what Adrian said a post up - prone to die and leave you with no lights.

The dim-dip arrangement puts _all_ of the current to feed the side & tail lights, dipped beam and fog light through a connection in the switch originally designed to carry only the current for side and tail lights.

Because of that, the switch is then prone to overheating and early failure, so reverting to the original setup makes more sense than retaining such a poorly designed bodge.

ken

Sorry for revising an old thread but I was digging through some of the posts and was wondering what the DimDip thing was all about.

So apparently if you turn on your park lamps (or what ever you guys call them), this device turns the low beams (dipped) on but at a lower intensity? This makes no sense.

The lighting requirements on US spec and European cars vary a bit. When I got my Trabant, I was baffled as to why the front amber lamps would not light up when the park lamps were turned on. Then I noticed that the headlamps appeared to be on but no light was being shined from them.

I did not know there was a small bulb inside the headlamp! The park and turn signals on US spec cars typically use a dual filament bulb. The turn signal filament is usually around 21 watts and the park filament is around 10 watts so that if the park lights are on, the turn signal is brighter.

Canada required all cars to have daytime running lamps some years ago. So for some reason GM installed daytime running lamps on all cars built in North America. The dipped beams on my 98 Chevy Van come on with the ignition but are not any dimmer than if the actual headlamps were on. I think the US later adopted this for all vehicles. The headlamps on my 2003 Subaru come on with this ignition but I don't think the burn at full intensity.

Rear fog lamps are not required. These are actually a good idea. The last two times I've driven across the Cumberland mountain here in East Tennessee it has been so foggy the visibility was like 10 feet. Every time it rains, it's foggy on this mountain for some reason.

Rear tail lamps. The entire tail lamp can be red (like my Chevy van) which is typically found on cars built by American automakers. I guess it's cheaper to mold one big light a solid color rather than splitting it into two separate colors. As with European or Asian cars sold in the US, the turn signal is almost always amber.

Side marker lights. Amber on the front wings and red on the rear. Unlike European cars with the small blinkers mounted on the front wings near the door, all these do are turn on with the park lamps. Some cars have wrap around front and rear marker lights that function as the side and rear like my Subaru.

I suppose the reasoning behind these are to indicate which direction the car is going or if parked. Why this even matters I have no idea.

We also do not have those side specific park lamps. Where you can only turn one side on. What's the purpose of this? To make the car more visible if parallel parked?

3rd brake lights. These were first required on cars installed around 1985. I think they have become mandatory in other countries.

Reverse lamps and emergency flashers I believe around 1965.

Wonder what ever weird lighting laws other countries have?

Dim-dip was a stupid idea that was only a requirement in the UK for a short time, before it was pointed out that it contravened EU law.
The parking lights worked as normal when the ignition was switched off, (for parking), but when you turned the ignition on, the low/dipped beam bulbs would come on at about half brightness. I assume that it was to discourage idiots from driving in darkness without headlamps, (so why not make it full brightness?!)

Oh no! Are we going to have to have dim-dip again after we leave the EU!

Will you guys be able to go back to using the imperial measurement system now that the EU won't be able to force you to use it anymore?

Unless I dreamed it up, I remember watching some news story where street vendors were forced to sell produce and meat by the kilogram instead of by the pound and were being fined if they were caught using scales using the imperial system otherwise due to EU regulations. What a bunch of bollocks!

Like Montreal Quebec in Canada. Years ago, a sign in a shop had to display the writing in French in large print and English in smaller print below it. If the print in English was larger, store owners got fined by the city!

I remember back in 1976 the US tried to switch to the metric system and a few petrol stations were selling gasoline by the liter but it only lasted for awhile until they went back to "US gallons" which is not even the same as an Imperial gallon.

Today Americans would probably be more accepting when it comes to liters since soft drink companies switched from 32 ounce glass returnables to 2 liter plastic bottles back in the mid 1980s so by now everyone has the concept of what a liter is.

Back in the 70s, people had no concept of what a liter was and wondered if they were getting ripped off at the pump.

If they knew their gas tanks held 20 gallons and they were at half a tank and they pumped 40 liters, they did not know that equaled roughly 10 US gallons.

Hmm,
"To reject something simply because it is 'foreign' is both xenophobic and stupid. To reject metric units because they originate in France is like rejecting motor cars because they were invented in Germany or rejecting air travel because the aeroplane was invented in the United States."

As it transpired, the adoption of the metric system in the UK had SFA to do with the EEC/EU.

Question....
"The metric system has been imposed on Britain by Brussels bureaucrats"

...& Answer.
"This oft-repeated objection to completing the metric conversion in Britain misrepresents history.

The timeline for Britain adopting the metric system comprehensively starts in the 19th Century. Britain's scientists contributed to the development of the metric system as a modern set of units including electrical as well as mechanical measurements. Full adoption of the metric system was recommended by an 1895 Select Committee but failed narrowly in Parliament in 1904.

In 1951 the UK Board of Trade recognised that the metric system was a "better system" of weights and measures than imperial and saw its introduction as inevitable. In 1965 the decision to go metric was announced in Parliament at a time when the prospects of successful entry to the European Economic Community (EEC) were bleak due to General de Gaulle's famous "non" to Britain's membership applications. Thus Britain decided to adopt the metric system over 7 years before joining the EEC.

When Britain joined the EEC, its endorsement of the metric system was merely confirming previously agreed British policy."

Wasn't the metric unit invented by an Englishman? I'm sure it was mentioned on QI once.

Hmmm...

Certainly find it really annoying and very illogical of the US way of MM/DD/YYYY. But then almost every country in the world ends up driving on the wrong side of the road! Drive on the Left is the only correct way of navigating down the highway, unless you're overtaking slower moving traffic.