High density discharge bulbs are a recent technology and slowly replacing the old generation halogen bulbs you may find on most of the older cars. Xenon HID bulbs are installed to produce a brighter light emitting from headlights, front lights, DRLs and any other light of your vehicle for improved visibility on the road. Xenons lights are appreciated for their long life and brightness but the most obvious benefit of having xenon headlights is they ensure safety. Xenon HID bulbs work in a different way than halogen bulbs and produce three times brighter light to shine significantly ahead of your car and lasts roughly twice as long as a halogen bulb. People may sometimes mistake to swap xenon HID lights for halogens but it is technically not possible because they both connect to the car differently. All the modern cars including all models of VW Volkswagen, are now equipped with these high-tech xenon gas discharge HID bulbs and comes as a standard.
VW Volkswagen features precision engineering in most of its latest models and offers a suite of active safety features to provide its users with safe and secure vehicles to drive. Xenon lights are an additional safety feature added to the lighting system of VW models to ensure you’re never in the dark.
No doubt, xenon lights are appreciated for their brighter light emission and longer life but there may be instances when these lights go out of order due to an accident or any other technical issue due to moisture or damage from water but failure of lights due to completing life is not an uncommon reason. When these lights on your VW Volkswagen fail, Check left right dipped headlight beam message appears on your dashboard mostly indicating a problem with the bulb of headlight. This warning message is applicable to all models of VW Volkswagen brand cars.
What are dipped /low beam headlights?
Dipped headlights are also known as low beam lights and located on the front of the vehicle next to the main beam headlights. These lights can be halogen, LED, or Xenon but unless, you prefer LED or halogen lights as a personal choice, these Xenon lights are a good replacement to all other dipped beam light options. They help to prevent glare on the road.
What does this error mean?
Whenever this warning message pops up on your dashboard, it actually point towards a problem possibly with the low beam or dipped headlight lighting component, xenon HID bulb or HID control unit also known as ballast. HID control unit works to power up and control the function of HID bulb.
However, this is not possible for both sides to fail at the same time. It is always helpful to identify the side as well as the reason of failure to promptly fix the issue. With correct diagnosis, you are able to pinpoint the issue without causing harm to any other part.
Possible causes for this warning message
There could be a few reasons from minor technical issue to a major accident. It is possible that like every electronic component, the bulb has completed its assumed normal life under normal circumstances, or perhaps the car has been to some foggy or rainy place, where the moisture get and locks in the lights causing them to fail. Warning may be appeared after an accident happened and the bulb or its control unit became out of place.
Diagnosis for the Faulty Bulb
Identifying for the real culprit from the xenon bulb or its unit through some simple tricks is easy. You may attempt diagnosis of the faulty component by noticing a few things such as:
When you remove the bulb and finds dark black in the middle of it, means that bulb has failed for sure. However, if it is not dark and just change in color from cool whiter to pink or purple is all what you can see inside, it shows that bulb is about to complete its life any time sooner.
But if the bulb looks fine, the problem might be with xenon ballast. The best way to confirm this assumption is to just check the bulb from working side to the not-working side. If the bulb does not turn ON, this is now confirmed the ballast has failed.
How to fix this error?
Once you identify which component has failed, it is easy to fix the error and unfortunately there is no other quick solution than simply replacing the component with a new one. There is literally no need to spend a fortune at dealer to make this replacement. However, if you are not sure for the authenticity of xenon bulb you’ll find elsewhere in the market or a bit lazy to do it yourself then take your car to xenons4u. There you’ll find high quality guaranteed xenon HID bulbs, HID ballast and many other components with expert mechanical services.
