Low beam Light Bulbs

Has anyone had an excessive number of low beam bulbs "blow" in their
volvo cars?

We own a 2004 XC70 and we have replace the driver side low beam bulb
at least 6 times in the past 3 years. We have owned many other cars
for a longer period of time and have never had to replace blown bulbs.

What gives with these Volvo bulbs and cars?

 

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,

You may get the odd faulty bulb, but not 6 - so it's unlikely to be that.

One thing that *can* cause fulbs to fail is faulty alternator voltage
regulation, resulting in too high a voltage - but in that case I would
expect other bulbs to fail - not just those in a particular position.

I would be inclined to look for a dodgy connection anywhere in the feed to
that bulb. If a bulb keeps going on and off when it's supposed to be on all
the time, that will dramatically shorten its life. Trace the wiring back to
the point where it's common with the other side, and make sure that all
connectors are tight. Disconnect and reconnect each connector several times
in order to exercise the contacts and remove any slight corrosion which may
be preventing a good contact.
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

 

In my 2004 XC70 I had this problem. I also was blowing fuses occasionally.
It cost me $125.00 to find out that the bulb manufacturer had wires that
"crossed" in the bulb assembly. Sometime the fuses blew and sometimes I
needed to replace the bulbs and did so with similar faulty bulbs.
So much for engineering!

 

So is it just a case of buying bulbs from another manufacturer ? E.G
Philips or Osram ?

Nick

 

Volvo's were well known for short-lived headlights; thta was
true at least for my 2000 S-40. I think there was a fix
that the dealer installed during a routine service. the
daytime running lights use the same bulbs as the low-beam
nighttime light, and I've noticed that when I switch between
the daytime lights and nighttime lights at night, the
daytime lights are dimmer.

 

A while back there were gripes of short headlamp life. It made me wonder if
there are either thermal or vibration/resonance issues with the headlamp
assemblies on some of these cars.

 

I believe in the past, there were complaints about short bulb life in
the early s70's. I think changing the light bulb socket was one of the
remedies.

 

Do the headlights flicker occasionally? Does the socket appear to be
leaking water or corroded?

I would clean the bulb connections throughly and try it again.