Vectra Bulb Warning

turn on the lights and walk round, and get a stick to push the brake pedal down to check the brake lights (most likely suspect) If you are really lazy then drive to somewhere you can see the reflection of the car in a shop window and check the lights there.

"Tony" wrote in news:468ff581$1 snipped-for-privacy@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com:

Get out and look?

The message from "Tony" contains these words:

It'll be the one that doesn't light up when you expect it to.

My BMW tells you which corner of the car the lamp has blown on. Except for the centre brake light which shows up as a right hand one. And of course if you ask someone if the brake lights are working they don't know about the centre one. Got me well confused when it blew.

It will refer to a 'statutory light' - those that are checked at MOT time. You can easily check then all yourself - except for the brake lights. So get someone to check those for you. But make sure if there's a third one they know about that. Number plate lights are another favourite to miss.

And another is the high-level stop-light, especially if you have the habit of slamming down in shutting the tailgate.

You look to see which one doesn't light up.

The message from "TJY" contains these words:

"The orange one's working. No it's not. Er - yes it is. No, it's stopped again. Oh, look it's on - nope, out again"

You have to be careful not to be caught out by the inteligent switching system on these cars. When you check the rear lights, check to see exactly what bulbs are lit up on both sides, and make sure it's the same bulb on each side. If a stop/tail bulb fails, it'll switch to using another bulb in the rear cluster (all bulbs in the rear light clusters are 21w - the rear end control module controls the brightness) If a front side light bulb fails, it'll then switch on the indicator on that side. And if a head light bulb fails, some of them will turn on the foglight on the corresponding side.

It shows an amber light to the front if a sidelight fails? Isn't this against construction and use regs? But a failed sidelight shouldn't be important since dipped headlamps will be in use. Tail lights have usually two or more bulbs these days. Or of course LED which should be more reliable.

that is useful to know, thanks

Mrcheerful

And they say truck drivers are thick...

Walk round the car with the lights on and see which doesn't work?

I manage to check the brake lights on an artic OK. Reverse up to a wall if it's dark or you can usually see them in the reflection off the rear of the car behind you in daytime.

Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr The one that doesn't light up?

Bit harder to check the 4 bulbs in the high level brake light like that...

No it isn't. Apply a little common....

Dave Plowman (News) ( snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

It's easy to check those single-handed, too. Just look at the reflection of them when you've parked tail-in to a shop window or similar.

Uhm, I'd rather not piss around unscrewing covers to try the bulbs one at a time, only to find they all work...

Around here, the only suitable spaces I can think of would be disabed spaces at Tesco...