Never ending story: xenon headlights

When I took charlie technical inspection in May, the inspector noted that the headlights were too low.

I aligned them to Lady Heathers headlights and was a bit surprised that I had to turn them up to the stops. I thought the lower profile summer tires were the cause and dismissed the issue, as the lights were okay.

A couple of days ago I noticed, that the headlights didn’t initialize themselves properly when turning them on. Usually the light beam moves down and moves up again to the correct position. But charlies lights are static.

So I asked lindi to hookup his laptop and check the ECU for errors. The diagnosis was sobering: Malfunction in actuator for automatic range adjustment HID right hand side. (Error occured 34 times) :(

The bad news is, there are no spare parts for the HID headlights. If something fails, you need to get a complete headlight assembly and MINI lists that at roughly 450 Euro. Bummer :(

The good news is, I got the right headlight last year on my insurance, as the old one was cracked, so this part should still be under warranty.I hope the dealer is of the same oppinion ;)