The headlights wouldnt work on my 51 plate WRX. I pulled the rubber covers back to see the halogen bulb plugs had melted...on both sides!!!!

Does anyone know how/why this has happened??

 

Not sure if this isn relevant but the battery needed changing a couple of days back?

 

I had the same after fitting some "not for road use" high wattage bulbs (120 watts)
If you are not running high wattage bulbs there could be something wrong with the grounding/earth cables.

 

That plug has at least one of it's connectors sprained: just look at how wide apart the curved edges are on the connector on the left.

Now unless YOU did that getting it off, it will have been making a por contact.
Poor contact means resistance and resistance means heat.

 

alcazar, i may have done that trying to get the bulb off...but i will look at the O/S and see how it is compared to the N/S

 

Do you know about squeezing the two sides of the connector in it's rubber sheath to release it?

 

I do mate, its just it was welded in due to the melted plastic..i had to get a set of grips on it.

 

Ah, OK.

 

changed a burnt out bulb drivers side and decided to do the passenger side as well... it was very hot and partially melted.

where do i go for a replacement? dealer? did some searching but no luck except in the US

its a 98 mkII legacy 2.0 non-turbo

thanks guys!

 

have a bad habit of searching and not finding anything... posting a question and then minutes later finding the answer!

anyhow I will order based on this post

https://www.scoobynet.com/showpost.p...69&postcount=2

I assume I only need the black plug and not the harness... I think this will do the trick because after I pushed in the plug on my car and drove around again it was no longer hot so it was probably not installed properly and/or corroded and then melted...

hopefully no deeper issues than that...

 

Hi my classic did this go to the scrap yard and get on most cars will have these just find out what bulb it takes and ask them, cut the cables about 6" long and reconnectto your wiring loom theres only 3 wires on each it cost me £1 each.

 

beauty of living in the UK... they have sold around 150 Subarus per year in Slovenia for the past 5 to 10 years

as opposed to 10 to 15 thousand Renaults or about 7 to 10 thousand VW's per year... the smallest cars of every manufacturer account for 96% of total sales...

... needless to say Subaru spare parts are hard to come by... it would be cheaper for me to buy another legacy for 500 EUR for spare parts but I have nowhere to put it!

so I ordered the plugs and it will cost me 10 EUR with shipping... probably less than the cost of gas to go find some used parts.... gas cost is killing me