Thread: D4 high-beam alignment

I would say it is a fault in the design of the headlight unit.
That is a fault not a characteristic headlight unit is unsuitable for its purpose.
If enough folks complain LR may redesign the units.

The fault occurs only with some vehicles.

I don't understand why my dealer needs to see my lights again to take further action as the fault was blatently obvious at the 1st visit and LR should just approve their replacement. I'll get back when I can take a break from work and hopefully get it resolved, but will contact LR Customer Care in the meantime.

Adjusting the low beam down only makes for dangerous driving and the lights illegally adjusted. My halogens are back up in the tree-tops where they are counter-productive but the low beam is where it should be. Maybe the halogen globes should be removed temporarily so as not to be distracting.

Manufacturing fault rather than design fault?

I'm interested in Graeme's comment about this fault only being on some vehicles. Is there any pattern? Is it a model-specific problem limited to the SE, does it affect some SE's and not others, or does it occur across different models?

It seems unlikely that LR could make such a blunder with the design, but it also seems unlikely to end up with such an accurately reproduced and consistent problem from a manufacturing fault.

Graeme's comment that it only occurs with some vehicles suggests that there may have been a bad batch of lights, not picked up by quality control tests. This would be an encouraging result if it could be proved, as it means that the fix is simply a couple of replacement units from an unaffected batch.

The difficulty is that my dealer compared the headlight beam pattern on the other vehicles in stock and found they were all the same as mine. This was only a small sample size (I can't imagine they had access to more than 3 or 4 vehicles in total and this may have included different models/specs) but the photos I provided to show the problem were forwarded to LR UK, who responded to confirm that this is how the high beam is on all Discovery 4's and is a characteristic of the vehicle.

This response from LR UK doesn't seem to fit with the "bad batch" theory, or that it only occurs on some vehicles and not others.

Does anyone have photos of the low and high beam patterns of a vehicle that is not affected by the fault? Any chance of putting some up on this thread to compare, or send them to me? I'd like to be able to show LR some photos to compare this "characteristic of the vehicle" with examples of D4's that have a better version of this characteristic.

Jesse B managed to upload some photos in an earlier post in this thread (about post #37 I think??) so I'll give it a go too. I've never tried this before so here goes...

DSC03304.jpg
The first image shows full high beam (xenon + halogen beams) on a roadway. The xenon beam is correctly aimed but the halogen high beam points up into the trees instead of lighting the area at ground level each side of the zenon high beam. There is actually an 8' high steel fence on the right but the halogen beam misses it completely and just lights up the trees above it.

Then follows a series of comparison photos that were all taken from the same spot in a shopping centre carpark, 40m from the wall. The first shows low beam, which is properly aimed.
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The 2nd in the series shows the same location with normal high beam (xenon + halogen). The xenon high beam is the bright white spot in the middle from road level up to the one-way sign on the wall. The halogen high beam is the slightly pink/orange beam from about the one-way sign up to the top of the Coles/Target/KMart signs along the top of the wall. You can see the black areas on each side below the halogen beam, which is where the halogen beam should be shining instead of lighting up the roof area.

The 3rd in the series shows some detail of the black area to one side on normal high beam.
DSC03295.jpg

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The last in the series shows the same area of detail from the beam pattern thrown by the halogen high-beam alone, with the main xenon headlights turned off and using just the headlight flasher to turn on the halogen beams. You can see that this beam pattern is essentially useless and is the cause of the black areas on each side at ground level.

To give a proper perspective of what this beam pattern actually looks like at a distance of 80m or 100m while driving, I'm going to have to find a much higher wall. Any suggestions?

Originally Posted by CaverD3

Manufacturing fault rather than design fault?

I believe so. On Disco3.co.uk some people with D4s with apparently good lights thought that I and others were complaining about nothing until someone posted a pic of the bad lights. But to date no-one has yet posted a pic of good lights, perhaps because those people don't have an issue to persue and thus don't have any interest in helping others get their faulty lights replaced. The fault exists in both adaptive and non-adaptive versions of the lights.

Just been talking to LR Assist, who are going to "look into the matter" - supposed to be ringing back tomorrow, so I'll post whatever their response is. They need to talk to my dealer, and to their technical folk - I wonder if I'll get the same old "characteristic of the vehicle" nonsense? Fairly obvious that the poms don't have great furry brown things leaping out in front of them at night... Perhaps if they did they might see this as something other than a bloody characteristic!

You should be making that point about safety to LR.