Cars Flashing

[Jackal83]

Does anyone else get this...

Driving along when someone will flash there lights at me... Always gets me.. usually tpo late for me to flash back but my god it makes you think... What if they are flashing cos something has fallen off!!!!

Anyone else get this?

[al 350i]

i've had people before flash me from behind at night quite alot and it turns out to be my rear fog light is on, very easy to accidently knock it on and due to the postion of the wheel and how i sit i don't notice its on.

[Gazzab]

I wonder whether the car being so low and with hard suspension means that the lights can appear to flash (or maybe they do dazzle) as you go over lumps and bumps in the road. Higher up normal cars will have the lights angled down more than ours and their suspension will be softer. So I think this is people flashing you cos of your lights.

[Tanguero]

al 350i said:

i've had people before flash me from behind at night quite alot and it turns out to be my rear fog light is on, very easy to accidently knock it on and due to the postion of the wheel and how i sit i don't notice its on.

Me too, until I put a repeater LED in the headlight high beam indicator wired to the foglight switch. Now it lights up red if the rear fog is on and blue if high beam is on.

[Jackal83]

I'm flashed mostly during the daytime with no lights on at all!!! and from oncoming cars...lol

[M3John]

Yep i get this quite a bit, probably because the headlamps don't actually light up the road at all. I do however manage to get a lovely view of the stars or any aircraft that may be within a 300 mile radious of me !


...another one on my *little* list of projects to do.

[headcase]

Are you on fire?

[davidd]

I have my headlamps in bits at the moment (replacing a failed ballast) so will be tweaking the NS as it is pointing so far over the to the left it is just silly..

However even with one hid not working the amount of light on the road was still at least 200% better than the old TVR fit dip!

D

[Buffoon]

Get flashed all the time, but sure its not the head-candles. Two main groups are Tiv fans (flashed a few myself when not in the cerb out of habit and respect), and friends. Car is instantly recognisable, but it is hard to reciprocate those in standard road fodder. Number of times people say they flashed or waved but I ignored it. They forget it is not so easy to see who is driving inside a Focus or similar from the Cerb driving position

[ajp70]

Are these lights flashing behind you sort of blue in colour and trying hard to keep up?

Only joking! I know we obey the police really.

[dean_ratpac]

Tanguero said:

...I put a repeater LED in the headlight high beam indicator wired to the foglight switch. Now it lights up red if the rear fog is on and blue if high beam is on.

Could you send some pics and the LED used - as i often find this on mine... nice little mod there i must say!

[Tanguero]

I am afraid there isn't anything much to take a picture of now its all assembled. I discovered the joys of the fog light switch position on my way back from collecting the car having driven from Devon to London with people flashing their lights at me from behind on and off all the way. It was only when I stopped in the services that I realised I had caught the fog light switch and couldn't see it.

I used the smallest red LED that I could get off the shelf from Maplins. You want to solder and heat shrink a length of twin core bell wire onto the leads, long enough to wind up behind the dash from the fog light switch. When you get in behind the dashboard, the centre warning lamps have the existing LEDs hot glued into the tubular body of the holder from the back. In my case the glue wasn't firmly stuck to the aluminium housing and was easy to cut back with a scalpel just enough to push the red led in along side the existing one - alignment was very non-critical. A fresh dab of hot glue wasn't really needed but I did anyway.

You want to pop out the fog light switch, if I remember it just pushes from the back and solder the other end of the wire in parallel to the existing switch illumination. (Test before soldering to make sure you have them the right way round!)

Push the fog light switch back and Bob is your mothers brother.

The fog light only comes on dip beam so you wont get both illuminated at once. Now lights blue for main beam and red for rear fog.

I will have hunt around and see if I can track down the exact LED I used, but as far as I recall it was just a bog standard 3mm type.

[McNasty]

al 350i said:

i've had people before flash me from behind at night quite alot and it turns out to be my rear fog light is on, very easy to accidently knock it on and due to the postion of the wheel and how i sit i don't notice its on.

Are you sure you are not just holding them up?