# LHD to RHD beam benders where to stick them and do they work



## 98794

If you've read my post in Tech you'll know that I am haveing a bit of a mare getting my LHD import thro' the MOT because of the headlights.  
When I put it thro' the MOT the furst time I asked the man to try the beam benders for the best place to stick them, which he did however, he told me that where ever he had placed them they had no effect whatso ever and it failed. I have the round headlights on a 1997/98 Starline. Which brings me to my question....

If you have the same headlights and use the stick on beam benders, LHD to RHD legal, and yours passed the MOT with these, would you kindly tell me where exactly on the lens did you position the benders ? pleeeease

Or is there another solution which doesnt involve the three screws, or paying Hymer UK £180+ to do it. 8O


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## Pusser

*Re: LHD to RHD beam benders where to stick them and do they*



guerrero said:


> If you've read my post in Tech you'll know that I am haveing a bit of a mare getting my LHD import thro' the MOT because of the headlights.
> When I put it thro' the MOT the furst time I asked the man to try the beam benders for the best place to stick them, which he did however, he told me that where ever he had placed them they had no effect whatso ever and it failed. I have the round headlights on a 1997/98 Starline. Which brings me to my question....
> 
> If you have the same headlights and use the stick on beam benders, LHD to RHD legal, and yours passed the MOT with these, would you kindly tell me where exactly on the lens did you position the benders ? pleeeease
> 
> Or is there another solution which doesnt involve the three screws, or paying Hymer UK £180+ to do it. 8O


I have read all the posts on the subject, taken into account that stick on's bugger up the plastic and still have not got a clue which bit to cover up and with what. Only suggestion I saw which I understood cost too much money and that involved buying light guards.


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## Rapide561

*Headlights*

Hi

Is it any cheaper at peter Hambletons near Preston? Could they convert the lights for you?

Rapide561


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## geraldandannie

It may be a stupid or naiive question, but can you replace the units? If they're round, aren't there some UK-legal cars which have similar-sized headlamps? If I remember from my yoof, working in Lucas, a lot of manufacturers use the same headlamps - it saves on design and development costs.

Gerald


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## geraldandannie

Geo may have some more info here ...

I've tried like mad to find a picture of the headlight beam shape, but I can't. I'll have to describe it ... :? 

Imagine you're sitting in your vehicle at night, shining your headlights on a wall some 20m away. With the headlights on low beam, the lighted area (from right to left) should be horizontal until it reaches the centre of the beam. Then it should rise up at an angle (of around 30 degrees?) as the edge of the beam moves across to the left. This angular rise (strangely called the cutoff) is there to illuminate the nearside of the road. The beam is horizontal to the right so it doesn't blind oncoming vehicles, when you drive on the left of the road.

Obviously, driving on the right, and the cutoff causes a problem for oncoming road users. Some beam deflectors are nothing more than beam stoppers. The result is a flat headlight beam from right to left. I don't think there's any way a deflector can move the cutoff from left to right.

Your situation is just the reverse. Your beam angles up on the right, and it is this (I'm guessing) is causing the failure. Someone I used to know (and work for - he was tight as .... a very tight thing) would stick electrical insulation tape on the cutoff section of the headlamp glass whenever he travelled abroad.

Hope this helps. Sorry - still can't find a picture to describe what I'm talking about. Try buying beam 'deflectors' from Halfords, and look at the various fitting diagrams. You should get the idea.

Gerald


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## Pusser

It would be really helpful if it were possible to build a database of van lights and where black sticky tape should go. Either diagrams or better still, real pics. Pics I understand, diagrams with measurements I don't.


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## IrishMike

Going back to the origional question my advice woudl be to look for a Van breakers and buy some second hand units for the base that you are driving,
It doesent matter too much about the condition as if you get them with the adjusters on then once you fit them they should be about the right position. Then after the test put your own back on.
Us bikers do it all the time with exhaust systems


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## sallytrafic

IrishMike said:


> .....
> Us bikers do it all the time with exhaust systems


I never would have guessed 

Frank


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## IrishMike

Hi Sally
Do I detect detect a slight note of announce or sarcasm there?
No really if the rules are over restrictive or idiotic (as many laws are) then is a very large open loophole exists then why not use it?
The main comment here si that is unlike bike exhausts that can easily be checked by the loca plod(no kite no legal) for lights with good benders on them then it causes no hassels for anyone except the bureaucrats.
By the way I am doing in this response what I try not to do as in changing the subject of the topic.


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## sallytrafic

Back to the original question. I think guerrero has hit the nail on the head when he asks for someone with the same headlight to give the solution. I have a set of what I will call converters which masks off part of the beam for my RHD Renault Traffic. The converters mask off different parts of each lens. I can confirm after driving through several unlit tunnels that the converters cut off the beam correctly but how on earth do they they come up with the design? Am I right in thinking that guerrero's hymer lights dip straight up and down like a lot of european headlights and dont have the extra bit that UK lights have? WE need a MOT expert like Geo to tell us what the problem is


Regards Frank


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## 98794

Thank you all for your replies  however what I really need is someone with the same ROUND headlights (my vehicle is a starline 640 1998 model), however I'm sure the same headlights are used across the range, to answer my main question. ........

If you have the same headlights and use the stick on beam benders, LHD to RHD legal, and yours passed the MOT with these, would you kindly tell me where exactly on the lens did you position the benders ? pleeeease 

And pleeease I need the answer soon  
regards Martyn


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## geraldandannie

Martyn - if you get really desperate, can you take a photo of the offending articles? That could help.

If you get reallu REALLY desperate, you could park in front of a wall, headlights on, and put a bit of card on the end of a bamboo stick (or seomthing), and wave it around in front of the lights - thereby working out where the "beam deflectors" (bits of sticky tape) go.

It might be hard to get the answer you need as quickly as you need it - people on holiday, etc etc.

Gerald


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## geraldandannie

Or pay Hymer £180 to do it, and be done with it :? 

Gerald


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## gaspode

I think we need to consider this slightly differently to what would be the normal situation for LHD/RHD headlights. As I recall, the Hymers fitted with this type of headlight have double headlights, presumably one set for dip and the other for main beam. They have clear glass and smooth parabolic reflectors. I have to concede here to knowing very little of the actual system used by Hymer, but I base my advice on systems common in the days when "twin headlights" were considered the bees knees.
The use of beam benders depends on deflecting (or obscuring) that section of beam which points towards the side (or the centre in the case of a LHD van) of the road when using the dip function. This beam deflection is usually arrived at by one of two methods. 
Method one uses prisms moulded into the headlight glass to deflect the beam and re-positioning that portion of the beam can be attained by sticking either an additional prism over that area of glass (beam bender) or by taping over that section of glass (black tape).
Method two (more recently designed headlights) uses prism shapes which are moulded into the reflectors of the headlights (which have clear plastic lenses). In order to deflect the dip portion of these headlights similar methods can be used, prismatic stick on beam benders or obscure stickers to block a portion of the beam. As Sallytraffic says, the positioning of these stickers/beam benders can be very difficult to figure out as you are trying to block a beam which is being created at the reflector, not at the surface of the glass.
As far as I am aware, the Hymer round headlight system uses neither glass prisms nor prisms on the reflectors, they simply aim the whole dip light units down and to one side. This means that in order to block the incorrectly dipped beam you would have to either mask the whole area of the headlight (might as well turm it off) or have a prismatic deflector which covered the whole of the headlight glass surface, ie: beam benders/masks will not work properly.
Hymer have built in an adjustmemt which has the effect of either moving the whole headlight unit or the bulb (don't know which) to point the beam correctly. Therefore the only way of altering the beam setting on these headlights is to adjust them using the method provided. Just a shame that the designer didn't take into account the positioning of the adjusting screws.
It's true that some of these Hymers will pass an MOT when beam benders are fitted - but as I have experienced many times, MOT testers often use a certain amount of discretion and will regularly pass headlights which are not strictly legal if they consider them not to be a hazard.

In short - I would say that the only way to do the job correctly is to use the adjustment screws provided for the purpose.


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## geraldandannie

Just one thought overnight - is it possible to rotate the lamp unit? If you rotate the unit through 30 degrees anticlockwise (as you look at it), you could simply move the cutoff horizontal, and the horizontal section upwards.

I have no idea how easy / difficult this is. Sorry if it's oversimplistic :roll: 

Gerald


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## 98794

Thank you all for your input.
The problem I have is that the vehicle is only in this country for as long as it takes to register it then I'm off to sunny spain and portugal. I dont want to pay the likes of HymerUk £180 pounds to adjust for the MOT and next week pay them another £180 to adjust them back 8O or replace the whole units for the same reason.  
It's soooo frustrating to have my plans held up for what (when I bought the vehicle) I thought would be a minor issue, I thought the biggest problem I would have, would of been the speedo being in Kilometres but the MOT man never even mentioned that :roll: 
Let this be a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of importing a Hymer with these type of headlights.


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## Hymer634

Hi,

I adjusted the LHD round lights on my self imported 2002 B634 myself.

It was quite a task, and involved removing the front bumper to get at the screws on the rear of the lights - altogether it took about 3 hours !!

However for European touring I now use stick on converters called Eurolites made by a company called travel spot ( www.travel-spot.co.uk ), obtained from Halfords I think. Just checked the website and they do both types LHD to RHD and vice versa. Other makes were not so good.

The instructions for these show a similar 'projector' headlight and the round converter supplied seems to work correctly by masking off the bit of the beam which kicks up to the 'wrong' side.

Alan


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## gaspode

Hi guerrero

I'm at a loss to understand your problem really. What you need to do is simply grab the bull by the horns and spend the three hours it takes to do the job. Alternatively pay someone else to do it. If it does take three hours, then the Hymer charge of £180 doesn't seem totally unreasonable (although no doubt a local garage could do it for half that price on lower hourly rates). £180 is surely just a drop in the ocean compared to the huge savings you made when buying the M/H in Germany? As for the speedo conversion, the speedo isn't part of the MOT test - but it is illegal to drive in the UK without a MPH readout which is visible in darkness - so you do need to convert it. If you intend to import M/Hs and take advantage of the massive price differentials, you have to be prepared to either do the necessary conversions or pay someone else to do it for you. I've done it a couple of times - and I'm certainly not complaining.

Alan
No doubt those deflectors will work to some degree - possibly enough to get you through an MOT, but I'm not convinced if they would be completely effective. Still, if passing the MOT is your prime concern perhaps they offer a cost-effective solution.


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## 98794

Thanks for that Gaspode most useful ! :roll: I may have saved a few thousand importing from Germany but the saving will pay for an extended trip to Spain. I dont want to spend it paying extortionate labour charges for work which I will have to reverse in a few weeks time. I may own a Hymer but I'm not exactly flush with cash !
I can see you have got the hump with me after I double posted the other day


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## 98794

By the way I'm now sorted. Took it to Peter Hambilton Engineering (Hymer Direct)at Lostock Hall Preston (thanks Rapide561) and they did it there and then after I explained my MOT deadline. £120 all in as opposed to HymerUK's £180 + VAT they removed the lights and cut off two flanges on each light which now allows the beams to be adjusted by hand whenever needed, without undoing the screws. Excellent service and friendly with it.  Theyll get my business again for sure.

The beam deflectors are a waste of time they dont work on this type of light (as the MOT man said) and apparently cause the lens/bulb to overheat.


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