I've Just bought a 3 year old Fabia SEL DSG 1.2tsi 110bhp and I've noticed that the rear lights are always on at lower intensity than normal when the ignition is on or the engine running. I read somewhere that a new requirement for the daylight running lights is that rear lights should be illuminated as well as the front DRL's, It's not a problem but surely the new requirements would not have applied to a three year old car. Perhaps someone could check if their Mk3 Fabia's rear lights are always on? Thanks in advance.

What light switch have you got, do you have auto lights and if so what position is the light switch at?

You can turn off the DLR lights via the infotainment system.

 

With mine if the front DLR's are on there are no rear lights on.

If the side/parking lights are on then both front, rear and number plate light bulb are lit.

I have the projector type headlamp units with the 4 H7 bulbs and the LED side/parking light bulbs.

The front side/parking lights are not as bright as the DLR lights, in old money they are 5W side/parking and 21W DLR.

 

Thanks AG Falco

I would guess that the previous owner has been a bit creative with VCDS or Carista, but as you say, maybe that is quite a handy setup you have there - don't let it stop you from either using auto setting for your lights or remembering to switch them on though.

bertJ,

It would be great if rear sidelights / position light did have to be on with front DRL's (daytime / daylight running lights) in the EU / UK. 'Simply Clever' even.

Where did you read that?

Sadly it is not the case, but there are countries that do require the Front and Rear to have lights on even in good visibility / Daytime / Daylight.

Thanks for all the helpful comments.

I've now discovered that the rear lights are illuminated in the daylight only when the DRL's are switched on in the infotainment system so they are controlled by the DRL system. The rear lights are, of course, switched on as normal when the parking lights and/or headlights are switched on. The car has auto lights and the switch positions act as normal. It therefore seems that a modification may have been done so that the rear lights come on with the DRL's, I agree that this is an excellent idea but can't understand why the DRL functioning rear lights are somewhat dimmer than the normal brightness of the rear lights.

I can't remember where I saw the reference to rear DRL's but I understand that new Volvos do have rear DRL's

It does sound like the previous owner had them activated as DRL. I did this on my last Octavia and my current one. Just makes sense to me.  You can change the intensity of the lights using VCDS (or similar).  Maybe the last owner wanted them to brighten further when the lights came fully on. Who knows.  This thread prompted me to nip out and activate rear DRLs on my wife’s Fabia, something ive been meaning to do for a year now. I just opted to enable the top section of the ‘C’ for DRLs. That way when the lights are turned on for dipped beam, the rear lights will fully illuminate. Why did I just do the top section?  Dunno, just to be different. Probably what that’s last owner of your car thought as well .

21 hours ago, SC03OTT said:

It does sound like the previous owner had them activated as DRL. I did this on my last Octavia and my current one. Just makes sense to me.  You can change the intensity of the lights using VCDS (or similar).  Maybe the last owner wanted them to brighten further when the lights came fully on. Who knows.  This thread prompted me to nip out and activate rear DRLs on my wife’s Fabia, something ive been meaning to do for a year now. I just opted to enable the top section of the ‘C’ for DRLs. That way when the lights are turned on for dipped beam, the rear lights will fully illuminate. Why did I just do the top section?  Dunno, just to be different. Probably what that’s last owner of your car thought as well .

Thanks very much for the likely explanation. I assume that this modification can be done using VCDS but I have a Carista unit that certainly doesn't have this option. I suppose it's time I bought a Ross-Tech VCDS unit!

However, I'm still intrigued because the previous owner was the 'One, careful lady owner' who did 7k miles in 3 years - but who knows? 

Sounds strange to me, I can understand a previous owner wanting the rear tail / night lights on with the front DRL's, it's a common modification, but not at a lower than normal intensity - that's just weird.

 

You sure it isn't a fault i.e. a bad earth?

1 hour ago, silver1011 said:

Sounds strange to me, I can understand a previous owner wanting the rear tail / night lights on with the front DRL's, it's a common modification, but not at a lower than normal intensity - that's just weird.

 

You sure it isn't a fault i.e. a bad earth?

I agree that it sounds weird but I can't find any faults with the lights - they all behave as they should. The DRL modification seems the most likely to me because when the DRL's are turned off in the infotainment unit then the rear lights only light as normal. The rear lights come on at lower intensity immediately the DRL option is ticked.

One of the reasons some of this Carista, VCDS and OBDeleven stuff is dangerous in the wrong hands. I can testify to that as I have first hand experience of screwing up the lights 

1 hour ago, silver1011 said:

One of the reasons some of this Carista, VCDS and OBDeleven stuff is dangerous in the wrong hands. I can testify to that as I have first hand experience of screwing up the lights 

 

What happened?

VCDS, Byte 18, I managed to disable the front DRL's on my Superb.

bertj, my new Citroen C3 has front and rear LED drl's. The rear are dimmer than the normal tail lights. It's normal practice now for most new cars and will be standard across Europe soon.

1 hour ago, Estate Man said:

bertj, my new Citroen C3 has front and rear LED drl's. The rear are dimmer than the normal tail lights. It's normal practice now for most new cars and will be standard across Europe soon.

That's very interesting; I wonder if Skoda were doing this three years ago? Thanks for that.

I guess one reason for the dimmer lights is to save the bulbs some. On a Roomster I had ~10 years back, the headlights were dimmed when running in "DRL" mode

40 minutes ago, the_raz said:

On a Roomster I had ~10 years back, the headlights were dimmed when running in "DRL" mode

 

There was something called dipped/dim from the 90's as well.

The side/parking lights would only work when the ignition was off.

If you turned the light switch one click the dipped lights came on but in dim mode.

 

Thanks AG Falco