Hello there, I will get right to it.

When I was a cop, the headlights on our patrol cars wagged. They would flash back and forth a couple of times, then simultaneously flash, then repeat.

This is what my Land Rover headlights do right now as soon as I turn the key, prior to start.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jeff

 

Do you have the Active Bending lights? I didn't think those were an option on the SE level.

If you do, they do have a start up procedure where they go through the full range of motion (left, right, up, and down) to make sure there are no faults, but they should not be flashing or blinking. Blinking could mean you have a bad bulb or ballast.

If you don't have ABL, I'm not sure what to tell you.

 

My wife's do it. I suspect it's the ballast on its way out. Hers are not active cornering or whatever it's called.

 

I think you guys are spot-on. The Adaptive Headlights do a calibration every time you turn the key to the start position. The SE trim level didn't offer the Adaptive Headlights so it must be an issue with the ballast. Although I'm not sure why a dying ballast would cause swiveling of the lamp.

 

It's not swiveling in my case, its a random flashing/blinking sequence until it stabilizes.

 

Ahhh...that would make sense then. Without a functioning ballast the voltage is not well regulated. I'm no Electrical Engineer so that's about as well as I can explain it.

 

Thank you all - I do not have the adaptive headlights. My IID gap tool is arriving by the big brown truck tomorrow. If it is the ballast, would that be throwing a code?

 

Is it just one or both lamps that do it? Do you know for sure if you have Halogen or Xenon bulbs?

 

Seems like both from inside, but never check outside.

To be clear, it's only at start up.

 

It is both headlights, and I do indeed have the Xenon lamps and it is only on startup. If I turn the ignition off and turn it right back on, the headlights do not wag at all. When I hooked up my IID tool today (about 7mins after the UPS guy dropped it off), I did see 2 faults - LH and RH headlights - short to ground. I cleared the faults as they were from Aug of 2015, and after reading faults again, they did not appear. I am wondering if this is something one of the PO's set up in Car Configuration...?