Last Wednesday ordered spare bulb kit for a week's trip to France on Thursday. Today I telephoned to see if they had come in only to be told that none available and are on back order. Would the generic kits you can get onboard ferry be OK for FL Octavia.

Last Wednesday ordered spare bulb kit for a week's trip to France on Thursday. Today I telephoned to see if they had come in only to be told that none available and are on back order. Would the generic kits you can get onboard ferry be OK for FL Octavia.

Halford sell a kit for the Octavia. Can't comment on it, just seen them in the store.

Halford sell a kit for the Octavia. Can't comment on it, just seen them in the store.

Thanks for quick reply.

I got the Halfords kit after the local Skoda dealer didn't even know what I was talking about when I asked for the bulb kit - same thing happened when I asked about getting a warning triangle that fitted the mountings in the boot of the car. Halfords and micksgarage.ie both got business that dealership could have easily had thanks to that one, a VW garage got to do the next service too...

Also for France you'll need a luminous vest which you need to be able to get at from inside the car, so not stored in the boot, to meet their regulations - I have it in the storage box under the passenger seat.

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by psycholist

I think the european law regarding having a bulb kit has rather been overtaken by the vehicle designers.Some cars need the bumper removed to gain access to a headlight bulb.Many VAG cars need the hand size of a 10 year old to remove a bulb.I had to make a special tool to fit a 9N Polo front side light .The left dip headlight bulb on the Polo needs the battery to removed . What about the high level brake lights ? To remove these requires the complete tailgate trim to be removed !

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by vwcabriolet1971

The french will still jump on you if you don't have it.

I use a basic H7 kit, then get an additional H1, w4w, P21W, PY21W and one other I can't think of right now.

If people are genuinely interested I could do a dedicated kit list, but that would be effort.

Edited 20 July, 201015 yr by cheezemonkhai

I think the european law regarding having a bulb kit has rather been overtaken by the vehicle designers.Some cars need the bumper removed to gain access to a headlight bulb.Many VAG cars need the hand size of a 10 year old to remove a bulb.I had to make a special tool to fit a 9N Polo front side light .The left dip headlight bulb on the Polo needs the battery to removed . What about the high level brake lights ? To remove these requires the complete tailgate trim to be removed !

That's why I love the way the whole headlight slides out of the front of the Octy and the rear light clusters are very easy to get at. I'm not sure the high level brake light not working is considered a problem as they're not mandatory in the first place AFAIK. Only complaint is that the plug for the wires to the headlight have to be released with a screwdriver from the bottom of the assembly and this is a bit tight, but compared to removing the whole front bumper to get at one headlight on a friend's Seat Ibiza like I did last Thursday, it's a hell of a lot better .

I got a spare bulb kit with everything I needed (and more) from Tesco.

It was was about £5 or £6, and included 3 different sizes of headlight bulb as well as tail bulbs, etc. That was less than I paid for a single headlight bulb at Halfords!

I got a spare bulb kit with everything I needed (and more) from Tesco.

It was was about £5 or £6, and included 3 different sizes of headlight bulb as well as tail bulbs, etc. That was less than I paid for a single headlight bulb at Halfords!

I got a Philips H7 spare bulb/fuse kit from here the other week with next day delivery, £9.99 all in - My link

The octy headlights are indeed easy to access and without any tools. All I would say though is while the dipped/main and indicator bulbs are swappable in seconds, the W5W side light fitting is a real bugger to get out unless you have hands/fingers the size of a small child (in fact maybe I should have got my 4 year old to do it). I had to use a couple of small screwdrivers eventually to ease the thing out when I fitted a pair of Philips blue visions as a cheaper alternative to going down the full HID/xenon conversion route (and they look great)...

I got a spare bulb kit with everything I needed (and more) from Tesco.

It was was about £5 or £6, and included 3 different sizes of headlight bulb as well as tail bulbs, etc. That was less than I paid for a single headlight bulb at Halfords!

Ye Gods, Tesco sell everything even car light bulbs!

Asked dealer to cancel my order for bulbs because I can get them at Halfords (or Tesco) - lo and behold no need to back order they will be in tomorrow first thing so I can pick em up before setting off for Dover.

At the risk of being pedantic the law in France says you need to carry a set of bulbs, it doesn't specify that you need to be able to fit them! Still at least you don't need to paint your headlights yellow anymore.

Don't forget to convert the headlights to a flat beam for continental driving... Takes a couple of minutes and all you need is a small screwdriver to do the job (Unless you have Xenons and the Maxidot option to convert automatically)...

We were not advocating that you don't need to carry spare bulb kits in France but were merely trying to show how stupid this law is when applied to modern cars.There must tens of thousands of unused bulb kits in car glove boxes that are never likely to be used because of the difficulty in replacement. Do the French police check that all the bulbs in the kit cover all possible bulb failures in each car model ? . This law is typical of E.U. legislation.

Don't forget to convert the headlights to a flat beam for continental driving... Takes a couple of minutes and all you need is a small screwdriver to do the job (Unless you have Xenons and the Maxidot option to convert automatically)...

Good point.

Unfortunately, I do have xenons but the salesman forgot to say you have to have Maxidot as well. This is an ongoing saga with dealer. Just goes to show that a small lapse by the salesman can ruin an otherwise reasonable car (if one ignores the strange zinging noise coming from the boot area!).

Ye Gods, Tesco sell everything even car light bulbs!

I forgot to mention that the Tesco bulb kit was on sale in the Tesco petrol station - I don't know if they have them in the main store too. I just happened to see them as I was paying for my fuel and grabbed them at the bargain price.

We were not advocating that you don't need to carry spare bulb kits in France but were merely trying to show how stupid this law is when applied to modern cars.There must tens of thousands of unused bulb kits in car glove boxes that are never likely to be used because of the difficulty in replacement. Do the French police check that all the bulbs in the kit cover all possible bulb failures in each car model ? . This law is typical of E.U. legislation.

I guess it just depends how awkward "les flics" are feeling. I've been to France maybe 15 times by car over the last 20 years and I've only been stopped by the police once, and then they didn't check the spare bulbs at all. I've always taken the set I bought for my Citroen AX in 1990 regardless of the car I'm in (well maybe with an H7 or two just to bring things up to date). You are correct that changing bulbs on recent models is a royal pain but I don't think its E.U. legislation, If so the French had a law of their own that preceded it.

Come to think of it if it was E.U. law wouldn't that mean you'd need to carry spare bulbs in the UK too?

I wonder if the bulbs last longer these days, hence they can get away with making them harder to change?

Edited 22 July, 201015 yr by juan27

I forgot to mention that the Tesco bulb kit was on sale in the Tesco petrol station - I don't know if they have them in the main store too. I just happened to see them as I was paying for my fuel and grabbed them at the bargain price.

Yep they have them in my local Tesco Extra