 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Car Forum / Mercedes-Benz Cars / February 2008Aligning headlamps
I am replacing my current sealed beam headlights but I don't have a nice flat surface with a wall at one end. The high beam of one lamp is burned out. So I am thinking of the following. Place a panel about 5' to 6' in front of the car (far enough out?) Mark the position of the focal point of the good light. Measure the distance between the lamps and mark the panel that distance across from the focal point. Remove the old lamps. Install the new lamps and align to the two focus points. Comments please. TIA RF RF schrieb: > I am replacing my current sealed beam headlights but I don't have a nice > flat surface with a wall at one end. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > Remove the old lamps. > Install the new lamps and align to the two focus points. The low beam dark/light edge should reach the floor at about 30m. This makes a gradient of 60cm /30m assumig your lamp sits at hight 0.5 m. Take a white stick and mark the edge directly at the lamp. Adjust the lamps so that the egde is 2 cm lower at 1m. I used to do it with a peg in the pants. Its a bit more difficult to get the beam centers both parallel to the car. Test the results slowly approaching a white car in front of you at a traffic light.  SignatureRoland Franzius I do it my garage... 5' exact from wall. Measure the center of your headlight from the ground... and measure it on the wall of same measurement. Then measure about 0.4" down from that center line and draw a straight line. I do this on a letter size paper so I just stick it on the wall. That 0.4" line is the highest your low beam light should hit. I would also do a vertical line too on that paper. Your center of headlight should also align vertically straight ahead. You eyeball this part in relation to the position of the car. > I do it my garage... 5' exact from wall. Measure the center of your > headlight from the ground... and measure it on the wall of same measurement. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > should also align vertically straight ahead. You eyeball this part in > relation to the position of the car. If you google you can find websites with details on how exactly to do it. From a practical standpoint, it's probably easier to just pay a shop to do it. With the right eqpt it's easy, accurate and takes 30 mins. Very few shop if any has that equipment. If you can see them working on your car... you might catching them doing the crude way. > Very few shop if any has that equipment. If you can see them working on your > car... you might catching them doing the crude way. Thank you Roland and Tiger. Just what I wanted. Have a great weekend :-) RF > Very few shop if any has that equipment. If you can see them working on your > car... you might catching them doing the crude way. Don't know where your experience is based on, but here in NJ, I've seen shops routinely using alignment equipment. |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.