Harley#356’s How-To’s
Aiming Headlights
Purpose behind the Mod:
This one is quite obvious, but is more of a sort of regular maintence than some realize. Anytime you change headlights, bulbs, suspension setups on the front or rear, or rim/tire sizes, or hauling a big load or trailer, it's going to throw your headlight alignment out. One of my big pet peeves is not being able to see extremely well at night, so the headlight adjustment tool is a handy one to have! You can do it with needle nose or a really tiny open end, but its a PITA, the specialized tool below is what you want! And rather than just cranking your lights up blinding other drivers, there is a
little method behind it that will get you in a pretty good ballpark, then minor adjustments (few cranks up/down for pulling a trailer, etc) takes all of 30 seconds to make.
Need:
-25 feet of space between the truck & a flat object
-Level ground
Tools Needed:
-25' Tape Measure
-Towel to cover headlight so you can adjust 1 at a time
-Lisle Headlight Adjustment Tool (http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/lis14540.html)
Process:
-On level ground, park 25 feet away from a flat wall or object (I didn't have a wall or garage door, so I had my pops hold a creeper lol)
-Measure on the truck the distance from the ground to the center of the bulb in the headlight
-Subtract 6 inches from that measurement
-Measure up on the wall to that new measurement. This is your target zone for the beams main focus. On my creeper that happened to be the "R" printed on it lol
-Cover one headlight with a towel to cover the light so you can adjust one at a time
-At the top rear of the headlight assembly there's a threaded stud sticking out. Crank one way and it raises the beam, crank the other and it lowers it.
-Adjust it until the beams main focus is on that line you marked on the wall.
-Repeat for other side.
-Test Drive! You may want to take it up or down a few more cranks, but this will at least get you a MUCH better estimate than just cranking away with no idea, and less likely to blind other oncoming drivers, or be blinding the person in front of you in their mirror.
PHOTO # 1: Headlight Adjustment Tool:
PHOTO # 2: Adjustment Stud Behind Headlight:
PHOTO # 3: As you can see, my Xenarcs are pointed into the DIRT before adjustment and with the shorter 26" tall skinnies up front:
PHOTO # 4: After Adjustment, MUCH better. Can still go a little higher because as you can see 25' away the lights arent up blinding in the window of my car, but once I put the 30" tall street rims/tires back on up front, it will lift the beam angle and I'll double check alignment and make any tweaks:
