http://www.google.com/search?n...bulbs

[Mister 26]

Today I replaced both bulbs. It seems that the right low beam is not right. It casts a big ball of light on the pavement just a few feet ahead of the car. Is there any trick to installation, i.e. certain orientation, etc?

[audtatious]

Yes. The bulbs are "keyed". You may have it in wrong.

[MetaOrbit]

Today I replaced both bulbs. It seems that the right low beam is not right. It casts a big ball of light on the pavement just a few feet ahead of the car. Is there any trick to installation, i.e. certain orientation, etc?

Make sure the return wire is facing down (toward the ground) and that the bulb is seated completely flush (push it in hard to make sure it's seated completely flat).

Also make sure the notches (keys) are lined up correctly as Matt said.

[Mister 26]

Yeah I reseated the bulb and it was fine after that. Not happy that the guy I bought them from on ebay sent me 10k bulbs when I asked for 6k bulbs.

Thanks for all the help.

[audtatious]

Well, I'm sure they look more interesting now