Litronic lifespan?

My ten year old hids are looking a little dull compared to my wife's glk hids. Does anyone know the lifespan of the hid bulbs or ballasts?

My 9 year old 2004 C4S just burnt out the passenger side. Bought 2 new ones from suncoast for $70. Porsche in Edmonton wanted $235 :\ I think 9-10 years is pretty good! sean

It's a difficult question to answer. HID bulbs change in color as they age, and they lose intensity. At 10-years old, your headlights are putting less light down on the road than they did when they were new. I bought two new bulbs from www.sunsetimports.com and installed them last year. I also had my headlight lenses polished and cleaned up by Dr. Headlight. The difference was quite dramatic. Another thing to consider is that Porsche designed the 996 HIDs with "frosted" lenses. If you compare them side-by-side to clear lenses such as those used by BMW and Audi (not sure about Mercedes) then they won't look as clear. It's just the way they are designed. I suggest new bulbs... you won't be sorry...

Ours are 12 years and kicking. I think our lenses are more if any dimming issue than the bulbs themselves (I accept that they don't perform as well, but our lenses are pretty bad).

I wasn't too impressed with the brightness of my HID lights when I first got the car, I then bought these http://www.ebay.com/itm/300511594600?item=300511594600&viewitem=&vxp=mtr since they are known to have higher lumens, and got much brighter output than the original D2S are on all the time the way the car is set up so they had dimmed over the 1,200 operation hours when I bought the car.

You can also buy them on eBay for about $40 a set. I've bought plenty this way, they are all Philips, made in the EU, and tested. I always keep an extra set on hand in the house now. Anyone know why these aren't just sold at Canadian Tire, Pep Boys, etc.?

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There is a risk you may not be getting genuine units but counterfit ones at that price point, unless you have sufficient confidence about the seller is legitimately obtaining genuine Philips capsules and not some off-shore knock-off ones. I would say due to price point and demand, HID capsules last a very long time even when they slowly degrade in their light output, where halogen bulbs don't last anywhere as long when the filament breaks from constant vibration over time. Auto parts places don't want to keep the expensive HID capsules in their stock when the inventory turn-over is extremely slow.

I'm a headlight nerd and I can't own a vehicle that doesn't have HIDs, so my cars always get retrofitted HIDs or the factory HIDs get updated for better output. I get all my bulbs and ballasts from www.ddmtuning.com . I've never had a bulb go bad or a ballast burn out on me. If you want better light out of your 911, get the 55w ballasts with 5000k bulbs and put them in your car. The ballast plugs are standardized, so they are a direct swap into the 996.2 headlights (can't say for sure about the 996.1 headlights), and the DDM ballasts fit in the factory brackets (you'll need to figure out a small spacer of some kind though, since the DDM ballasts are slimmer than the OEM ones).

One of my DDM ballast died after 3 years of use, life time warranty covered the replacement, however I had to ship the dead ballast back to them at my expense, and pay for the shipping of the replacement ballast back to me. IMHO there is really no need for 55W HID capsules, they are way too bright to use unless someone is doing rallying at night......

Hmmm, I was thinking my replacement headlights were about $1000 per side from what Ive seen? Whats the deal?

The headlight housing is around $1000, the bulbs and HID ballasts are not that much. Unless you'd prefer to pay 4 (or 10) times the price for the same part at the dealer so that you can have a fancy box that says Porsche on it.

Our 06 CS (Tit Edit) was bought in Feb 07, and have now 100k miles. I felt that the HID lost a "lot" of intensity over the time, and for about US$ 40, I got a pair on eBay. It took me less than 10 minutes to change both bulbs, and discover on the flight that the original ones were pretty "whitish" (the glass between the two electrodes was pretty opaque, i.e.: like milky) instead of transparent (..like glass should be !) on the new one. Results : much better intensity, ..but I got the feeling that the beam should be adjusted after that change !