Replacing slave AFS modules

In an earlier post I talked about how my xenon ballasts were toast because of water intrusion in my headlights. In the same post (which you can read here) I talked about how my AFS slave-modules were the first things to fail. Ever since I bought the vehicle I’ve had to watch the dash warning lamp and the Maxidot pop-up every time I drive the car. That changed today.

I ordered two of the AFS-modules brand new from a Norwegian website called Lyshelten.no, and the product link you can find here.

I made sure that everything, all text, on this part matched the original part, as I know even slight differences has caused unsolvable problems for a lot of people on the internet. Only difference was the manufacturing date.

The parts finally arrived today, and I got around to doing the repair. During the xenon-ballast replacement the whole headlamp had to come out. It was borderline impossible to unscrew the ballast any other way. But after I had performed that job, I noticed there could be enough space to fit a screwdriver through the hole for the fog light. It required a lot of tinkering, but I eventually managed to unscrew two of the screws of both modules that was on the fog-light-side of the AFS-unit (keep in mind that the passenger side was the hardest due to the headlight washer motor and other stuff which got in the way). When those were unscrewed there was one screw on each left which was easy to get to from inside the engine compartment. Afterwards I could just push the module downward slightly and stick the new one in, on both sides. I screwed them in place, and next came the part that worried me the most.

I had read lots of places that programming was needed. I put the fuses for the AFS slave-modules back in into the fusebox. I had removed them prior because they caused error messages ALL THE TIME. Afterwards I turned on the ignition and connected my OBDeleven. I went into the control unit 55 - headlight range. The 6 fault codes from before persisted but the two top ones had now turned green😁 (Which means communication was established) Keep in mind the «no signal/communication» errors were causing the other ones.

Now only the coding was left. I went into the coding tab in OBDeleven and tried to recode the existing code for the master unit, hoping it would program the two slave units. It didn’t, and stated that the function could not be performed.

This made me nervous. I tried going into the subsystems (the slave modules) and looking at the code from there, but it stated the code could not be read.

I decided to turn the ignition off and back on again. To my surprise and delight, the warning lamp on the dash was now gone, and all the errors in the 55 module had disappeared.

I was very happy and decided to perform an output test, and now surely, the swivel lights worked as well. Before this, the output test would just return «function cancelled, marginal conditions have not been met», but now it actually worked.

Needless to say I’ve been driving around enjoying the view of a warning light-free dash.

The lights do actually perform the «dance» when starting the engine now. One thing worth mentioning is that you should recalibrate the height of the headlight beams after this procedure. Information on that you can find here. This is called a basic setting.

After reading through my struggles; if you still cannot get it to work, make sure you have performed these steps, as they seem crucial:

1. Tried to brush of the connectors and made sure no connector pins are stuck in the headlight socket

2. Bought NEW (very important) slave modules, as used ones to my understanding cannot be reprogrammed, and the coding in any used case has to be perfect in order for the master module to recognize the slave modules

3. Tried to «program» the master module

4. Cleared fault codes

5. Turned ignition on and off

I’m really proud of this achievement considering how sparse information was available online.

My hope is that someone will have the need for what I learnt during this experience.

Feel free to contact me for any help.

Thank for your time,

Hjalmar