I got up early to catch the best of the Winter sun, as I expected the job to be a lot harder than it actually was. Within 15 minutes I had the front bumper loose and the lights out of the car. As they came out both spilt significant quantities of water on to the floor. As it was cold I took them indoors and started to get out as much water as I could, there was still an awful lot in there, my Wife's hairdryer was pressed in to duty to get the rest of it out over the next few hours.
Somebody has tried at least twice to fix them in the past but had used silicon, possibly when they were still wet and it simply wasn't adhering to either the abs plastic case or the clear plastic lens. I spent a good hour removing all trace of silicon and then set about sealing it with a hot melt glue gun. Well that didn't work, I think my glue sticks were crap, it just pulled off again when it had set. I did the job again with PU adhesive - that stuff sticks to anything and everything, I am pretty sure they won't leak now.
They will be left overnight to fully set, they will get another good blast with the hair dryer before they are put back together and put back on the car. I am absolutely gob smacked that one of the light was working, both ballasts were absolutely full of water and the striking voltage for the D1S bulbs is 1200 volts, it's amazing there wasn't a fireworks display going on in there.
I am now waiting for Amazon to turn up with 2 new bulbs and 1 new ballast, i don't think I will need the bulbs but at just 17 quid for 2 it won't hurt to have them in as spares.
Sunday morning was dry, which was a relief, I had heard some rain in the night and was a bit worried that my cunning plan would be thwarted. I can always use my mate's workshop but I like to do stuff at home when I can. Anyway the light units went back together and went back in to the car very easily and quickly. I was very pleased to see the new ballast working on the driver's side light, I was less pleased to see the passenger side had now stopped working. To be fair I wasn't massively surprised, the ballast had been absolutely full of water, it was a miracle it had worked at all. I have ordered another one off Amazon and will have to wait for it to arrive, I have put the car back together in the mean time, I still haven't actually driven the bloody thing. it was delivered with a virtually empty fuel tank and the last thing I wanted to do was run out of diesel and knacker the incredibly expensive high pressure pump in the process. Malc lent me a 20 litre jerry can full of the magic stuff, which meant I could fill the tank enough to make absolutely sure. I don't think it's reading correctly though, the 20 litres only gave me 140 miles on the trip computer, I think it should be an awful lot more than that. I will see what happens when I fill it right up, Russ tells me his car says between 720 and 780 on a full tank, I would be very happy to get anywhere near that.
Anyway, I digress, sorry, didn't mean to do that, I shall lock myself in my room and have a long hard think about what I did there. In the mean time I ned to go in to the car config and turn off the setting that turns the lights on as soon as I unlock the car. It's a silly idea.
Bit of an update - it's been a couple of weeks now, the lights are still working ok but I got a bit of moisture back in them - not a lot but enough to have me scratching my head as to how the hell it got in there. Maybe it was already there and the heat of the lights caused it to turn to vapour and then condense again on the freezing cold lens. I dried them again, this time without taking them off the car and have left the rear caps off - the ones you remove to replace the bulbs. My theory is that if air can circulate the moisture within it won't condense so easily and the heat from the engine will hlp dry out any residual moisture. I will update again in another month, this is a big problem or Insignia owners, there are less and less used units available and new ones are now over 800 quid each, 2 of them cost as much as a good used 2010 model car. It's madness.
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