HEADLIGHT HELP!!!!

[sacsubie]

Im trying to align my headlights on my 93 Legacy wagon.. i look at the bubble level and i turn the nobs with springs inside them but dont notice a change nor do i in the beam...

i need to get them right because i dont want to blind the hell out of people... i just want to get my lights setup right... its bad enough they are a yellowed lol.. but i cant even see that far the way they are i dont feel safe.. ones so far up i can shine a stop light 4 blocks up and the other is about 2 feet infront of my car...

[Richard]

I have no clue how to do that. I have never had to re-aim my headlights. Have you tried the search function?

[sacsubie]

sooo much to see in search i dont think im good with it lol... im going to just remove the headlights i think theres 2 more aiming screws on the back of the housing.

[Manarius]

As far as I know, there are two screws. One for changing horizontal level, and the other for changing the aiming "left-right". Just pull up to a wall or garage door and make sure they're level and not too high.

[sacsubie]

Im hoping to get them just right... because i got myself some nice 4000k color headlights for my subie and im sick of not being able to see in the dark.. im not one for APC but ill give them a worl... im pissed they dint have the hella xenon 9003's!

[jamal]

Im hoping to get them just right... because i got myself some nice 4000k color headlights for my subie and im sick of not being able to see in the dark.. im not one for APC but ill give them a worl... im pissed they dint have the hella xenon 9003's!

just because they say xenon does not me they are. Blue color is extremely bad for headlights. The blue tint filters everything but blue out of the light. Halogen bulbs produce light that is in the yellow/red spectrum. With the blue coloring you are filtering out a large portion of the light.

Throw those bulbs in the trash and pick up some XtraVisions at Autozone, they're like $7 each. If you really want good bulbs buy some of the Narva Rangepower +50s from the Daniel Stern website (danielsternlighting.com)

Also here is a headlight aiming guide. You'll want to find a flat surface next to a wall, and go out there with a tape measurer, level, and some electrical tape.

[sacsubie]

I plan on later replacing them with the Hella bulbs...

[jamal]

Hmm, well those look decent actually. They have them for sale at rallylights.com

Now I'm considering the 70/65W bulbs.

[Richard]

I'm going to get a HID conversion kit when I come up with the $300. My friend put some in his Buick and DAMN are they nice. 6000k is damn bright!

[jamal]

I'm going to get a HID conversion kit when I come up with the $300. My friend put some in his Buick and DAMN are they nice. 6000k is damn bright!

What is this conversion kit? Generally they're a bad idea, especially if you're just putting HID bulbs in the stock headlights.

Right now I have cleared lenses, Sylvania Xtravision bulbs, and huge driving lights. It works very well.

If I were going to upgrade the headlights I would get some glass EDM housings for LHD cars, build a beefier harness, and use either Narva Rangepower +50 or some 70/65W bulbs.

[Richard]

The kits I'm looking at have seperate ballasts and only use the harness for the signal to turn them on/off. Power comes directly from the battery to the ballast, with a fuse in line of course. The bulbs amazingly put off less heat and the system uses less power because they run at high voltage, not high current like normal bulbs.

The kit I threw into my friend's GS was quite simple. No wires cut, just plug in factory plugs, run the power & ground, mount the ballasts, pop in the bulbs and away you go. Granted, the likelyhood of anyone making kits to use our factory harnesses w/o cutting wires is slim to none, but I'm all good with that.

The only thing is the scatter. Factory HID housings are set up to focus all the light. Normal ones aren't. But, they are MUCH better than any thing else I've seen. I realy don't care if the light isn't as focused as it should be.

[jamal]

The only thing is the scatter. Factory HID housings are set up to focus all the light. Normal ones aren't. But, they are MUCH better than any thing else I've seen. I realy don't care if the light isn't as focused as it should be.

Uh, you want better light but don't care about the beam pattern? You should probably read up on it a bit more, because it will turn out terrible. There is a reason doing that is illegal. Please read this.

Here's a good part:

The most dangerous part of the attempt to "retrofit" Xenon headlamps is that sometimes you get a deceptive and illusory "improvement" in the performance of the headlamp. The performance of the headlamp is perceived to be "better" because of the much higher level of foreground lighting (on the road immediately in front of the car). However, the beam patterns produced by this kind of "conversion" virtually always give less distance light, and often an alarming lack of light where there's meant to be a relative maximum in light intensity. The result is the illusion that you can see better than you actually can, and that's not safe.
It's tricky to judge headlamp beam performance without a lot of knowledge, a lot of training and a lot of special equipment, because subjective perceptions are very misleading. Having a lot of strong light in the foreground, that is on the road close to the car and out to the sides, is very comforting and reliably produces a strong impression of "good headlights". The problem is that not only is foreground lighting of decidedly secondary importance when travelling much above 30 mph, but having a very strong pool of light close to the car causes your pupils to close down, worsening your distance vision...all the while giving you this false sense of security. This is to say nothing of the massive amounts of glare to other road users and backdazzle to you, the driver, that results from these "retrofits".

If someone is blinding me with high beams, a shitty conversion, or poorly aimed lights, I'm more than happy to return the favor.

[Richard]

Well, we were lighting up stop signs 2 blocks away like they were Christmas trees, something his Silverstars couldn't even do.

I'll have to take it for a spin down some dark country road and test it out. On his setup, he keeps the standard hi-beams.

And I really could care less if it was illegal. One mile over the speed limit is illegal. Loud stereos are illegal in some places. Dark tint in most places is illegal. Hacking out your cat is illegal. How many members here commit at least one of these offenses every day? At least the enviro-nazis won't be after me for having ultra-bright lights. I plan on hacking out my cat in the future though, and that will just add fuel to the fire sort of speak.

[Project_Legacy]

And I really could care less if it was illegal. One mile over the speed limit is illegal. Loud stereos are illegal in some places. Dark tint in most places is illegal. Hacking out your cat is illegal. How many members here commit at least one of these offenses every day? At least the enviro-nazis won't be after me for having ultra-bright lights. I plan on hacking out my cat in the future though, and that will just add fuel to the fire sort of speak.

lol, so true.

im sure everyone has been blinded by SUV's/Trucks with their stock lights before... it happens all the time here.

[Richard]

Besides, isn't adding higher wattage/brighter burning bulbs going to give you the same effect? Okay, HID's blow away regular bulbs as far as light output, but putting brighter regular halogen bulbs would in effect give you some of the same effects that HID's would, wouldn't they? Remember, our headlights were designed with the intent of using shitty dim yellow-tinted halogens. Anything more than those is going to put it out of origional specs.

But I really could give a flying fizznuck as far as all of that is concerned. I want to see at night, especially while it's raining. You can't see shit on the road when it rains here, not even the lines in the road most of the time. These HID's take care of that. Besides, with all the gauges and stereo equipment I'll be throwing in, my eyes will be f-ed up enough. I'll need something to overpower the lights inside my car.

[jamal]

shitty dim yellow tinted halogens? Most cars that come from the factory with HIDs still use halogen lights for the high beams.

Anyway, please take a picture of you're friend's beam pattern 30 feet away from a wall. I'm sure it's just a fantastic mess of general light. The silverstars would have lit up the stop sign had it been at around waist level. Why would you want light being wasted 12 feet off the ground?

But that's cool, you go ahead thinking you see better when really all you're doing is blinding other drivers.

[Richard]

Maybe I like blinding other drivers...

Today's halogen headlight/bulb technology will blow away anything from 1994 and earlier.

And we aimed them using a wall afterward. I broke an adjuster screw thing and had to bust out the 'ol epoxy. The pattern wasn't that bad actually.

You may be right. Your statements on the physiological/psycological effects may be true. However, the same things were said to me about window tinting. I simply do not care. Please don't take it personally. This discussion shouldn't be about that.