This is my third Mazda and first time needing help on forum which shows how kick butt these cars are. Anyway, I have looked all around this site for a similar problem to no avail: Here it is: My low beam headlight on the Driver's side of my 2008 Mazda 6 went out. I went to Autozone and purchased a Sylvania H1 Xtravision halogen lamp bulb. This is the fourth time in two years that I've had to replace a lamp bulb on this car (2 x passenger, 2 x now on drivers). I checked the bulb that I pulled out and it is exactly the same model and make as one I am replacing that lasted approximately a year. I used rubber gloves during the whole process. I put some vasoline on the wire connector and bulb connector. After I installed the new bulb and turned on the headlight switch, I saw smoke coming from the area where the wire connects to the bulb. In fact, the plastic housing melted. I turned the switch off of course. The plastic had melted enough that I could just pull the square plastic housing off the wire and I re-checked that I had the bulb in correct and that the connecting wire wasn't corroded. I attached the wire again to bulb, turned on light switch again and smoke came up again...this time from housing. the bulb was burned out now. After this, I checked the fuse box. Nothing burnt out. I thought maybe (even with gloves) I had compromised the bulb. So, with gloves on again, I put bulb #2 in and connected it. Same result, smoke came from connection I think. I had this sucker on a short leash and turned off light switch before bulb burned out. So what the heck? All the other lights work. No smoking on any other connections. The passenger side headlight works fine (even though I have had to replace it twice over last year and a half as well). All other electrical is fine. Only other repairs done to car in last year have been recall on passenger air bag and the control module on radiator fan. Please help or I may lose my frigin' mind!

 

I forgot to update my own post. I discovered that I used too much frigin' vaseline and that's what was smoking. It was on the wire and both bulps. Wouldn't have thought it would cause that much smoke. But oh well.