My 2005 Superb Elegance nearly failed it's MOT yesterday due to the adjusters being broken on the offside headlight. The garage managed to adjust it so it passed, but said that I would probably need a new headlamp unit for it to pass next year. I would imagine that a complete xenon headlight would cost a fortune (?) or is there another way to fit some new adjusters? Any advice would be gratefully received!

The Hella headlamp adjusters are crap. The shaft rusts, expands, splits the nylon gears which then fall off.

There is an easy fix. Remove the Hella adjusters so you just have a rusty shaft sticking out of the back of the lamp unit. Drill a 1.5 mm hole near the free end for a cross pin. Thread a small compression spring onto the shaft and then fit the pin to hold it. You can then adjust the lamps by turning the shaft with your fingers using the cross pin as a handle. You need to fit a spring in order to keep the optic assembly preloaded against its internal shoulder.

rotodiesel.

Thank you very much for the advice,

Well when my B5 Passat failed after the dealer tried to adjust the HIDs at the car's second MOT (I think), I was not well pleased, a new light housing took 3 or 4 days to come in from Germany then an hour or two to strip out failed housing, rebuild using new housing and refit to the car - quite a lot of money, over £300 rings a bell - and that was back in 2003 or 2004. Out of badness I made sure I got the old housing back and its still resting in the attic!