I just got my headlights replaced under warranty for haziness inside the housings. I noticed right away that the new bulbs seem to be a more white light, whereas my old ones were more bluish.

Have the HID headlights been changed since my 8 was built back in 06/2003?

Or, do the bulbs change color over time? My old headlights had almost 43k mi. on them.

Also, the new headlights came back out of alignment. It looks like two different cuttoff areas now, with the closest area brighter than the further cuttoff area. Also, the diagonal line is further over to my right now. Kind of like this:

________----------
________----------

Where as before it was just like this:

_____----------------

Any ideas?...aside from having the dealer re-align them.

I was very happy with my old headlights, aside from the haziness and my worry that it would get worse, so I'm a little salty that I have seen a bit of a downgrade in performance and color output.

 

with 43K miles on your last set of headlights, if you did use them often enough, HID bulbs do color change. phillips 4300k start to look like 5000k after a lot of useage. but that should be a symptom of the bulb, not the headlight.

there are threads on this forum that will help you align the headlights yourself if you wish. just don't start blinding people on the road.

 

The dealer replaced the entire headlight assemblies (over $800 a piece!), but I'm not sure if the replaced the bulbs too. Would it be standard procedure to replace the bulbs as well? I should probably call and ask.

My old headlights were very blue when you first turn them on, and within a second or two they would gradually fade into a little more of a white light-

Post 420

smoke em if you got em

 

that's what the bulbs do when you turn on the headlights. the headlights need to get to operating temperature and it appears bluer at first and turns to it's normal color light which is slight yellow with white.

 

that's 100% correct.