Meant to ask this one a long time ago.......

I consider myself a pretty smart guy...but I have yet to figure out how the fricken headlights work. I not joking.

I think the design of the headlamp switch is asinine - the most stupid I have ever used . Its completely uninuitive as
- its a dual ring configuration sharing a common centre point
- its a mix of text and symbols
- when with rings read "AUTO-OFF" means AUTO in on !!!
- the manual is useless

Can some one tell me in plain english, the 'simple' explanation of the difference between these position of the light switch?

1 - OFF (outer ring in position 1) with OFF (inner ring in position 1)
2 - OFF (outer ring in position 1) with LAMP SYMBOL 1 (inner ring pun osition 2)
3 - AUTO (outer ring in position 2) with OFF (inner ring in position 1)
4 - AUTO (outer ring in position 2) with LAMP SYMBOL1 (inner in ring position 2)
5 - LAMP SYMBOL 2 (outer ring in position 3) with OFF (inner in ring position 1)
6 - LAMP SYMBOL 2 (outer ring in position 3) with LAMP SYMBOL1 (inner ring in position 2)
7 - LAMP SYMBOL 3 (outer ring in position 4) with OFF (inner ring in position 1)
8 - LAMP SYMBOL 3 (outer ring in position 4) with LAMP SYMBOL1 (inner ring in position 2)

I think mine is normally in the AUTO-OFF position

I'm sorry, but this is just plain stupid, I never have any idea what ligths are on or off, other that night driving...and even then I'm not sure what I really have on. and I always need to wait to ensure the light go off when I leave the car.

 

Easiest thing to do is to defeat the Auto Lamp ON sensor on the passenger side of the dash by covering it up with something dark so the car thinks is always dark.
I placed some black felt material under the plastic eye and now to turn the headlights on, all I do is turn the **** one click to position 1 and the lights come on no matter how bright it is outside. I have the delay set to 0 sec. so even if I forget to turn the lights off, they go off as soon as I shut the driver door on my way out of the car. This way, you can be 100% sure your lights are on whenever the switch is in the AUTO position.
I did this mainly to avoid having the lights turn on when turning the switch from position 0 to position 1 just to go out again in position 2 and then finally come back on MANUAL in position 3. It was pretty annoying seeing them flicker on and off everytime. Leaving them in AUTO mode also caused the lights to come on and go off randomly causing the gauge and Navi screen light settings to change as well.
Good luck.
P.S. also, I believe the inner ring you are referring to has to do with the almost non existent factory fog lights that are only active when the headlights are ON.

 

You know that the inner ring is for fog lights only right? It can only turn on once your headlights are on, so even if it is on while the headlights are off, the fog lights are still off.

One way you can tell that your headlights are on in the auto position is by the auto brightness on your LCD screen in the center console. At least for me, since I have navigation, when the headlights turn on, the whole nap turns into night mode. It's very helpful while headlights are in auto mode. I know that in the newer G's, the dashboard displays when your headlights/foglights are on.

The Lamp symbol 2 (position 3) in the outer ring only turns on your parking lights. Those are rarely used in daily driving. The Lamp symbol 3 is your headlights, so they're always on when the switch is on that position. The fogs will turn on or off depending on the inner ring, but only turn on when the full headlights are on.

I don't see how hard this is to understand. You can even test the switches out yourself in the garage. Just leave your headlight switch in the Auto position. You never need to ever change the light switch and worry about if your headlights are on or off. They will automatically turn off after 30 seconds when you leave your car when it is shut off. I usually leave the inner ring in the on position (Lamp Symbol 1) because it allows the fog lights to turn on so they illuminate the road better.

I don't think the headlight switch is bad; most of the Japanese cars use the same switch as Infiniti does such as Lexus, Acura, Toyota, and Honda. German cars have the switch in a different place.

 

I'd have to disagree as the auto lamp on/off sensitivity spectrum in the options menu is simply too narrow and the lights end up coming on and turning off several times during a typical commute.
Prime example is when I used to keep the switch in auto all of the time (before teh bypass mod), the lights would come on as the engine was started. Then I'd back out of my garage and the lights would turn off. Once I turned onto the main road and went through an underpass, the lights were back on just to turn off a few seconds later as I exited the underpass. Keep in mind that my instrument cluster and the Navi screen are adjusting back and forth from day to night settings every single time this happens. Basically, it became a real nuissance so I decided to simply bypass the auto light sensor. So bottom line is if the OP would like to be sure that the lights are on, the switch must either be in position 3 regardless of the inner ring, (which we already mentioned is for the useless factory fog lights, imho) or the factory light sensor needs to be bypassed so turning and keeping the switch on position 1 guarantees the lights to come on and stay on until the delay turns them off after vehicle shutdown.

 

That's true, but that's not a huge problem. You're supposed to have your lights on when you're in a tunnel or under an underpass that's long enough for your headlights to kick on anyways. It's much dimmer under an overpass or in a tunnel that it's actually a safety issue. It's the same idea that people don't turn on headlights when it's raining outside, as required by law. In that case, I manually turn on my headlights in adverse weather conditions.

In Canada, your headlights are on at all times as required by law there.

I understand it would be a nuisance for you to have your instrument cluster keep changing brightness while headlights turn on or off, but I keep mine at full brightness at all times.

 

My problem with all this was that you are not really supposed to turn on your Xenon lights for short periods of time...something about the bulbs wearing out faster. I also like the option of keeping the lights off when I need every last bit of available current for my sub amp, for example. I'm sure pulsating HID lights while starving the ballasts of current is not easy on them anyway.

 

Yep, you're correct about that. The bulbs do wear out faster but you're supposed to change them out every 3 years for maximum performance anyways. I would not want to keep bulbs after 3-4 years, since their lumen output degrades by about 20-25% by then. With aftermarket bulbs they go bad even faster since they're using lower quality salts.

It's not terribly expensive to get new bulbs. I get Philips 85122+ bulbs for $70 from Amazon per pair, which are brighter than OEM.

 

Thanks giuys. Sorry fro the initial rant... but this was helpful !

Yah,forgot to mention that its compounded further with the auto sensor and with the always-on Canadian lights

Yes, agree that one can figure things out in the garage. But over time I would forget as I am frequently in different cars between the wife and two older kids. All the lights work slightly differently, but it takes one second to read the switch labels and I know what I am getting. On the Infiniti, I find the the symbology is really bad and the centre dot is confusing.,especially when it reads AUTO OFF ( with the second OFF refer to fogs, not headlights), Silly me, but If I want AUTO to be ON, my brain expects to see AUTO ON or just AUTO. It does not compute to see AUTO OFF.

As to innrer ring bieng fogs, yes of course, but over time, I actually had forgot that!. Ya know why? It doesent say FOG and it does not even say ON!

And had I not referred to the position numbers in this thread, this would have been even more entertaining!

I think if tis continues to bug me, I should just re-label mine:

Outer ring would simply say OFF, AUTO, PARK, ON
Inner ring would simply say FOG-OFF (how approrpriate), FOG-ON,
(simple words like ON bring whole new meaning for me)

It would look like this:


rather than this:

 

You can always do that. But keep in mind, manufacturers are using the icons mainly because they're already accepted standards. It's no different than seeing an SES or Engine light to tell you how one of a gazillion things could be wrong, or that a genie is about to give you three wishes (i.e. Gravy dish a.k.a Oil light).

I agree, it could be more intuitive, but these are fairly simple and basic items for the masses so i guess there just never was a need to improve on it.

For the record, i thought German (i.e. VW) light switches and cruise control stalk controls were confusing at first, too.

I'm inclined to say that this really is a non-issue. My old car had auto-on/off HID's, too, and that thing would also turn on/off quite frequently. It's a 2002 and to this day is still on the original bulbs, with a little over 175k on the odometer. To add to that, the alarm was also somewhat trigger happy earlier on in its life, which meant everytime that alarm went off, the HID's were going on/off like strobes.

On the G, the sensitivity settings work well enough in my case to not turn on/off as much, like if you're temporarily stopped in traffic under a 12ft wide pedestrian overpass.

 

this threads funny

 

^+1
thread is funny

I would hope it is fairly obvious, to most people at least, what each of the symbols is for. Most cars these days have similar symbols to those shown above. Look at the FOG ON symbol and what do you know! It looks just like a fog light shining into fog! OMG!
As for putting PARK on there? You should be careful you dont shift your lights into park and forget about the actual transmission shifter.

 

At least the gear shift always says"P"!

Its not the international symbols that bothers me....its the implementation of it in this car with
Having four cars in the driveway doesnt help either with each having thier onw variation.

I know I'm old fasioned, but simple text goes a long way. Look at the Nav, can you imagine that thing if it were all international icons!! Now THAT would be funny!

 

lol old people. i guess they should start making bigger stalks tooo with big symbols and writing with full descriptions

 

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Looks like a big ***** to me