Anyone any idea what I need to do with the lights on my UK STi to make them leal for continental driving, (I'm driving to Austria in a few weeks time). It was easy on my old scoob as I got some stick on converters from halfords which did the trick, but the STi7 light are somewhat different.

Thanks,
Iain

 

The dip beam on STi7's is the bulls eye shaped lens as I'm sure you know. The purpose of the beam deflectors is to remove the extra bit of light designed for lighting up the left kerb when driving on the left. The point being that this is aimed straight at oncoming drivers when you take a right hand drive car to the continent. So you need to take this bit of light out but as it's generated somewhere inside the bulls eye rather than from the plastic lens it's more difficult to see which bit to blank out.

My first thought would be to forget it, not many people bother with the beam deflectors anymore, I've never heard of anyone being stopped for not having one. If you're feeling very sympathetic when driving on continental motorways you could always lower the complete lights using the knobby on the dash.

If you keen to play then I'd park up close to a wall so that you can see the dip beam pattern, which seems to be more than usually well defined (ie very sharp) with the STi7 lights. Then get a bit of insulting tape and fiddle around on the plastic covers and see how much tape and where you need to blank out this bit of light.

 

Thanks

 

Left and right hand drive units are the same, there is a switch at the back of the light unit to change the beam spread over

 

Cool, I'll have a look.

Cheers,
Iain

 

Erm, where exactly is this switch? I've had a look and couldn't see anything obvious.

Thanks,
Iain

 

Do nothing !!

Dazzle a few french/germans on route - who cares
They always have their front foglights on anyway.

Not sure we did anything, but did travel in daylight to Austria in both ways in March

 

The thought had crossed my mind Carolyn (teach em a lesson eh ).

I'm catching a 10pm channel tunnel train, so I get most of the boring French motorway drive over with in the dark, and will probably arrive at the destination at around 5pm the next day. Don't really want to risk running into French plod though...

Iain