I have a 59 plate VRS with xenon headlights, and seem to have issues with faulty lights warning on the dash - it cannot make it's mind up whether I have a blown bulb or not! When I put my headlights on, sometimes the warning light come on and at other times it stays off. Although on one occasion i did find a blown bulb in the rear sidelight cluster.

Anybody else had this issue?

Another query is the sidelight bulb above the main headlight - on cars fitted with xenons. Is this meant to come on when the headlights are on? The bulb appears to be blue.

Thanks for your help.

Do you have Maxidot? If so this will tell you exactly which bulb is causing the warning.

If not then you'll just get the orange light which shows a bulb with an exclamation mark inside.

Are you saying that the warning only comes on when you turn on your dipped headlights?

The side lights on the facelift vRS are dummies and do not work. the LED DRL's dim to perform the function of sidelights. The 5W bulbs in the main headlight are therefore redundant and not wired up.

Thanks for the reply.

No, there's no maxidot, so all I get is the warning bulb with the exclamation mark.

If the warning is going to show, it only appears when the headlights are on, but even with the headlights on, the warning doesn't always show.

I suspected that the front side lights were dummies, but I thought it would be useful to check - I have recently seen a facelifted octy with sidelights working, so they must have added lights as an extra..

The non-vRS facelift Octavia's do use the 5W bulbs in the headlights.

It is only the vRS that doesn't use them as it has the LED DRL's instead.

As the non-vRS and vRS Octavia's both use the same headlights I suspect Skoda simply fitted the 5W bulbs into the vRS headlights to avoid having two holes where they would normally be. Saying that they have gone to the extra effort of fitting the bulbs with the blue tint on the vRS even though they'll never work (there is no wiring)!

With the bulb warning on have you checked all of the lights?

It is worth noting that the Octavia has four separate tail lights in each rear cluster in the shape of the letter 'C', it can be easy to miss one.

Also the rear number plate lights are monitored too.

The fact that the warning only comes on occasionally suggests:

- A faulty bulb

- A dodgy connection

- A poor earth

- An electrical glitch

Each time the 'bulb warning' light is displayed a fault is logged on the car's ECU. If you are able to read this fault code it will tell you where the issue is.

Once when I was sat in traffic I got the bulb warning for a brake light, although it soon went out never to return. I checked the brake lights too and all were OK. A few months later whilst in for service they replaced the bulb even though it was working as they were able to see that the car had recorded the faulty bulb.

Thanks for all this. I agree with your diagnosis about the potential wiring problem - might be worth me checking all the bulbs are seated correctly.

I initially didn't spot the number of bulbs in the rear light cluster, but did eventually - good job the bulbs are little 'uns!

I'll see what happens when it goes in for it's last service before the warranty expires later this month.