Hi

My 5 year old Superb has covered 46k mi from new and has mainly been very reliable, not to mention comfortable and frugal on motorway journeys.  However without any warning the passenger side headlight ceased to do the dance on start up.  The horizontal motion is fine but the vertical motion is missing.  This resulted in the headlight's focus being about 3 metres from the front of the car giving poor nearside visibility.

 

I took the vehicle in to my local independent garage who had no experience of any VW car with this problem.  A code check revealed no faults.  As a temporary fix the garage owner adjusted the headlight manually to give reasonable nearside visibility.  As far as I could tell everything else is working fine.

 

I am completely new to Xenon headlights.  I'm fairly certain that the car is fitted with bi-xenon headlights.  There is no change in light colour when the dipped is switched to main beam.  I also now understand that the initial alignment is only applicable to bi-xenon lights.

 

I understand that a replacement bi-xenon headlight is close on £1000, a significant fraction of the car's value and there's no guarantee that the other side will not fail in due course.

 

So I would appreciate any help, information or guidance.

 

I've spoken with a car electrician in whose view and experience the only option is to replace the headlight although I have seen comments elsewhere that this problem might be rectified in the engine management system.

 

Can the headlight be switched to an alternative light system (eg Xenon dip / halogen main beam, LED) ?

 

Any other comments and suggestions gratefully received.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Peter

I had this problem many years ago when i fiddled with the LHD option for driving on the continent. 

 

I had to take mine to a dealer to recode it and reset it. Occasionally it trips and i get a warning because about the AFS function and it has defaulted to the "home" position but it usually resets. However my problem affected both headights.

Its sounds like your fault could be a motor issue. Surprised the cost was that high though for a new one. I looked into replacing mine a few years ago when i had a problem with the ballast which stemmed from a damaged headlight unit. Its only a 58 plate car though. The cost for a main dealer headlight was about £500 and included the ballast that is about £150 on its own.