Has anyone had an excessive number of low beam bulbs "blow" in their volvo cars?
We own a 2004 XC70 and we have replace the driver side low beam bulb at least 6 times in the past 3 years. We have owned many other cars for a longer period of time and have never had to replace blown bulbs.
What gives with these Volvo bulbs and cars?
You may get the odd faulty bulb, but not 6 - so it's unlikely to be that.
One thing that *can* cause fulbs to fail is faulty alternator voltage regulation, resulting in too high a voltage - but in that case I would expect other bulbs to fail - not just those in a particular position.
I would be inclined to look for a dodgy connection anywhere in the feed to that bulb. If a bulb keeps going on and off when it's supposed to be on all the time, that will dramatically shorten its life. Trace the wiring back to the point where it's common with the other side, and make sure that all connectors are tight. Disconnect and reconnect each connector several times in order to exercise the contacts and remove any slight corrosion which may be preventing a good contact.
In my 2004 XC70 I had this problem. I also was blowing fuses occasionally. It cost me $125.00 to find out that the bulb manufacturer had wires that "crossed" in the bulb assembly. Sometime the fuses blew and sometimes I needed to replace the bulbs and did so with similar faulty bulbs. So much for engineering!
So is it just a case of buying bulbs from another manufacturer ? E.G Philips or Osram ?
Nick
Volvo's were well known for short-lived headlights; thta was true at least for my 2000 S-40. I think there was a fix that the dealer installed during a routine service. the daytime running lights use the same bulbs as the low-beam nighttime light, and I've noticed that when I switch between the daytime lights and nighttime lights at night, the daytime lights are dimmer.
A while back there were gripes of short headlamp life. It made me wonder if there are either thermal or vibration/resonance issues with the headlamp assemblies on some of these cars.
Do the headlights flicker occasionally? Does the socket appear to be leaking water or corroded?
I would clean the bulb connections throughly and try it again.
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