[poorcollegekid]

Alright, I have been battling a faulty driver's side headlight in my 2006 325i sedan for months now. The low beam halogen (H7) has finally gone out, seemingly for good. I have tried replacing the bulb but that isn't the issue. I have also checked all of the fuses associated with the headlights and they are good too. When I inspect the wiring harness that plugs in to the back of the headlight, I can see the insulation has frayed and cracked a bit. I tried individually wrapping those wires (at least the portion that I can reach) with electrical tape, which seemed to solve my problem for a few months but no longer. The yellow warning signal in the car accompanies the headlight being out, so part of me thinks its the car's software stopping the headlight from coming on, but maybe that's a good thing. In all my research I've narrowed the culprit down to a few options:

1. The wiring interior to the headlight is bad. It shorts and when the car starts it cuts power to the headlight for that reason. I need to take it in and get it replaced because I'm not too interested in taking off the front bumper by myself (unless someone tells me it isn't that tough... I'm fairly mechanically savvy but don't have much tooling, especially tooling for BMWs)

2. The footwell module is bad. It has received 50 "headlight out" signals and has given up. I read somewhere that you can't reset this guy, you just have to replace. Makes perfect sense. Thanks a lot BMW.

3. The headlight control module is bad. Do halogen headlights even have headlight control modules?

4. It's something else that I haven't thought of or found on this forum or anywhere else in my hours of research.

I'm frustrated to no end on this one. Usually I can track down issues like this and fix them on my own. I'm a bit at a loss here. Any help or insight or ideas are greatly appreciated! Cheers!

[poorcollegekid]

Bump.

The headlight has come back on for times once or twice so I am ruling out the footwell module for now. I have also had the tiny white auxiliary light drop out in my other headlight once or twice, but it is back to life as well. I'm becoming convinced it's wiring issues causing shorting within the headlights. Has anyone else had this type of issue? Am I on the right track? For the electrical-savvy folks, does the response to treat the bulb as "out" due to a small short at start-up make sense? Thanks in advance for the help!

[techietaichi]

Have you looked at the condition of the bulb housing? My passenger side headlight was throwing codes and working intermittently. I swapped my bulb housing with a spare I had laying around and problem was solved. The darn thing was past it and just burnt out.