UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hi all. Our 2017 1.2 tsi DSG Polo is actually my wife's daily drive.
The car's reversing light has always been pretty useless. She was trying to give way to an oncoming car on a pitch dark country lane on her way home on Friday. Could not see a thing in reverse.

Looking at the problem this morning I could see a functioning nearside reversing light, albeit not very bright, and looked at the offside (driver's side) cluster to see if there was anything there. A YouTube video showed me how to get the light cluster off, a fiddly job requiring monkey hands, which I do not have.

When I got the cluster off, I could see a bulb holder facing what looked like a reversing light lens, containing this little thing, what looks to be a very small halogen bayonet bulb with offset pins. Could not discern any characters printed on the bulb. Herself tried all the lights with the cluster out of position. Needless to say, this little bulb did not illuminate when she selected reverse, but the nearside one did; I don't know what kind of bulb is in that cluster, it's pretty feeble - could it be a P21W?

Next thing is to put a meter on the mini bulb socket and see if it registers anything when reverse is selected; the filament appears to be intact. Where can such weird little bulbs be obtained?

Any ideas or suggestions?

Many thanks.

Only the passenger side has a reversing light. The driver side houses the rear fog light in that position.

Yes, that is as good as it gets with many cars since rear fog lights became mandatory many many years ago.

Near side always reversing light, same position on off side rear fog light - unless you are lucky enough to have a car that has enough room/space in the rear clusters to have reversing lights on both sides, and maybe, just maybe, rear fog lights on both sides - but the issue with having rear fog lights on both sides is, if the off side rear fog light fails, it is only the near side rear fog light that is showing or lit, it has been considered that in extreme foggy conditions, that only having a single near side working rear fog light could be dangerous as a stupid/speeding driving coming up behind you could collide with your car - not my idea, just what is considered a possibility.

There will be present regulations on what form/position(s) are acceptable if you are planning on fitting a "better" extra reversing light, so maybe look into that before drilling a hole in the hatch and bolting on a spot/driving light. I'm not sure that anyone nowadays will find the supplied reversing light of any use when reversing, they have morphed into more "reversing indicator lights".

I think technically, the main purpose of reversing lights is to warn others of your intention to reverse, rather than to provide adequate illumination to help you see where you’re going. The mk6 Golf GTD I owned was terrible to reverse in the dark if you happened to be in an area with no street lighting (like the road I live on!) as it also had quite dark tinted windows as standard from the B pillar back to the rear of the car, so reversing was a bit of a lottery.

I had a reversing camera on my previous (6c) Polo - not because it was a difficult car to reverse, but with the camera mounted close to the rear LED number plate lights, it provided quite a good illuminated view of the area behind the car when reversing after dark. I have a reversing camera on my current (AW) Polo for the same reason.

@piemanpete; I think some other forum members have fitted a replacement LED bulb for the reversing light - if you use the advanced search facility (top right of forum screen; click on the cog wheel symbol and input your search criteria) you should hopefully find the relevant discussion topics. Bear in mind that with the reversing light segment of the rear light cluster being quite small, any upgraded bulb may not provide significantly better light output than the OEM bulb.

I get all my led lamps from Trups at EM Tuning (emtuning.co.uk). Not the cheapest, but high quality, guaranteed, and CANbus compatible so no bulb error messages.

No connection just a satisfies customer.

Mike

Fitted one of these into the Reversing light, Auxito brand, been using them for several years and have been happy with them