City light not working correctly.

[Benjamin]

Hello fellow 480 owners,

English is not my first language so please bare with me while I try to describe the problem as best as I can.

As of late my front left city light is not functioning properly anymore. On the left of the steering wheel there's a round switch that you can use to switch between 3 modes of lighting. The city light works fine when I use the first mode, on the switch it is shown by a circle. For the second mode (park lighting?) and third mode (headlights), the city light does not work. What I get from this is that it has to be some switch in the electrical circuit that is failing, but I'm unsure where and how I fix this problem.

Any tips and/or help is greatly appreciated.

[brinkie]

Hi Benjamin, welcome, where are you from?

It depends on the fitting of the front lights how the behaviour should be. Some cars have only standing lights (5W single filament), many have Daytime Running Lights (DRL) and standing lights (21/4W dual filament).

Standing lights only fitted: 0 = all off, 1 = standing lights + rear lights, 2 = standing lights + rear lights + headlights raised.
DRL/standing lights combined: 0 = DRL on (21W), 1 = standing lights (4W) + rear lights, 2 = standing lights (4W) + rear lights + headlights raised.

BUT... some cars have light switches wired such that standing lights and rear lights are always on, even with the switch in 0.

Have you checked the bulbs already?

[Benjamin]

Hi Robert, I'm from the Netherlands.

I have checked all the bulbs. And if one of the bulbs malfunctioned the bulbs shouldn't go on at all, but in 0 the city light works. The problem is that in 1 and 2 my left front city light doesn't work. So I'm currently thinking there must be a cable break somewhere, or maybe one of the switches doesn't work properly.

[eye of ra]

Can you confirm what you mean by city lights?

I assume you mean what in the UK are called Day Running Lights and Standing/Parking Lights and are located between the indicator and the auxiliary driving light.

These bulbs have two filaments in them so one will illuminate in the 0 position and then the other filament should illuminate in the 1 and 2 positions.

As Brinkie has said they use different wattage filaments so when your working RH one is on 0 it will be brighter (DRL 21W) than when it is on 1 and 2 (standing/parking light 4W).

Can you confirm this as things may be different in the Netherlands?

If the RH unit is working as it should then the switch is OK as a single wire leaves it for DRL and another single wire leaves it for Standing/Parking Lights, then they splits later to feed each bulb.