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Headlamp converters - where are they?


Joh

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I apologise right from the start for this post.... but I just have to get this off my chest.......this is really starting to make me cross!

I remember some years back that the French police were being particularly heavy on British car drivers using their cars in France without headlamp deflectors. So, when my husband and I bought our latest car (and bearing in mind that we drive over 600 miles to our house on a regular basis) we purchased a set of headlamp protectors and then fitted permanent stickers inside the protector. Now all we have to do, each time we travel across the channel, is clip them over the headlights. (They cost about £40 but save us £6 each trip).

But my blood is starting to boil

We've recently started using the Dover routes to France (as they are much cheaper than the Portsmouth routes) and therefore are coming across far more British traffic in France. On our most recent trip I noticed - probably due to the rain and the fact that most people had their headlights on - that well over 90% of the British cars we saw DID NOT have converters on their lights. I was quite surprised at how blinded I was getting sitting in the passenger seat of my car when a non converted Brit came towards me.At the ferry terminal I watched over 100 cars loading onto the ferry and counted only FOUR with converters.

With the introduction of "Lights On" for driving in the winter months - I would like to know whether the French police are going to get tough again for this failure to redirect your beam.

Apart from anything else it's dangerous and a legal requirement to convert your headlamps! All the port terminals tell you what you MUST LEGALLY have with you for driving on the continent and these are top of the list.

I say all this but.....

The same thing is happening back in the UK too..

What about all the LEFT HAND DRIVE cars that now visit the UK...where are their converters too?????????????

Over the past few months I have noticed an increase in the amount of European traffic on UK roads, in particular Polish and Dutch cars. None of these cars appear to have headlamp converters either.

Surely if WE have to do it for over there THEY have to do it for over here?

Just interested to see if other people feel the same way I do - or am I just getting cranky in my old age???

Or... perhaps you are one of the people I have started to rant about... .....

Jo

 

PS: When I say cars I mean LORRIES AND VANS TOO!

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[quote]I apologise right from the start for this post.... but I just have to get this off my chest.......this is really starting to make me cross! I remember some years back that the French police were bein...[/quote]

My solution to light converters is to have some electrical sticky tape and a small 'opinel canif' in the gloves box of the car. When I arrive at the port before loading on to the ferry, I stick a bit of tape to deviate that beam.

Travel happily accross France and visit all my folks and at the end of the hols (YUK! YUK!) come back to Blighty. Stop at the nearest opportunity and peel off the bit of tape and drive up to Wales to relieve the neighbour from dog/cat feeding duty!

I have done so for 25+years. Never had one gendarme telling me off because of it and saved myself lots of money.

All savings are spent on an extra bottle of my must-have-liquid-poison!!
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In all the years since I have been aware of the principle of headlamp conversion, I don't think that I have ever seen a continental car on British roads with converted headlamps.

As for British cars in France  - I must confess that I ceased to convert my headlamps some years ago. I was forever being flashed by oncoming drivers when my beams WERE converted, so I gave up using them and my experience is that that I now cause far LESS annoyance than before.

Perhaps all the cars that annoy you actually ARE using beam converters and the wretched things (like rubber strips making contact with the road to "earth" static electricity) just don't work.

 

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Not sure that the headlights on continental cars are dipped to the right. I believe they are set to 'straight ahead'.

I may be wrong and no doubt will be corrected shortly.

We went across to France at the end of May in an Alfa spider, they have a lever behind the light fitting which changes the lights from UK to continental setting (or vice versa). Since coming back to the UK I've left them on continental setting and they certainly don't light up the right side any more than the left (but then they are fairly hopeless at lighting up anything !!!)

Cheers

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our british car is registered here in france, until last year it was eough to put some black tape in it just before the mot

last october we had to change both lamps or we would not have passed the french mot.

of course the insurance paid for it, as we were so unlucky to have both headlamps broken by the same stone on the same day

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One of the reasons that many UK cars travelling in France do not appear to have deflectors, is that they may have a manual adjustable switch to drop their beams. These devices were incorporated so that one could adjust the beams when the car was fully laden travelling on UK roads. If you have a manual light adjuster in your car by changing the beam to the lowest setting will make your lights safe for overseas travel and prevent blinding oncoming vehicles. Unfortunately, cars that have automatic adjusting lights will need some form of deflector.

Many modern cars have lights that are difficult to determine where to place a deflector or tape. Like JOH mentioned, I also have a new car and the manufacturer had to supply headlamp protectors with markings where to place the stickers. Whilst £40 may appear expensive it is a drop in the ocean if a stone were to damage unprotected glass and had to be replaced, so I leave my protectors on all the time with the sticker removed.

Baz

 

 

 

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  • 11 months later...
While I have been forced into using insulating tape the best stuff I had for years was from a bicycle shop.

It was a two sided chrome tape that was self ashesive on one side. So you lost little light within the reflector.

When cars were cars they had a an obvious pattern where to position the tape.

What annoys me are those BMWs and Volvos with some strange head-lights that if they hit a minor bump hundreds of yards away they dazzle you.

Never had these problems with acetelene lamps.
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[quote user="Chauffour"]

our british car is registered here in france, until last year it was eough to put some black tape in it just before the mot

last october we had to change both lamps or we would not have passed the french mot.

of course the insurance paid for it, as we were so unlucky to have both headlamps broken by the same stone on the same day

[/quote]

Did this change sometime between June and October last year?  We got our UK car Controle Technique'd last June using the black tape method and the centre didn't mention this.  At least I've got plenty of time to source a pair of French headlights from a scrapyard!

Phil

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A lot of cars now have self levelling xenon headlamps. These can usually be adjusted (a small lever on the back of the headlamp unit) to dip either to the right or the left. You often won't find the instructions how to do this in the car manual but a trip to the main dealer should show you how. The advantage for the manufacturers is that they only have to make one type of headlamp so keeps their costs down.

Having said that, there are a lot of people who don't bother to adjust their headlamps. It was reported one day last summer that the police at Cherbourg were checking all UK cars coming out of the ferry port that didn't have visible beam converters. There were a lot of fixed penalty fines handed out that day !!

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I think you'll find that because the load adjusting switch only varies the vertical plane of the light beam they will still be considered to be set to shine to the left and consequently not legal. I guess too that the police would in any case only accept a modification that they could see easily.

Last June we saw several gendarmes carefully checking every British car at the Baie de Somme services so were glad that we had recently invested in a set of the clip-on covers. Though the main reason for buying them was that I figured they would be cheaper in the long run than getting a set of the stick-on deflectors every visit.

I also get irritated at the number of Brits who ignore the signs telling you to switch your lights on to go through some tunnels - presumably through lack of language skills - or perhaps they are taking the signs literally and are busy lighting fires in their vehicles.

I think GB is the only (or nearly) country that has headlights pointing to the side - presumably if everyone had them set straight forwards there wouldn't be a problem.

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Just been to the garage and switched on the lights on my French Picasso. There is a definite bias to the nearside, with a kickup to the light pattern. There is no definite mark on the plastic headlamps, other than a dot, to indicate where any deflector should go. When we drove to UK I just lowered the beams until I did not dazzle oncoming traffic. I keep a small roll of white tape in the car in case of need as well. When I owned an English Piccy the dealer could not supply deflectors, just gave me a couple of half scale headlamp outlines purporting to show where to mask the beam, not much use!

Mike

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[quote user="Mikew"]Just been to the garage and switched on the lights on my French Picasso. There is a definite bias to the nearside, with a kickup to the light pattern. There is no definite mark on the plastic headlamps, other than a dot, to indicate where any deflector should go. When we drove to UK I just lowered the beams until I did not dazzle oncoming traffic. I keep a small roll of white tape in the car in case of need as well. When I owned an English Piccy the dealer could not supply deflectors, just gave me a couple of half scale headlamp outlines purporting to show where to mask the beam, not much use!

Mike
[/quote]

 

I have the same problem with my UK 2004 Scenic.... where to put the converters [8-)]  it's guesswork TBH [:(]

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I dutifully but grudgingly shell out £6 to Halfords each time I go over so the idea of headlamp protectors that I could clip on with the converters in place sounds like a sensible £40 investment! Can you get them for all types of car? Do I need to ask at my Toyota garage?
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[quote user="Fay"]I dutifully but grudgingly shell out £6 to Halfords each time I go over so the idea of headlamp protectors that I could clip on with the converters in place sounds like a sensible £40 investment! Can you get them for all types of car? Do I need to ask at my Toyota garage?[/quote]

 

Try eBay [;-)]

 

I tried to get some for the Scenic but they don't do they for the new model [:(] I've got some for my next car already as I saw them for sale and grabbed them there and then [:-))]

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When I tried the "shine the lights at a wall" approach, I was surprised to discover that my headlights appear to dip vertically only - they do not deflect to the left at all. This being so, there would not seem to be any need for beam deflectors with this car (Mazda Xedos). There is no way that it should dazzle oncoming drivers, whichever side of the road I/they are on.

However, if - as has been suggested - gendarmes near the ports are routinely issuing tickets to Brits with no obvious deflectors in place, I think I might attach a token bit of tape to each lens anyway on my next visit. Hopefully, this will avoid being pulled up and having to try to explain why my car doesn't need them....

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My local Toyota garage has ordered me a set of protectors for £40, and when I told them why I needed them they congratulated me on my brilliant idea - for which I cheekily accepted the credit!

So thanks, Jo. On my 7th trip I will be in profit. Tee hee!
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  • 4 years later...
Hi. Can you please tell me where in the UK you can purchase Headlight Converters that clip over the headlights? I travel to France at least 10 times a year and have to pay £6 a time. Would love the clip over type but can not find them.
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Further to my previous post (in 2006!), when the converters arrived at my Toyota dealer, they required a degree in mechanical engineering, a couple of hours and a toolkit to fit - even the Toyota engineer admitted they were hugely complicated and not a 'clip-on' option at all. So I didn't buy them.
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Last seen on round Lucas circular headlamps as fitted to Minis, Anglias Cortinas etc in the '60s. Production tolerances are so tight that there is no space for the claws anymore and almost every car has unique headlamps these days.

I used to simply glue the lens converters back on with silicone glue and use a hair dryer to remove when I arrived home, not a good idea on plastic/polycarbonate headlamps. On older headlamps,which you could mask, just used to cut up the GB stickers the ferries were happy give away and mask the lights with them.

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In my toolbox, Anton, is a reel of Aluminium electronic self-adhesive (Very stick too!) shielding tape. (used for shielding such as high gain-high impedence input devices to high gain amps). I cut sort of trapezoid shapes which effectively mask the worst of the left dipping low beams.

When it falls off (I leave it on all the time and the cars even go through MOT in UK so equipped), simply cut out a new bit.

Maplin sell this in UK: Here:

And Conrad in France.

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most eastern european cars will not have head lamp converters or a tax disc or car insurance or an m.o.t because you can save money on parking finds and insurance premiums and car tax and m.o.ts and congestion charges because they cannot trace the vechile, quiet clever really
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The reason you may not see so many cars without headlamp converters is possible down to an increasing number of cars are fitted with Zenon headlights and you cannot fit headlamp deflectors on these lights due to the increased heat. I believe there is a new EU law which states that all new cars must have a means of converting headlights from inside the car, I believe new Audis and others have an option within the onboard menu system to lower the beam to prevent glare.
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