SteveMondragon

For the longest time, I was getting this error here (as some of you have gotten before, mostly on lowered cars)

<img src="http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e51/mugenef8/da6461c2.jpg">


And it started acting up again pretty bad, even if my car was just idling on a flat surface in a parking lot for a minute or two at night. So I decided to tackle it again. Fortunately this time I was able to find more recent links on some VW boards with more people having the same problems with their bi-xenon headlights. I was able to figure out what my exact problem was and I fixed it (good enough for now) so that I shouldn't get the error again.


First, you need to see if your headlight leveling sensors are within range from your lowered car. From this: <a href="http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/download/label-files/1T0-907-357.lbl">http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-com/download/label-files/1T0-907-357.lbl</a>

With your VAG cable, go into the Xenon headlights (55), and choose the measure block 2. You can see the current values being:

Block 002 Field 1 = Front Sensor (G78) (actual)
Specification: 12.5...50.0 %

Block 002 Field 2 = Rear Sensor (G76) (actual)
Specification: 50.0...87.5 %

My range was 68.7 up front, and 62.8 in the rear. My rear was fine so my problem was the front. When you get underneath the car and take off the wheel, you can see this:

<img src="http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e51/mugenef8/fd2db8b8.jpg">

Granted it's mounted differently on our Audi but it's the same box/module and same lever &amp; arm. When the wheel is off the ground, and the arm is pointed down at a 40-ish degree angle, your front value is around 8-9% on a lowered car (mine is approx 1.8" with Eibach Sportline springs.... I love the ride height &amp; look of the car). When you drop the car on the wheel, the arm moves up to a positive 30-40 degree angle and you get around 60%, which is out of range.

You can do a few different things to correct this problem. One is to remove the bracket from the subframe and add spacers. One is to remove the bracket from the subframe and add spacers to lift the bracket higher (tight to get to, plus there are some clearance issues but it would be the cleanest way to do this). One is the remove the long arm (that is circled in red) and fab up a new one in its place that is shorter. Or you can just ghetto-rig it by using some vice grips and a pry bar and bending the bracket upward so it moves the module up and shortens the distance travled. This is what I did and after bending and prying and bending and prying for a few minutes, I was able to get the sensor to now read 46%, just under the 50% limit.

On my test driving around with my laptop on and my VAG running real-time, average was around 45 to barely 47, only hitting 50 one time when I slammed on my brakes to make my front end dive. But otherwise, the problem now seems to be fixed as it's not constantly out of range, causing the adaptive headlights to fail. When I return my car in from my lease, I'll just bend the bracket back down within range for the stock springs so no problems there.

My rear was fine but if your rear is out or range, you will need to adjust in a similar way but it's much easier to adjust the rear than the front. I didn't need to but here is a pic from the VW forums of what it looks like in the rear.

<img src="http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e51/mugenef8/fd2db8b8-1.jpg">


I'll be have my VAG cable with me and be keeping an eye on my car during the holidays as I plan to drive over 1000 miles in it starting tomorrow night, so make sure that I don't get the adaptive headlight error anymore.

MikekiM@PureMS

We've seen it happen often when people remove it, and reinstall it incorrectly when they're lowering their cars.

Never have had a problem with the lights being out of range of adjustment when we lower cars.

SteveMondragon

considering I did the lowering myself with the proper tools and everything was done correctly.

Also, you can install it backwards and it will still give similar readings to the computer (I tested it with the VAG running real-time for a read out). I never touched/adjusted/moved the sensor in the first place. But since the LCA was now higher due to the lowering spring, it caused the sensor to read out of range. If you use a spring that isn't as short, say a 1" drop, then you probably won't have this problem. My drop is around 2" all around.

Tanner

Only had the error come up twice, both where I just drover over a pothole.

Now if my right ballast or xenon could just die and be done... the annoying flickering is getting, well, annoying on cold startup since Audi won't replace it as they can't "duplicate" the problem.

Gorobei

From the pics I remember seeing of your car I don't remember it being tremendously lower than mine. Knocking on wood, mine has been fine so far.

Audi Loyalist

good to see you back on the forum as well

vplaza

Perhaps not too many lowered cars have the adaptive Xenons?

Gorobei

Could be, although I kind of had the impression that more cars than not had HID on this board.

Audi Loyalist

and they could'nt reproduce the problem as well. With repeat visits, they decided to pull the xenons from the housing and reinstall them...all seems trouble free since then.