Carlos Pineiro

What is the proper way to aim your headlamps? The laws may be different, depending on the state as far as how many feet need to be illuminated in front of a vehicle (300?), but there has to be a way to gauge and set your lights, like, how highto aim from how many feet back, etc.

Any takers?

Thanks for any replies.

Carlos

PS: If you know, please include the info for high beams (I have a '69).

restomod66

Carlos,
Checkout this website and download the pdf.

http://www.coolbulbs.com/HID-VISUAL-...-PROCEDURE.pdf

Carlos Pineiro

Brilliant. Thanks.

CP

BAY68_347

restomod66... great info. Thanks for posting...
I am saving that pdf for future reference.

Starfury

Not so sure that method will work well with sealed-beam headlights. You don't get quite as focused of a beam with them. I believe the FSM has a headlight-aiming procedure in it somewhere.

Norm Peterson

The FSM procedure probably involves using the device that you set against the aiming pins on the edge of the bulb"s lens (not a tool that very many individuals have access to). That procedure would be more oriented to a shop being able to do headlight aiming in the minimum amount of time.

You can get entirely close enough regardless of the type of headlight bulb if you take the information on that coolbulbs link one step further - and it isn"t even necessary to make any measurements or markings on the wall either.

Just drive slowly either directly toward or directly away from the wall and watch how either the beam cutoff (or the hot spot in the case of OE sealed bulb units)moves. You want the low beams to drop slightly as the distance to the wall increases, and not move side to side. High beams on a 4-lamp system should not even move vertically. You can even choose to have the left and right low beams drop at different rates (usually having the driver side beam drop more rapidly than the pass side beam), if that reduces anydark regions in the overall lighting pattern from the two headlights combined.

What you get is a good "practical" aim for the least amount of "fussiness", which ultimately is all that is either necessary or desired(and what almost 40 years of direct personal experience has found to work very well). Aiming regulations need to be written with measurements mostly because it is not possible to uniformly enforce "good judgement" on the part of everybody who might ever do this particular task.


Norm

Starfury

Ya know, it may be the owner's manual I'm thinking of. I've misplaced mine recently (grrr), but now that I think about it I think that it was in there somewhere. It basically told you to park x feet away from a wall, make marks y feet up the wall and z feet apart and align the headlights to those marks.

wsovonick

Nice find! I'm saving it too. Hey Carlos, that's a nice Grande(?) you have there. Is that the original color? I have a 69 Mach 1 that was originally Winter Blue. I'm hoping that's what's on your 69. It looks really nice!

Carlos Pineiro

Thanks, wsovonick. I will take some better pix soon. In the shade, this shot almost looks like Acapulco or Grabber Blue. It's just in the shade. Yes it's Winter Blue with multiple clear coats. Mach 1 paint w/o decals.

I screwed up the driver mirror area, and the fix doesn't blend right. I'm hoping to get hit there one day and have a shop do it on an insurance claim. I drive to Hollywood everyday, so it's only a matter of time, lol. There are a lot of chuckheads with cars here who ignore the cell phone law.

Tim

4reboy

^ I know of a great shop in long beach area that would fix it if that happened. Great custom shop, their the guys that did mine. However I'm sure you already have a great shop considering the nice paint job they did already