Making sense of headlight modes

[Borbus]

My GTI has three positions on the headlight dial (not including fog lights): 0, auto, sidelights, dipped beam.

I've noticed that the sidelight symbol can light up green. I did assume previously that it lit up green whenever the headlights were on, either by auto, or by manually using the dial. But now I'm questioning that...

I was parked in front of a window the other day in broad daylight and noticed the lights were on. My dial was set to auto. But it wasn't the dipped beams, it was actually the full beam bulb, but a part of the bulb that didn't actually shine out a full beam (dual bulbs?). These stayed on even if I put the dial to 0 which surprised me. If I put the dial to sidelights then the green light came on and those bulbs went out, but the sidelights came on. Dipped and full beam worked as expected.

So my question is what are those lights that aren't the sidelights? What are they for? Why does the green light only come on with the sidelights? What are the sidelights for if I have those other bulbs?

[Snoopy]

Daylight running lights.

[Borbus]

I thought daylight running lights were the bright LED type. I read about them in the manual but assumed my car doesn't have them. It doesn't have the light in the gauge for it.

[Neil C]

Not all daytime running lights are the bright LED ones. The ones on your car , and mine uses the same bulb as the full beam. It is the same bulb with but on DRL setting it operates at about 30% of normal brightness.

Daytime running lights come on when car is started , its your default setting without turning your lights on so to speak. You also have your sidelights , main beam and full beam , fogs etc which will light up your light gauge / dash etc and obviously the rear lights and number plate lamps are illuminated too.

You can turn your DRLs off via the onboard computer if you wish , but id leave them on as they are a safety feature at the end of the day.

Hopefully this all makes some sense now , you can read up in your owners manual if not sure chum.

[SRGTD]

I thought daylight running lights were the bright LED type. I read about them in the manual but assumed my car doesn't have them. It doesn't have the light in the gauge for it.

You only got LED DRL’s on the mk6 GTI if the optional xenon headlamps were specified by the first owner. The standard headlamps for the mk6 GTI were halogen, in which case the DRL’s were also halogen.

Xenon headlamps was an expensive option on the mk6 GTi (around £1,100 in 2011), so not many cars were ordered with this option from the factory.

[Snoopy]

Just to confuse matters further if you have an early car with xenon option like i do. Yes i paid £1000 for the option when new. They don't have the LED daytime running lights the later xenon lights do so your headlights are just on all the time unless they are coded out. Thanks VW you cheap skates.

[Borbus]

Now I know they are DRLs, I see that you can disable without any coding via a quite bizarre indicator stalk manoeuvre (something like hold up and right, but only when ignition is off). I'm not sure whether to disable mine. They can also be changed via coding to come on in various different ways like with the headlights or fog lights, or both. I wonder if it looks cool to keep them on with the headlights.

[dubber36]

Just to confuse matters further if you have an early car with xenon option like i do. Yes i paid £1000 for the option when new. They don't have the LED daytime running lights the later xenon lights do so your headlights are just on all the time unless they are coded out. Thanks VW you cheap skates.

Just to add a little bit more to this, the .:R had the same xenon headlights as the early factory option on the GTI, but it had separate LED DRLs in the bumper. Also, if you speced 19" wheels, you got headlights with black innards.