Last night I got in my car after work and started the engine, as soon as I turned on the lights I noticed that they seemed bright for a split second then dim. As it was chucking it down I didn't get out but drove to a nearby fence where I could see from the beam pattern that the near side bulb was out. I carry a set of spare bulbs but decided to leave it as the bulb was bound to get wet when I changed it, possibly causing problems.
Anyway, to get back to the point of the post, shouldn't I have had a warning on the dash display saying, "check near side headlamp bulb" or something. I'm a bit disappointed, I was almost looking forward to having my clever car tell me that a bulb had gone.

Having fumbled for about half an hour in the warm sunshine to try and access, then replace, a front bulb (longer for drls) I can only admire what a good call you made not to attempt changing yours in the wet.

Perhaps your dash knew this, and was waiting until the rain stopped to tell you....

snes said:

Having fumbled for about half an hour in the warm sunshine to try and access, then replace, a front bulb (longer for drls) I can only admire what a good call you made not to attempt changing yours in the wet.

Perhaps your dash knew this, and was waiting until the rain stopped to tell you....

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Ha Ha! It still didn't show anything this morning when I went to change the bulb under the relative comfort of my carport! I changed both the bulbs as I know from past experience that if one has reached the end of it's life then the other won't be far behind.
I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for more special offers, I bought four Philips H1 and H4 spare bulb kits from Homebase a few years ago for £1.89 each, plus a pair of Philips X-treme Vision H7s for £8, the H7s went in this morning and the remaining stock of stop, tail and indicator bulbs is getting low now, that's the joy of having a wife and two kids with cars plus a couple of motorbikes. Oh, that reminds me, my wife has a brake light out on her StreetKA.

I would think the designers thought "it's obvious when a headlight bulb goes, so why put a warning on that circuit?"

Funny but in 4 years of ownership i have only needed to replace the H7's dipped beams twice each (mainly because i used to always drive with dipped beams on- now mainly drive with the DRLS on.)
I have also replaced one brake light the left rear if i remember correctly.

So so far so good on the lighting front!

staffordmike said:

Anyway, to get back to the point of the post, shouldn't I have had a warning on the dash display saying, "check near side headlamp bulb" or something. I'm a bit disappointed, I was almost looking forward to having my clever car tell me that a bulb had gone.

Click to expand...

It's not so long ago that we had a post from someone who had a bulb failure warning message & a working bulb! Most likely just out of resistance limits; not that unusual with aftermarket bulbs.

The system is designed not to alert you for headlight bulbs. It does mention it in the manual. Don't know why it is like that.