I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on: Headlamp conversion for driving abroad.
For all it’s headlamp control gizmos such as steering headlamps, auto dip, auto levelling etc. I find it hard to believe that there is not a setting for conversion from RHD to LHD unless I have missed something in the manual. I feel that anything required would be specific to the ND and any form of stick on beam deflectors may create havoc with the existing headlamp alignment systems. I have looked at the “MX-5parts” catalogue and they do not appear to list anything for this purpose.
Any advice or suggestions for this will be gratefully received.
You do not need anything for the ND. If you park in front of a garage door and look at the pattern of the light you will see that the beam is flat.
So there is a good reason that you can not find anything. Just pack your bags and go.
Modern cars with LED headlights do not need beam changers or any alterations.
If you get flashed at by the French it’s because there is a police radar trap ahead !
I did test it and it did deflect the beam but now I know I won’t need one in the future
This was a few years back and the ND was very new then. The MX-5 isn’t the ideal car for bringing wine back but we still managed to squeeze in quite a few litres
Came off easy but sold that one on years ago, have an ND2 now.
We bought 10 litre bag-in-a-boxs and flat packed the boxes and then squeezed them anywhere we could, in the passenger footwell in the boot, behind the seats, managed to get 2 bottles of bubbly in the ‘secret’ cubby holes too
I have been travelling to France for at least forty years and no gendarme has ever checked my headlight dipping alignment. The law asks simply that you have provision to avoid dazzling oncoming traffic.
I cross the channel frequently and I do not recall seeing a single French car coming to the UK with headlight converters so you can see how seriously the French view this.
Thanks for your very illuminating reply Michael
The point of the “kick up” on the old dip beam set up was to illuminate the side of the road (hedges, kerbs etc.) better and further into the distance than the main part of the dipped beam so that you had an idea what was ahead. The “flat beam pattern” seems to reduce this somewhat which is somewhat of a backward step in my mind. Mind you I have driven my ND on very few occasions in the dark and not for some time so I may be mistaken.
In my experience of visiting Europe for work and holidaying reasons some European countries treat EU legislation very lightly, especially when it comes to Health and Safety. In the UK we seem to really hamstring ourselves and make ourselves uncompetitive by being overzealous with our compliance.
