Norm Peterson

You may have a decent color temperature AND the low-beam caps and still get flashed if you've lowered the rear of your car more than the front. That tips the upper edge of the low beam pattern up.

I suspect that many, maybe most folks doing suspension work or having it done do not connect the dots to checking and adjusting their headlights for proper aim.



FWIW, I actually found the factory HID aim in my car to be slightly low, so I finally got around to tweaking them up a tad a couple of months ago. Passenger side more than the driver side so as to minimize the change to oncoming traffic. They've been that way long enough to know that they apparently don't bother people, as I haven't been flashed since. My (OE halogen) fogs are on more often than not for up-close fill lighting, so if I was likely to get flashed at all . . . that would just make it more certain that I would.


Norm

Stang-aholic

i dont have them.

Goldenpony

I have an '06 with the black caps over the end of the bulbs. I put in a set of RetroSolutions 35W 6000K Bixenon HIDs maybe 4 years ago. I might have been flashed maybe once or twice in 4 years.

KonaStangPete

its probably your wattage, tho if theyre aimed properly it still shouldnt be a problem.
35w is more than bright enough, much brighter than oe halogen anyways, usually only see guys with tinted headlight run 55w kits as the tint blocks bout 25% of the light.
but if you have them aimed properly and the cops arnt giving you crap then its just aholes giving you a hard time.
i have 6000k 35w bixenons, only been flashed once

Kixsters

I have a Navigator with stock HIDs and people are always flashing me.. Why ? IDK ! if their the oem hids... And now i installed 6k on both my headlights and foglights on my 2011 5.0 people even flash me more LOL but i dont care cause their alligned right and their super super bright but dont blind others.

LordRipberger

Is a good and easy way to test to see if mine are aligned correctly?

Norm Peterson

Your Navigator has the lights installed at or possibly ABOVE eye level to people in "regular cars". I too wish that vans/pickups/SUVs were limited to a lower headlight centerline height, although most of my complaint has to do with said tall vehicles behind me at a traffic light putting their driver side headlight in my outside mirror and their other headlight on the inside mirror.

More than likely, with the fogs at the same color temperature as your low beams people are even more likely to think you're running high beams. Not everybody will recognize an oncoming Mustang at night just from the headlight & foglight placement. But more people seem to catch on if the inner two lights are not as brilliant/hot as the outside two.


Norm

Norm Peterson

I can tell you what works for me, since I don't have any of the fancy headlight aiming equipment.

Find a flat paved area where you can shine the lights up against something like a brick wall where the horizontal mortar joints can be used as reference lines. With only the low beams lit, SLOWLY back away from the wall. If the top of the beam pattern drops down on the wall a little bit as you back up, you'll be very, very close. You can also drive SLOWLY toward the wall, in which case you want the tops of the beams to rise just a little.

Similarly, you can watch for lateral (sideways) beam shift if you've got halogen headlamp assemblies which do have horizontal adjustment. Factory HIDs do not have this capability. I suspect that HID conversions may need this checked as well, and if so that there are people who don't realize it.

Give a little thought to intentionally aiming the headlights differently, with the passenger side headlight aimed just a tiny bit higher.


Been doing all of my cars' headlight aim like that for almost 40 years.


Norm

LordRipberger

Is there a test for the lateral projection? How far out are they suppose to shine? Mine currently go out about 20feet in both directions on the sides of the roads. Which I find very helpful as I drive a lot in rural areas that are plagued with deer and various smaller animals. They give me a huge heads up if something is coming toward the road; heading for my travel path.

Norm Peterson

I don't know about any spec for beam spread, but you still don't want the center hot spot (of the driver side headlight in particular) being aimed toward the left. Even if the vertical aim is OK, any horizontal aiming errors wil still throw a little more light at oncoming traffic. It's a 3-D problem, where the closer your eye gets to being on the direct axis of the beam the brighter it starts to get even if you're in the nominally shaded region. There is always some beam "scatter" that goes beyond the "cutoff".

Years ago, some of the H4 conversion headlight mfrs did provide information on beam spread, which was truly meaningful when sealed beam tungsten bulbs were the only things legally permitted. If you never had to drive at night with sealed beams, be thankful that you didn't.


Norm