Scirocco Poor Head-lights

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I have a GT: 1.4 TSi 92kw Scirocco, the headlight bulbs are a very poor shade of yellow, night driving is best avoided! Every-one now seems to have bright white heads, would welcome advice on the best replacements please.
 
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I have found Osram nightbreakers good in my golf.
Don't be tempted to change to LED's they are very white but the light source is different in shape to standard halogen filament bulbs so the beam pattern is distorted that's why you get loads of idiots blinding you with dipped beams these days!
All bulbs do get dimmer over time so if you want the best results it's worth changing them every year or so.
 
Is the glass in your headlights still clear?

VWs have a tendency to start to turn opaque with age so if the glass is getting a little "milky" then you can either replace them or use a very fine abrasive to remove the surface layer of glass and return it to the original clarity.

I've had this issue on my Golf and every few years go through an hour of polishing the headlight glass with 2000 grit wet & dry paper then finally some metal polish to restore it.

If it is the bulbs, have you tried changing them for original parts?
 
Glass headlights get milky?? Anyway, yes you can't change illumination type legally as the reflector is designed to work with certain bulbs.
 
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Glass headlights get milky?? Anyway, yes you can't change illumination type legally as the reflector is designed to work with certain bulbs.

Polycarbonate ones do, which is what all modern cars use instead of glass. Polycarbonate suffers from UV and exposure to the atmosphere, eventually becoming opaque unless protected. They are protected as they leave the factory, but over the years the film wears off. Yes, they can be restored with wet and dry, but due to the lack of the protective coating they will much more quickly become opaque again than when the left the factory. My lamps tended to show deterioration in just weeks after being restored.

You can buy headlight restoration kits which include a specialised spray coating supposed to offer the protection, but I have found the clear lacquer, as applied to car bodies after the colour paint has been applied, is as good or almost as good. As a test, I polished up a really opaque scrap lens 6 months ago, sprayed it with clear lacquer, then left it out in the garden facing the full sun. Its as clear now as when I sprayed it.

The abrasion needs to be very thorough and quite bold, using course wet and dry to get completely down to the polycarbonate over the entire lens surface, otherwise the lacquer might react to the original coating. You then work down to finer and finer wet and dry grades, finishing off with Brasso or metal polish. A good wash, thorough drying, they finally the clear lacquer.
 
It can be hard to tell glass and polycarbonate apart - the easiest way is to see if they have the tell-tale "nubs" from where the glass is cast into the mould.

If the surface is uniformly smooth then it is probably injection moulded polycarbonate

Aftermarket headlights tend to be polycarbonate due to the much lower cost.

Another thing that can cause the milkiness is abrasion from sand and dust - depends where the car has been driven over a period of time.

It still isn't clear from the original post whether the glass/polycarbonate parts are actually cloudy or whether it is the bulbs that are dim (or even the lenses now I think about it - condensation can cause them to lose their reflectiveness.

I was only throwing some ideas out there that may help.
 
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