Headlight washers stuck out

[PoloBlueGT]

Morning all,
I have just made my way to work and on the way made the stupid mistake to try and clear the crap built up on my windscreen with the washer. As it is below -5 degrees lets just say this didn’t work but on he other hand I discovered after almost 4 years I have headlight washers. The problem is that now they will not go back in, am I right In thinking they work off a vacuum and will they self retract when they are ready?
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks

[iichel]

as far as I know, they need water (washer fluid) pressure to go up, and they are working against a spring when going up. retracting is both by gravity and spring load.

[PoloBlueGT]

Thanks for the reply I will leave them till after work and see how they go

[SRGTD]

Owners on one of the Golf forums have had this happen before in sub-zero temperatures. They should retract when the weather warms up.

If you’ve had your car nearly 4 years, I’m surprised you’ve only just discovered you have headlight washers - you can’t miss them, as they spray washer fluid all over the car’s bonnet as well as the headlamps when they’re activated! If you’ve got the winter pack or xenon headlights they’ll be fitted. Unless someone has changed their frequency of operation with VCDS, OBD11 or similar, if you’ve got your headlights on they will operate the first time you use your windscreen washers, then (I think) every fifth time of activating your windscreen washers after that.

[PoloBlueGT]

Yeah I have xenons on the car but obviously I’m in the car when they activate haha. Although I did wonder how the lights seemed to stay clean. Think I’ll go to specsavers on the way home

[RUM4MO]

Once the temperature rises above freezing or more, buy some VW windscreen washer concentrate, then add a bottle of that into your washer fluid tank. It sounds like your washer fluid mix is not "strong" enough for these winter conditions. After you have made sure that your tank is now filled with enough mixture of the correct strength, operate the washers front/back/lights to make sure that all pipes are now filled with a washer mix that will not freeze/sludge/slush in winter conditions.

I agree with iichel in as much as the headlight washers are operated by hydraulics - the high pressure headlight washer pump pressurises the washer lines and that forces the washer spray heads up on their pistons, they dump the pressurised water out onto the headlights then should collapse back down by the action of a strong return spring.

[PoloBlueGT]

The mix that is in has not been diluted and said it should work down to -15 degrees but like you say it seems that it is not as good as it seems

[RUM4MO]

The mix that is in has not been diluted and said it should work down to -15 degrees but like you say it seems that it is not as good as it seems

I have been using what I consider to be a good enough mix in the washer tanks of our cars for lots of years, only recently I have become aware that it is only giving protection down to -5C or so, which is not where I had expected it to be, so my plan is to get as much neat conc into both tanks and make sure in future that I always have adequate protection against freezing in winter. So far I seemed to have got away with it, but now that I know that I'm a bit too close to freezing the fluid, I am doing something about it. It is Prestones stuff that I have been using, the blue version.

[PoloBlueGT]

Yeah that’s what I have got in mine undiluted Prestones? The only thing I can think of is one of my family members said they were filling the tanks and maybe hasn’t used the same fluid so therefore diluted mine down