Aligning the Headlights

[TekNinja81 3]

Hi folks,

I recently had one of my low-beam bulbs blow and upon replacing it, I felt like the left beam was aimed way too low for some reason, and had been wondering if it had been prior to that.

Standing 15-20' away, looking dead-on at the front of the car/into the lowbeams, if this makes any sense, my passenger-side low-beam projector appears fully illuminated, while the driver-side appears to mostly be illuminated in its bottom-half. That's the first thing I noticed.

Sitting in the car, I feel like my driver-side lowbeam is mostly hitting the ground about 6-10' in front of the car, while the passenger-side lowbeam hits the wall about 20-30' away. If I hold my hands in front of the projectors, I can see a definite difference in the height of the light being output.

Not exactly the most "technical" way of looking at/explaining this, I know...

Now here's the thing: I've been trying to adjust the driver-side beam using the single hex-key adjuster located between the high/low-beam to raise my driver-side lowbeam, and my understanding is the low/high are both adjusted by the one setting. If I run my high-beams, the driver-side highbeam ends up way higher than the passenger-side by the time my low-beam looks anywhere near right to me. It takes several full turns of the adjuster to make a significant difference in the height.

Am I doing something wrong here? I'm using a matched set of bulbs (those Eurolite "xenon 55w" bulbs if anyone knows them) and am 99% sure they're both installed properly, but I can't figure out this bloody alignment! Heck, if anyone in the Toronto area wouldn't mind, I'd love your help getting this right within the next day or two. I've tried looking through Google/other forums/here but the only site that seems to offer a visual guide of how to do this is Evilution, and I'm not a member there nor interested in paying for it.

[dmoonen 54]

Did you replace both bulbs with the same brand first of all?

[darren 192]

A couple of times on my old 450, I had the bulb not seat properly when installing it. It felt right, but it clearly wasn't seated flush. Try re-seating the bulb first and see if that helps before you go crazy with adjustments.

Also, buy better quality, Tier 1 manufacturer bulbs. I would never put that Canadian Tire "Eurolite" crap in my car, simply because of how its marketed. I used to buy quality Phillips bulbs from PowerBulbs. I found they worked better and lasted longer than any GE, Osram, or Sylvania bulbs.

Edited September 11, 2015 by darren

[TekNinja81 3]

So I should really try not to do these things when I'm fresh off a 12-hour overnight shift. That said, the point at which I made one final adjustment and said "screw it I'm going to bed" before checking my setting, I apparently managed to almost perfectly align the lights! Go figure, sometimes giving up pays!

That said -- I've used these Eurolite bulbs for several years and with good results -- the catch is, I get mine from Pacific Mall specifically, and have tested them against a differently-packaged batch Canadian Tire sells/used to sell, and the CT ones are crap in comparison, oddly enough. I mostly get them because of the "true white" colour they output vs the slight yellow tinge to most factory-style halogens.

I should note, when I first replaced the bulb, I actually did have the new bulb installed in the wrong orientation -- the tab facing upwards I believe, where it needed to be closer to a 6- or 7-o'clock position. That seems to have also helped a bit. Again, side effects of doing anything in a half-exhausted state.