Hi Folks,

I have a 2003 Octavia estate 1.9 PD Laurin and Klement and I have a bit of a problem. I changed a sidelight bulb on the nearside light and found that, as it was so easy to do, I'd change the Full Beam bulbs to brighter ones to match the xenon dipped beam.

When i put them back together, the self levelling doesn't work on the near side. To enable me to use the car I adjusted the aim manually to match the other.

Now i had a good look at the nearside light, took it to bits, and so have 2 different mechanics (not Skoda but vw/audi group independent specialists) and when trying to access the vcds/ canbus system, there is no control for the lights system.

This has puzzled me and the mechanics.

I have searched and searched topics and forums for this car and nothing matches my set up and i've had no end of problems getting the correct parts for it.

Does anybody have any idea what's going on as I seem to have a car which has been made with a job lot of fancy parts from Skoda. Much as I like the car of course.

Edited 27 May, 201313 yr by Ferg

As far as I know, the nearside lamp has the control unit built in for the self levelling, so the system itself must still be working if the offside is moving.

This suggests that you must have either disturbed the connection to the motor in the nearside lamp, or there may be a broken wire to the motor. I know the wires are very thin.

It is also possible that the motor is faulty and it is just a coincidence that it packed in when you had removed the lamp to change the bulbs.

One other thought, is there anything stopping the the reflector assembly from moving?

Can you hear the motor trying to move?

The lens is moving freely and the motor is still connected to it when I unscrewed it from its housing. Is there a test (ie resistance) I can do off the car? It's difficult to get someone to switch the ignition on ( no mates) but ill try that.

You could try swapping the motor from the side that is working. I wouldn't really recommend fiddling about inside the headlights with them switched on as I think the xenon lamps use about 20,000 volts to ignite, so you don't want to get hold of the wrong bit when they are live.

Did you remove the headlights completely when you changed the lamps?. It is easy to bend or break a pin in the plug when re fitting.

Both right out on the bench. Did a resistance test on the motors. They each have 4 terminals. There seems to be about 3 ohms between terminal 1 and 2 and between 3 and 4 on the good motor ( by the way, I ain't no electrician and these things are tiny, so don't quote me). I found that the bad motor had 3 ohms between only two (forgot exactly which ones). D' ye think that means the motor has bit the dust?

I don't know to be honest. You could try swapping the motors over and see if the good one works in the other lamp.

I've ordered a new motor from fleabay so I'll let you know if it fixes the problem

Replaced the aim motor and it all works now! Job done! Had to manually adjust the aim down again tho, but fixed all the same.