Xantia dipped headlights no longer working (secondary fuse?)

phantasmagoria · Post by **phantasmagoria** » 17 Nov 2010, 21:51

hi all, i've often lurked here and found solutions to problems with my R reg xantia via the search function but sadly no luck with this.

For about a year I've had a dicky dipped headlight (offside, if that's at all relevant) in that 99% of the time it won't work, sometimes after twiddling the bulb in the little housing it sits in it came on for about 5 minutes but after that it turned off. I just assumed this was a bad connection between the earth part of the bulb and what it sits in.

Anyway, it's due for its MOT in a few days so I decided to fix this, or at least work out what was wrong. However this time no amount of twiddling of the bulb or roughing up with sandpaper of the area the bulb sits in worked, so i thought there might be a problem with the wires or the main big connector thing or that the bulb had blown. In order to test the bulb i thought i'd plug it into the other dipped headlight socket to test it. What resulted was a relatively large spark and nothing else. But now neither of the dipped lights work. I don't know which fuse relates to the lights but all the ones under the steering wheel look fine when i inspect them. Is there another fuse somewhere else or some kind of relay?

Currently i've plugged my full beam headlight wires into the dipped bulbs so i can at least get to and from work, just without main beams.

I don't know a great deal about electronics (aside from what I learned at school) but i'm not a complete moron, can anyone shed any light onto if there are some hidden fuses? it'd be rubbish if this resulted in a failed MOT.

cheers,

Sam

bonnyman750 · Post by **bonnyman750** » 18 Nov 2010, 07:36

Hi Sam,

I have had this problem too and with me, it was just a case of a dodgy bulb and when I swapped them round, I blew a fuses too. IIRC the fuse(s) you are looking for are in the underbonnet fusebox under the ribbed cover behind the battery. When you take the ribbed cover off standing in front of the car, they are 2 far left hand 10A fuses (red). According to the legend on the cover, fuse number 14 and 15...

HTH

Glyn

phantasmagoria · Post by **phantasmagoria** » 18 Nov 2010, 17:17

Fantastic! Both had blown. I had no idea there were fuses there.

Thanks Glyn.