trekntrail wrote:

Hmm CG - one of England's biggest counties (Northumberland) lies mostly north of the waal

so can someone please confirm then if I leave my headlights oriented to be legal for driving on the right -I am committing an offence in the UK, or not?

Drivers from mainland Europe when in the uk don't fit 'beam benders' do they?

Mainland Europe has a different beam compared to the UK, the Mainland beam just points down, but the UK beam dips to the left to point at the kerb, hence when we go to France and drive on the right, when we dip, the beam is pointing towards the oncoming traffic.

Never ever seen a non UK registered vehicle over here with any form of beam deflection and considering that it is said that at one point in time there are 140000 non UK registered vehicles over here, with 3 million coming over here every year.

trekntrail
As I and later CG (with his excellent web link) have already confirmed - IT IS ILLEGAL ANYWHERE IN EUROPE and probably in other jurisdictions - to drive with incorrectly aligned headlights.

With regard to the comment repeated within different threads on Freel2 that "mainland Europe beam patterns only point downwards"; I can report that from daily experience I am not convinced that this is so as I experience dazzling from oncoming traffic. Furthermore, her Ladyship's FL2 (LHD) own Xenons are distinctly orientated to the right of the road and when visiting the UK, and having applied LR FL2 "Tourist Lever", her headlights are then predominantly cast their beam to the left side of the road. That's my observations after 42,000kms in her FL2 and over 100,000kms in my own cars and motorcycles.

Just had a bulb replaced and garage have snapped the bit of plastic the retainer hinges from - too much force trying to remove it I think - retainer not broken but the bit in hinges from. I have a retainer with hinge attached to a snapped piece of plastic!

What needs to be replaced? Can't quite work out which part is broken with headlamp still in car and unwilling to remove until they look at the mess they've made of it. I'd just like to know what they have to do - in case they don't!

Thanks