bruce_hyman

so one of my xenons burned out. asked my gas station to pop in another one while they had the car for an oil change. $102 later we found out that it was the $483 igniter, not the bulb - but of course, the "used" bulb was not returnable. and it turns out that you cannot buy an igniter that fits my 2002 headlamp - so we had to buy a new lamp assembly for another $400 odd. plus $75 to install. total bill over $1200 (not counting the time to compound out the small scratch they put in the fender)..

and while they were at it, the gas station managed to install the lamp incorrectly.. so on my way back to tell them that the next day, one of the tires took a nail.

so they reinstalled the lamp correctly (that is, it fits the housing correctly with all the gaskets in place) but the lamp is aligned so low that the demarc hits the ground about 40 feet in front of the car.

oh, what a joy it is to own a fine piece of German workmanship.

Tgr_Clw

There are also a lot of HID parts for cheap on ebay. Might've saved you a lot.

bruce_hyman

didnt want to futz with ebay - remember, this started off as a bulb replacement. no, i didnt tell the gas station to stop work while i farted around - admit i could have saved a buck. probably not emotionally involved enough to go for ecodes, even though it was tempting. probably could have found somebody who had bought ecodes and taken their us-codes off their hands <g>
thanks for the thoughts...

MB The Body

i have an early 02 (i assume you do as well) and they changed the shape of the ignitor as you know... i had the ecodes in my hands technically for free no less (because it was covered under insurance from an accident), but couldn't make it work with my ignitors

bruce_hyman

yes, a early 02.
i can understand changing the shape of the ignitor and headlamp to improve the product or whatever, but i dont understand why they discontinued the older one - it worked fine for long enough for the warranty to expire! ;-{

MB The Body

don't hold me to it... but iirc there was a shortage of the ignitors... so they just scraped them for a different one and this happened mid 02

bruce_hyman

A running change to deal with a shortage on the part of a supplier is fine with me. but at some point, you should support your embedded customer base. if they went to a new spark plug design midway in the model cycle, would i have to replace the cylinder head?

MB The Body

you'd think they would've at least gone back to the old shape as well just to stock parts to fix old problems/issues

BlackAvantA4Guy

Hot damn...thanks for the heads up. I didn't know that the 2002 are different than other years.

MB The Body

not all of them... just early 02s are different