Dipped left headlight

[Number54]

I sometimes get a "Dipped left headlight" warning on the dash. Its accompanied by a light-bulb symbol with a cross through it, that goes out after maybe 3 minutes of driving.

The left headlight is indeed out when I get the warning, but sometimes it is fine. So the headlight failure is intermittent.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is my headlight bad? Can I change just the headlight bulb? Or is there some electrical connections that I should check? I don't know how to start to diagnose this problem.

Thanks.

[gregory.fazekas]

Chances are either your bulb or ballast is going bad. Swap the bulls from each side and see if it follows the bulb or stays on the same side.

[audi49]

My S4 had intermittent dipped headlight for months. Was worried that it was more than the light itself. Ended up buying a $50 bulb from Amazon, replaced bulb... works great now.

[davis449]

Mine's been that way since I bought the car. I requested it be "adjusted" several times by the dealer over the last 2.5 years. The last time I insisted they take a look at it. They did and told me that it was that way from the factory on purpose so as to lessen the effects of blinding oncoming drivers. I don't know that I believe a word of that. However, my headlights do adjust (move up down) when turned on and that seems to be the "natural" position of that headlight after the initial adjustment so, who knows? Every time I drive in the dark it makes me batshit crazy and I keep swearing I'm going to do something about it...but I never actually do.

[Das Ponto]

You know its super easy to adjust them right?

You can still manually adjust the headlight level and direction even on the adaptive headlights.

after my accident they never adjusted my headlights and my right one was way to high.

Look at the light housings under the hood. there should be a white cap and a black cap I think... I will take a picture if need be, turn with screw driver and headlights adjust.

[Number54]

Ok, thanks everyone. I'm going to swap the bulbs left/right and see if the issue switches sides.

Really hoping for a bad bulb... I will report back when I get some results.

[944Fuzz]

Ballasts are kind of expensive as far as I can tell can a guy go from projector-beam HIDs to regular halogen bulbs indifferent housings or am I just wishing for a less expensive option

Fuzz

[944Fuzz]

I'm aware that this thread is kind of old but this is a current problem that I am having the intermittent dipped headlight turning off and back on

Fuzz

[Creations_Cult]

I had an intermittent Dipped headlight issue on my A3 3.2 Quattro with Auto Adjusting headlights. I took it to Audi multiple times and they couldn't figure out the issue, when the headlights dipped I would sometimes have only one dip sometimes both sometimes one than the other, but if I turned my headlights off and turned them back on they would both come back on.
I replaced ballasts and bulbs, I had them properly adjusted and everything, it turned out the wiring inside of the headlight assembly was actually brittle so the wiring was exposed inside of the housing and it would cause a short every once in a while and cause my headlights to dip. I ended up rewrapping all the wires inside of my headlights it took a while, but saved me a bunch compared to buying new headlights and compared to having Audi do the work for me :)