So I had brought a 2005 2.3 Mazda 3 hatchback and had some unfortunate luck. I was making a left turn and some moron used a right turn only lane to get ahead of the traffic at the light and gunned as the light turned green and tried to change lanes in the intersection, she pulled out in front of me and wrecked the front end of my car. I had a body shop look at the car and write up an estimate and it came out to $7,000 and she won't talk to her insurance so the investigation is taking forever.

I just had a baby and need to go to work so I couldn't just wait around so I had a very cheap body shop repair the car and needless to say the work wasn't great. He didn't match the color, the car was that dark gun metal gray color, which I really liked but he just painted half the car black. Beggars can't be choosers so I really didn't care as long as the car drove safely, which it does.

But I had to replace both headlights with aftermarket headlights that my girlfriend had bought off of ebay. They look exactly the same but I'm having some problems with the low beams at night. They put a dead blub back in so I replaced that but the lighting doesn't look great and I can't figure out why. The bracket that holds the bulb is the dumbest thing I've ever seen and I'm having a hard time getting the bulbs to match so I get a straight lighting line, not a crooked one. Also it looks lik the bulbs are pointing at the ground to much and the lighting height isn't where it should be.

I'm just curious if anyone has had these problems and what the best halogen blubs are. I want to put really good ones in because I'm gun shy driving the car as is because of the accident and even more so at night because the headlights aren't doing a good job. I think its the bulbs and how I'm trying to mount them.


Thanks for reading and any help would be appreciated.

 

First question, where are you located?

Second question it sounds like you're describing carbon grey mica, which (in the US) was only available in 2005 on the sp23 limited special edition..... really it didn't end up being 'limited' as nearly every option it came with became available on the subsequent GT trim level in '06, but it was limited for that year. Does you car have red and silver "sp23" badges on the sides?

The reason I ask those two questions is because if you are in the US, and do have a sp23 then your car should have HID headlights, not halogens.

Third any pictures of these aftermarket headlights? Are they an actual aftermarket, or are they just an OEM clone?

As to damages and who pays for what...... that's what insurance is for. Regardless of fault (and especially where there's an issue with an extended investigation) your insurance company should have footed the bill to have your car repaired properly and then they should have sought recompense from the other driver's insurance. You shouldn't have had to end up in the position of having to decide between settling for substandard repairs or not going to work to support your family. If for some reason your insurance company wasn't backing you up then I'd suggest you start looking for another insurance company. Assuming you didn't pay for the full $7k in repairs out of pocket I'm guessing you went with less extensive repairs and unless you have a truly astronomical deductible still went through your insurance anyway. If you did go through your insurance then I'd start looking through fine print to see what they'd do to cover you if you're not satisfied with the repairs you get.

Regardless let's just assume for the sake of conversation that you have the appropriate headlights on your car. Yes the headlight retention clip is a huge PITA to get to and manipulate. It's one of the crowning annoyances with the 3. If the lamp isn't seated properly in the rear of the projector then it can very easily mess up the beam pattern as you're describing. It's also possible that the lights were simply never aimed properly after they were replaced. The lamp has an alignment tab which should seat into a notch in the back of the projector. If the lamp is seated properly then you'll likely want to check the aim of the projector itself. You should be able to move it by turning two bolts on the back of the housing.... one will adjust vertical, the other horizontal. IIRC the outer most one does horizontal.

If the retention clip infuriates you too significantly then just remove the front bumper cover and the headlight housings themselves. Then you can actually look at the back of the projector and use more than a single finger tip to get the clip back in place. I realise I just suggested taking apart the front of your car but it's really not as bad as it sounds. I've removed mine several times and can have the bumper cover off in less than 10 minutes. You have to remove: 8-10 screws under the front, two plastic screws in the front of each wheel well, one bolt in the back upper corner where the bumper meets the fender (accessed from behind the wheel well trim), two pop clips in the front center of the grill, and two bolts in the center. Then you literally just pop the sides loose and pick it up. The headlights themselves are held in with...... 3 or 4 bolts. If the lights are really out of whack then you could leave them connected but pull them out a little bit and doing a general reaim would be much easier like this. Then once you put everything back in place you could do the fine aiming, but at least you'd be doing most of the work with more space for your hands to work with.

As to the "best halogens"...... there really aren't any. Unless you go to higher wattage lamps then all 55w halogens you'd replace with are going to emit basically the same amount of light. I don't recommend increased wattage lamps by the way as they can actually burn or melt your wiring or the housing itself. I wouldn't waste money on any blue filtered lamps which try to look like they give off more light.... they don't, and they generally cost significantly more and burn out quicker to boot. Why? Because they generally boost the light output of the filament to compensate for the amount of light being filtered out by the blue layer. So my suggestion for halogens is whatever regular inexpensive ones you can find at the auto parts store. Even the dealer ones are perfectly fine if they don't charge you crazy amounts. Whatever you do make sure to keep the black adapter that's on the back of the lamp as you'll need it to: A) take up the space for the retention clips to actually hold the lamp, and B) change the spacing of the connectors so the car's wiring will actually connect to the lamp.

Once you confirm that the lights are seated correctly and aimed properly if you're still not satisfied with their performance then I'd recommend installing a HID kit in your car. The price of kits has come down significantly over the past several years to where you can get a reasonably reliable kit for $30-50. Stick with a ~4300k color temp and you'll be putting out about 3x as much light as your halogens. If you want to go a few steps further you can replace the frosted projector lens with a clear one which will increase your output appreciably.

Sorry about the super long reply. Hopefully I gave you somewhat of an answer to your question without raising even more questions. Let us know if we can help out any more.

 

I live in San Antonio, Texas.


and I'm pretty sure that's the color, as for the badges, I know they are on the car but I'm not sure if they have red on them as I'm in bed and don't want to walk downstairs. I know the 2.3 is chrome but I'm not sure if there is red in it. I'll look tomorrow.

But here is the ebay auction for the headlights : 04 05 06 Mazda 3 Hatchback Headlight Headlamp Pair NEW | eBay


I used to drive a 69 SS Chevelle so I'm not too familiar with modern cars. My Chevelle was so simple to fix, compared to my Mazda 3, it's like getting a man on the moon. I have no idea what I'm really doing with my Mazda, I'm just using the small amount of common sense I do have to try and figure this out.

I was reading some things online and saw that HID's were the best but required some mods to get them to work and I wasn't sure how difficult it would be so I thought I'd try the halogens first.

Do you have a favorite pair HID's or a know of a good one that easy to figure out?


-Thanks

 

Cool, I asked because if you do have the carbon grey paint and are in the US then you do have a sp23. The carbon grey was an available regular color in some other countries like Canada. Incidentally check the sticker in the driver's door jamb for the color code. Carbon grey's color code is 28B. The way you descirbed it it really has to be that color since the only other gray color that year was titanium grey which was much lighter. For example.

Carbon grey sp23


Titanium grey


Yeah, the regular 3 just has 2.3 badges vs. the sp23 badges on the 'special' edition. You can see the badges I'm talking about in the picture above. In addition to the badges if you have the sp23 you'll have leather, LED tail lights, auto-wipers/headlights, etc. The reason I'm confused over all of this is I thought the sp23 came standard with HIDs. I know most of them had the Bose stereo, but apparently that was one of the single option packages. Perhaps HIDs were as well.

Yeah, those look like regular headlights. I asked because there are some knock off aftermarket ones that have truly horrendous quality on the interior pieces.


A little common sense goes a long way.

HID's don't necessarily require modification to get them to work, at least not in our cars. The big thing is the 3 already has projector headlights for the low beam, and though the projector quality isn't as good as the OEM HID projectors they're still pretty darn good. For installing HIDs you basically swap the halogen lamp with the HID one, plug the HID lamp into it's ballast (power unit) and then plug your stock halogen wiring into the ballast wiring. That's it.

Now it's certainly possible to do a few other modifications to get the most out of the HIDs. You can swap the stock frosted lens on the projector with a clear one which clears up the beam/cutoff and increases the output slightly. You can paint the projector shield to reduce glare above the cutoff, and can even trim a little tab off of the shield to completely eliminate it. None of those are strictly necessary to install HIDs, but they do make them look much better.

Like I said pretty much no HIDs are difficult to figure out. Put them in the lights and plug them up to power and you're done. I personally have DDM slimline HIDs and they work fine.... had them in for about 2 years now without issue.

 

The interior is cloth, it has the auto wipers but not auto lights and for the bose audio, I'm not sure, it doesn't have the bose badges on it but the stereo does sound very good.

as for the lights : DDM Premium Slimline HID Kit #DDM - Revolution Performance Motorsports!

is this your pair? and the bulbs are H7's right?

-Thanks

 

Based on what you'd said about the aim, I'm guessing that the bulbs are not seated properly which may be caused if the adapters are missing. This would cause the bulb to face up which would throw the light pattern down on the road.

The only two options for the US based sp23's were auto or std trans, and the navagation system... @ $1700!!!! Not a popular option and for good reason.

The Bose 6-disc was std and if you have the small subwoofer under the passenger side seat you can confirm this. Leather was std, brown or black. Auto wipers and headlights were std too. They also had "bright finished" wheels... same 17"er's as the std 3's, but they had a finish which resembles polished aluminum instead of the duller painted silver.

In short, and based on your description of the car, I'm not sure what you have? It could be a FrankenMazda?

Oh and the way I deal with the f%^(*&$g clips is to get the hand-held mirror from our bathroom and when I can't feel the clip back into place, shine the mirror behind the HL assem. Easiest and best solution I have found.

I have been replacing all kinds of halogen "envelopes" in all kinds of light assemblies for... 30yrs(?) now and have NEVER seen a more frustrating clip than that one.

 

I'm getting the opposite, the bulb is facing downward and not lighting enough of the road up. The first couple of feet in front of the car are glowing with light and after that it just fades away. The light cuts off at about 20 inches from the ground up when I'm 6 feet from my garage door. above those 20 inches is a thick line of some sort of dull light then above that is darkness. And I messed with aiming bolt, I only saw one, next to the actual bulb and it didn't look like it moved the light up nor down. Come to think of it, I can't really notice anything it did, maybe aimed the bulb left to right? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure how to raise the beam so I can see 10 feet in front of my car.

I'm about one frustration headache away from dropping this thing off at a dealer or mechanic and taking a hit just to get this over with.

 

Do you have the black adapter/spacers that the bulbs plug into, then the cars wiring harness plugs into them? Without that, the bulb will never be tight in the housing. And thatis likely where your problems are coming from.