having browsed this forum for a number of years and occasionally picked some gems for our old octavia elegance estate

we finally go a good deal on a 2009 superb which I deduct to be a mark 2. all has been good .

apart from some sensor under the windscreen wiper  air vent cover thing which had wiring modified before we bought it.

then 

The Columbus

early version

well it stopped working in the middle of some city in west Yorkshire .

Jeez we had to navigate out of there with the aid of street signs and fortunately we had a map in the car 

anyway Our lass goes to work in the car daily  and I use it for business . 

But the radio does not work and the reversing bleepers and you never know how hot it is in the split temps of the car etc etc  

so finally decided to look into fixing it .

had a quick look on here , after a google search 

took it to the local garage who service the car .

looked at the Fancy stuff on ebay, 

priced a new one .

decided to have a lurk on here again 

The point of all of this 

I would like to say thank you to Rusty Nuts  @Rustynuts who pointed me in the right direction and assisted and finally helped me with the problem 

As you may have guessed . My life has improved tremendously  thank you

I am on a number of motorcycle forums this is my 1st car forum and I am pleased to say it has been a pleasant experience. 

now I off to investigate some better bulbs or some such for the dipped beam which is terrible to drive with in these dark winter evenings . can't fault main beam.

anyway thank you .

Edited 24 January, 20197 yr by JOHN-DYNOSTAR

Going by your description of the car's features, it sounds like an Elegance model, which means it has bi-xenon headlights with AFS2. If the beam pattern is bad it could be a problem with a sensor or control module: in those circumstances the system defaults to pointing the lights down to avoid blinding other drivers. Before going fiddling around with bulbs I'd suggest you find someone with VCDS to scan it for faults first.

 

There's a list of members with VCDS here:

 

I scanned it for faults last night, and nothing relevant to the xenons was present. There were a few random fault codes from some years back (and a few from the Columbus being removed etc.) but nothing lighting related.

Oh, and cheers John. Nice to meet you.

Ok so I read the MANUAL  

headlights

and there are supposedly different driving modes, in town , in country, on motorway.  mmm so does this happen on auto.  ( it is usually driven lights on auto) 

because changing to manual lights on and off. made no discernable difference to the low beam. can the modes be changed ?   or is that specific to another car  .

the driving lights do move across  when steering the car left to right  

43 minutes ago, JOHN-DYNOSTAR said:

Ok so I read the MANUAL  

headlights

and there are supposedly different driving modes, in town , in country, on motorway.  mmm so does this happen on auto.  ( it is usually driven lights on auto) 

because changing to manual lights on and off. made no discernable difference to the low beam. can the modes be changed ?   or is that specific to another car  .

the driving lights do move across  when steering the car left to right  

As far as I know, the manual on position disables much of the adaptive functionality, probably because the foglights need the switch in that position so they can be switched on. Auto means the controller is in charge of the lights and full adaptive functionality is working.

 

One thing that could be wrong is that the manual aim is wrong and the lights are pointing too far down. To correctly aim them you will need VCDS to put the controller in Basic Settings mode and then the manual adjustment of the lamps can be made using a beam setter as you would on conventional headlights.

16 minutes ago, chimaera said:

As far as I know, the manual on position disables much of the adaptive functionality, probably because the foglights need the switch in that position so they can be switched on. Auto means the controller is in charge of the lights and full adaptive functionality is working.

 

One thing that could be wrong is that the manual aim is wrong and the lights are pointing too far down. To correctly aim them you will need VCDS to put the controller in Basic Settings mode and then the manual adjustment of the lamps can be made using a beam setter as you would on conventional headlights.

 

so when it goes in for its service  next month I need to ask to have the  beams checked in MANUAL  ON position not auto. I say this because , I assume the main and dip beam are not

adjustable independently.  (or am I misunderstanding all of it and the dip beam adjusts itself on auto )

or are you saying if they have not used  VCDS  when setting them up , it is possible they could be incorrect anyway .

sorry for asking, just trying to understand. 

 

*waits for a "bog off you plonker"  statement * 

Just now, JOHN-DYNOSTAR said:

 

so when it goes in for its service  next month I need to ask to have the  beams checked in MANUAL  ON position not auto. I say this because , I assume the main and dip beam are not

adjustable independently.  (or am I misunderstanding all of it and the dip beam adjusts itself on auto )

or are you saying if they have not used  VCDS  when setting them up , it is possible they could be incorrect anyway .

sorry for asking, just trying to understand. 

 

*waits for a "bog off you plonker"  statement * 

 

The switch is left in auto mode for beam setting but diagnostics are needed.

 

The adaptive headlight system uses a bunch of sensors to check things like ride height, road speed, steering angle, etc. and uses this information to adjust each bi-xenon bulb individually to adjust the beam pattern (they can move left/right and up/down: you can see this when they do their little dance at startup). The range of movement in the mechanism is limited to a certain amount either side of a nominal position and the control system is active as soon as the vehicle is switched on. If the nominal centre position is wrong, it limits the controller's ability to adjust the light pattern while driving. This nominal position is where the lights default to if there's a problem with the system, and is probably (if I had to guess) where the bulbs would be set on a standard headlight.

 

The beam setting procedure sets the nominal position so that it's correct: this ensures it doesn't dazzle other drivers if there's a problem, and allows the adaptive system to perform optimally. The Basic Settings mode on the controller is a service mode that disables all of the adaptive functionality and allows the nominal position to be set correctly. It requires VCDS to access the controller and activate Basic Settings and then a normal beam setter is used to adjust the headlights.

My headlights were one of the first things (that and the terrible brakes) that let my car down 

this was fixed by doing the above and resetting them correctly 
They passed a MOT the way they were when i got it as they were not set too high just set far too low

I was even considering changing bulbs till I set them right with VCDS on a MOT ramp with light beam tester 

Just a wee bit too low  but on adjusting the difference was great and what they should of been like when I purchased the car