Headlight help

A

AlexStanley

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I think whoever owned my car before had hacked around with the wiring in the headlights, as one side has one style connector and the other side has a different style! :(

I'm going to try and get it sorted out though... It makes sense in my mind to get them all working properly before I upgrade to the facelifted headlights sometime in the spring.

Anyway, my question is this:

As you look at the front of the car on an original pre-facelift 8L, are the dipped beams on the outside or the inside edge of the headlight lenses?

So, for example are they

a.

indicator - dipped beam - main beam - radiator - main beam - dipped beam - indicator

or

b

indicator - main beam - dipped beam - radiator - dipped beam - main beam - indicator

Hope that makes sense?
 
Its a. for prefacelift...and b. for facelift mate!
 
Take some pics of the connectors....
 
OK

I've been out and taken some pics. Apologies that they'll be totally over-exposed but it's the only way I could do it in the dark ;)

First picture:

DSC_5227.jpg


These are the lights on the drivers side. You can see that on the right there is a 2-spade connector. This is currently running the dipped beam when the lights are on. So the dipped beam is in the correct place, but according to the A3 Owner's Manual (p187) the 2 spade connector should be for the main beam not the dipped beam!

You can see the side lights are there, and they seem to be OK.

Now, for the main beam & fog light.

It's difficult to see but the white cable ends in a single spade connector at the very left of the shot. There is another spade connector with two wires attached to it which is pushed onto a tab of a bulb base. The bulb itself is missing from this shot and is the reason for all this malarky in the first place!

Second picture:

DSC_5228.jpg


Sorry for the funny angle - this is the passenger side, next to the battery. You can see on the left hand side of the picture that there is a 2-spade connector - mirroring the connector on the opposite side of the car.

To the right is the side light connector, which is OK, and then a 3-spade connector which is powering the main beam and the foglight.

Again, according to the manual the connectors are the wrong way around (although the lights are working as they should!).

Now I'm happy to believe that the manual is wrong and that on the passenger side the bulbs and connectors are in the correct order, but WTF is going on with the drivers side!

Sorry for the long post :)
 
Ok this setup is definately correct.... On the drivers side it take one H7 Bulb (dipped) and one H1 Bulb (main beam, seems to be missing in your pics). However on the other side it has a H7 Bulb (dipped) and a H4 that has 3 spades (main beam). I never worked out why audi thought they should put different bulbs for main beam on each side...Looking at your pics everything does seem to be above board and the manual is just there to confuse you by the sounds of it!
 
Thanks mate :) So I don't have to worry about the passenger-side at all then! :)

On the drivers side though, I need to get a different bulb - the one that was in there just had a single spade connector on the back, which is why I think it's been messed with. Any idea where I could get the '2 spade connector block' from so I can put the correct bulb in?

This car has the front fogs in the same cluster too - does that affect the wiring? I can't understand how it works if it just uses a bulb which appears to only have 1 filament for the main beam & foglight!
 
So when you turn your front fog on what light turns on? The H4 on the passengers side?
 
audi upgrades
From memory (I can double-check this in the morning), it is the bulb with the 3-spade connector that lights up when the fogs are switched on.

I know we now know the manual to be wrong, but it's listed as an H7 there: "Main beam headlight with front fog light"
 
Also while your there double check that your switch looks like this...
DSC00908.jpg

and not this.....
DSC009082.jpg


Ignore the fact that thats the same switch surround and has no switch...
 
audi upgrades
And thats the one that lights up when you put on the front fog?
 
audi upgrades
Ok that is weird...Well the setup you have is definately what I have, however mine doesnt have the front fogs....Ill do some more digging tomorow about your drivers side to see if i can find one with a different fitting! But you do realise that when you go facelift you wont have front fogs (not that you will need them having HID Xenons *hint-hint*)
 
;) I'm not sure whether you were dropping hints there at all were you? :)

The grand plan is to have a facelifted bumper fitted with the individual front fogs - it's just a case of balancing money at the moment y'see!
 
Thought I would report back more findings - I've been out in the cold (but daylight!) this morning having more of a prod around to see what's going on.

So it would seem that the black cable which on the passengers headlight runs to the H4 3-spade connector simply isn't there in the other headlight cluster, which initially I thought was a bit odd.

Eventually I decided to unplug the round multi-connector thing that connects the headlight to the cables running inside the engine bay (hope that my descriptions help you understand what I mean as I'm not sure I'm using the correct terminology!).

Inside the connector there are loads of smaller different shaped sockets which match up with pins in the headlight assembly - one of the sockets doesn't have a corresponding pin. The headlight on the passenger side does.

So I'm making the assumption that the car has had a shunt at some point in its life and the headlight has been replaced but with a headlight that didn't have the foglight in it - ie. the wrong spec headlight.

Does that make any sense at all?
 
That makes perfect sense that the wire is there from the headlight loom upto the multiplug connector but is not carried over into the headlamp cluster and I think your theory may be correct....what I would do is pop into an audi stealers and ask them to see a pre-facelift offside front headlight with integrated fog. Then see if it takes a H4 which I think it will. I phoned around local breakers and headlight suppliers and they are all useless if im honest!

Good luck mate!
 
Ok so I had another look at my headlight and found something very interesting....My drivers side (which i know had a shunt a few year before i bought it) has got a H4 foglight type headlight in it...thats a definate mistake!
 
No the pin from the loom just doesnt exist where as the hole for it to go into does so its fine really...
 
Ah OK :) Maybe I've remembered the connector the wrong way around then - I thought the pins were on the headlight and the holes were on the loom.. D'OH! etc.

Incidentally I've found an ebay seller in Germany who are selling facelift headlights for 100 Euros (approx), and a loom adapter for 40 Euros (approx), which converts the round plug to an oblong-ish one.

I'm also watching a couple of auctions on ebay the 'correct' headlight for me :)

What a faff!
 
Who knows! Anyway, let us know when youu have the lights!
 
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