Hi All, Well I've been cruising around in my Mk3 and I absolutely love it. Anyway, the only thing I don't like are the lights on dipped beam, they just don't seem to go far enough. My full beam is great but the dipped just seems pathetic, I can barely see far enough to follow the road round corners which is pretty worrying at times. It's not a case of the bulbs being blown so I'm just wondering if I need a new set of bulbs. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just my imagination, any common problems relating to this issue? Cheers
could be alignment? could go for higher wattage bulbs,think anything over 100w is illeagal. i just use ma side lights cos it looks better. (accident looming)
My Twin Headlights are a lot brighter than the original ones, but I wouldn't say that they original ones were underpowered though.
Hmmm, I've been having a read through my Haynes and user manuals and I suspect that someone has had a fiddle with the alignment and arsed it up. I'll have a look at them tomorrow as I cant really make them any worse than they are at the moment. Might look at getting some slightly more powerful ones if that doesn't work. The only reason I'm unhappy is that my old car (ahem, a nova) had better dipped lights so I cant be having that.
Wombar, First up, pay a garage 20 to get the headlights aligned. That should raise the beams enough for you to see where you are going. If that's not enough light, then get some Philips or Osram +50% brightness bulbs. These are still 55/60W bulbs (so road legal), but have a better beam shape. You can get the +30% variety from Halfords, or the +50% variety from www.powerbulbs.com Whatever you do, don't fit 'blue' bulbs, since they reduce your visibiity when foggy. Moving on from there, the next step is to fit relays. These put more voltage into the bulb by bypassing the loom. Have to be done well to be reliable, and there are a ton of websites that we show you how. Don't fit 80/100W bulbs. They are illegal. Further they will fry your headlight switch (at 60 each) unless you have relays. Simon.
Cheers for the reply. I take it that you shouldn't really have a go at doing the alignment yourself? If not I'll have to pay a visit to my local garage to get it done. Edited by: Wombar
You can't do alignment yourself. Garages will have kit to do it, beam just shines into box with a line, and they adjust accordingly.
What model Mk3 do you have? The GTI/VR6 and some other higher spec models have much better lights than the base models - if you look at your headlamps is there one chamber, or two one squarish and one round? If you have the base ones (one chamber) it's worth changing over and won't cost a lot.
I've got a P Reg 8V GTI, yeah I knew about the lights differences coz I had to replace one of the rear clusters when I got the car and the GTI ones are slightly smoked. Edited by: Wombar
you can tell if your allignment is out when you drive in fog, as you can see the light beam goin a bit skewiff, if you know what i mean.
