Hi there

 

I know I've read that a couple of people in the forum have installed xenons on their mk3 Fabias. I just did and I was wondering about the behavior of the lights when the car restarts with auto start/stop. 

 

In my case, when the car shuts down the lights stay on, but when it restarts they blink off for less than a second. The halogens that were installed from factory usually dipped a bit when the engine was restarting - but the xenons are turning completely off for a couple of milliseconds and turning back on.

 

I don't know if it matters, but I noticed that the battery installed in my car is a EFB one (enhanced flooded battery, 59Ah) but the owners manual also states that some cars have a AGM one (maybe with more amps).

 

Looking forward for your feedback!

Thanks!

Edited 24 July, 20169 yr by peipe

Battery type, yes I think all the petrol engined cars will get the EFB batteries and probably all the diesel engined cars will get the AGM ones.  EFB is minimum needed for STOP/START as normal batteries are not rated for high numbers of engine starts.

 

My wife's Polo has LED head lights and you don't notice any flicker when the engine restarts, I would have hoped that you would not notice much with the halogen bulbs, bit of a shame that the xenons are getting flashed OFF/ON!

Turn off the auto start-stop. If anything it will ruin the battery very fast if used in urban stop-and-go traffic as it will never be fully charged.

It may save you a few drops of fuel but that will be compensated by the cost of batteries. And probably also xenon-bulbs which certainly do not like to be switched on and off frequently.

LED's use much less power than halogens or even HID's. So they shouldn't flicker. 

 

It wont do the HID's any good to keep having a drop in power tbh. They don't like being restarted. 

 

I'd turn off the stop-start too. It's not really up to much unless you do alot of city driving imo. 

Yes of course the LED headlights use a lot less power, but in general, an LED device will respond - ie flicker - to any change in voltage like when re-start is initiated a lot more than a filament bulb. I totally agree with retro fit Xenons, they must get protected from frequent restarting.

 

I'm finding that what I initially thoiught was a flashing/flickering LED light bulb, is probably just an LED light bulb responding to load switching in the house - something that a filament bulb would be buffered against due to the mass of the filament.

Thanks for the feedback! I had tried to install some LED headlights but there is really not much space to work with, the xenons use the same space as the halogen ones. Also, the LEDs I saw were not rated for as many lumens as the xenons are.

 

I've been disabling the stop/start at nights when the lights are on, it's just annoying that it resets to on after power cycling the car... Probably you can disable via VagCom though.