Olivia, and other cars of her species, and close species (Golf MKIV’s, some Seats and Skoda’s) and vintage, i.e, almost all Audi A3 8L’s have a little problem with their headlights – they are plastic, and eventually degrade, causing what was a good headlight to be worse than a candle at 20 miles, with your eyes shut.
What really did it for me thought, was driving home one night, and Olivia was casting her own shadow, in her own headlights light, from the headlights of the car behind !
Something had to be done – so Fleabay was where I went….. and picked up a pair of headlamp units for about 80 quid.
I know people have effectively T-cut these lights, basically polishing them to take off the damaged outer layer, and have seen very good results, however, the fact that mine were cloudy was only part 1 of the problem.
When I first got the car, my job was a long commute, mostly in the dark, and the left headlight kept blowing dipped bulbs, and it took me a couple of bulbs before I found out why.
To adjust the beam level, there is a movable reflector mechanism inside the headlamp unit itself – and this is tilted backwards and forwards via an electric motor, some models this is automatically done via sensors on the suspension, on mine however, it is set by a potentiometer next to the dash light level control.
On my left headlamp unit the plastic that all held the reflector to the motor mechanism had been broken, and the reflector was just bouncing around inside the unit – which as I was going along, was causing early mechanical stress failures to the bulb filament.
I’d worked around this by using a two part epoxy resin hole filler material to jam the reflector into a “normal” position (I didn’t carry heavy loads, so I didn’t need the adjustable nature!) – but as the cloudy-ness was now another problem – it made more sense to junk the lights and replace – after all, 80 quid isn’t actually a lot of money for these units.
So – to work.
Firstly – what the Haynes manual says – we need to take off the front bumper – and according to that manual – you need two people – I didn’t have two people – and so long as you are prepared and careful, frankly it doesn’t require two people.
It’s a doddle really – pop 4 plastic rivets out of the top of where the bonnet shuts – but – and it’s key – mine had clearly been removed before I got to the job, as the central pins were already missing.
If your’s aren’t already missing – there are a few hacks about online that allow you to get around either preventing their loss – or hacking their replacements.
(Note – I didn’t replace the central pins – I decided I wouldn’t bother!)
Once these pins are removed, get down on the ground and disconnect the leads from the fog lights if you have them (I do).
Then, work around the inside wheel arches, and remove the 5 or 6 screws that attach the bumper to the inner wheel arch.
Then – you are ready.
With a bit of persuasion, the edges of the bumper come out from around the outside of the wheel arches, and you can (with or without your helper) now carefully remove the front bumper – ending up with a car as per the shot on the right:
Looks funny doesn’t it ? Almost …. undressed. That silver bar is the front impact protection bar.
The headlight units come out easy enough – disconnect the bunch of cables – there are at least three – one for the indicator lights (Olivia being a 52 plate means she is a facelift model, and thus has headlamp and indicators as all one unit), one for the main lights (sides,dipped and main beam) and one for the electric motor for level adjustment.
Then you have a couple of screws – the one on the outside (nearest the wing) might require a rather long extension to you screwdriver bits – or one of those long screwdrivers – but easy enough.
What I’ve not mentioned here at all …. yet …. is that quite clearly when you have replaced the lights, the beam alignment might well be somewhat “off”… Well, two ways around that – either do this work immediately before an MOT test, and let the nice MOT person tweak it for you, or, prepare yourself first, and *BEFORE* taking the lights out, turn them on, and put marks on a wall, or other suitable material placed in front of the lights – and on replacement, use your marks and adjust accordingly.
Putting the units back in is simply the reverse of taking them out – but – I would recommend attaching the cable to the indicators before screwing the lights in – I found them a little difficult to attach with my hands.
I would also recommend looking at the condition of the indicator bulbs whilst the units are out, and seeing if there is much of the orange coating left, and potentially replace as a precaution – which is what I did.
See – that is how cloudy the lights were – pathetic eh ?
It’s no real wonder that the amount of useful light being shone onto the road wasn’t really good enough.
I guess this is a downside to the move from glass headlamp lenses which don’t react to UV and go cloudy over time, but are that much more susceptible to chips and breakages from stones thrown up from the cars in front.
That is so much clearer isn’t it ?
First day I used them in the dark after replacement, I really did wonder why I hadn’t replaced them sooner – not quite night and day comparison, and still no-where close to the same as the Xenon’s of my RS4 – but, ever so much more useful, and so much safer.
Now that’s what I call a before and after shot – you can clearly see how cloudy and useless the old lights were.
