2007-02-10

A new level of worthlessness

Filed under: Lotus — iain @ 22:42:39

I realise now that I never really knew how useless the headlights on my Elise actually are.

I thought I knew. I knew that they were worthless. I knew that several times while driving at night I have had to physically check that the buttons were presesd and that the lights were, in fact, on. I strongly suspected that there’s some hidden circuitry which detects when the car is in front of a wall, another vehicle or something else that the lights should reflect off. In this case the circuitry activates the lights. On the open road, however, it switches them off.

The thing is you’d never know because they’re so worthless that you can’t see the beams on the road at all.

I thought, dear reader, that I was fully acquainted with the inadequacies of my headlights.

But I was wrong.

As I will be driving to work next week, and starting off early in the morning when it will be dark, I decided I should take some steps to improve the headlights. Thus I bought some "extra bright" Xenon bulbs from Halfords.

Fitting the bulbs is, as you would expect, a hassle. You have to get down in the wheelarch, unscrew a mudguard, pull out a grommet, unclip a retention mechanism and slide out the bulb. This I did. In the wet. Lying on a towel so I didn’t get my clothes ruined.

And when I’d done it I found that the bulb I’d just pulled out was the exact same model as the replacement I’d bought.

Only now do I appreciate the full worthlessness of the headlights. I already knew they were bad. Now I know they don’t get any better.

I’ll have to splash out on a HID kit (and installation). I can’t afford it but I’m going to have to.

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