Headlight help

[DirtyBeats92]

I have a 2007 corolla, and my passenger headlight is not working properly. The bulb has burned out twice since we first bought our car (new). well a couple of months ago I thought it had burned out a third time and went to replace it and noticed the bulb was not burnt out, so I looked and the plug looked like something had melted it a little but not enough for it to be unusable. So I just stuck the new bulb into the socket and it worked. The other day I saw that the passenger headlight had burned out and I made a note to fix it this coming weekend, but lastnight both headlight were not working, (parking lights do work). I go to change them today and sure enough, the passenger side is burned out but the drivers side is not. So I replace both bulbs anyway and jiggle the connection. The passenger side works like a champ and the driver comes on and goes out randomly. Does anyone happen to have any ideas on how to go about fixing this? I sure would appreciate the help. sorry about.the rambling story but I figured all the details up front might help with any question someone may have.

[TrdSpeed140]

this is a bit of a long winded story/fix, for answer, skip to last few paragraphs.

I had a similar problem a few months ago. I had bought a pair of 9006 (low-beams) Sylvania Sliverstar Ultras a few years back and then after a few years one of them went out (they would flicker sporadically, bumps on the road would wiggle the connections). I pulled the bulb out and the connector looked black, singed/burned/melted, the bulb end looked ok though, singed but not melted. I ended up cutting the pigtail off and putting a junkyard one in and put the same (singed) bulb back in.

A few weeks later the same thing happened to the other side. I bought a brand new pigtail from Advanced Auto and soldered that in. I think, I don't remember exactly, I went through maybe 2 or three more pigtails (they kept burning up/melting) before smacking myself on the forehead for being a cheapass/dumbass, I kept putting in new pigtails but putting the singed bulbs back in!

I guess that when the bulbs were at the end of their life (Silverstars have higher than oem light output but shorter lifespan), instead of the filament winding burning and going Open, the first thing to go was the connector, that's why they were melting (I'm also going to venture a guess and say that the sylvania bulb's plastic had a slightly higher melting temp than the pigtail connectors, it would seem to make sense).

I figured that the singed/blackened stuff on the bulb leads were creating a high resistance which caused the connectors to get excessively hot and melt (since I kept using old, singed bulbs I ended up going through a few too many pigtails).

long story short, get both pigtails replaced with new ones and put in oem or equivalent bulbs, not those brighter supposedly "better output" bulbs. I now just use plain old GE bulbs from Walmart, cheap and effective. I do still use the silverstar ultras for high-beams since their lifespan should be longer since they are not always on.

[DirtyBeats92]

Thanks for the reply, im headed out to get one right now.

[TrdSpeed140]

make sure that the plugs that the bulbs go into are not damaged at all, as in melted, singed, etc., otherwise they'll still keep going out. new plugs and bulbs should be the complete fix.