How do I angle my HIDs in e36 m3

[ayoDMO]

I've been getting highbeamed from other cars every time i drive at night and it's annoying and also dangerous for them. How do I go about angling my HIDs the right way so I don't blind other drivers? Whats the easiest way to reach my lights? I haven't really taken a look because it's cold as balls outside so I figure I'd just ask first even though it's probably simple


THANKS

[G. P. Burdell]

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html

[armorrig]

What brand lights do you have?

I have depos on my car and it's pointed really low. I tried adjusting it to beam higher but it doesn't adjust anymore.

[ayoDMO]

thanks and i'm not sure what brand i have. i bought the car a couple weeks ago haha.

[desynch]

There's going to be 2 adjustment knobs on the back of the headlight if they're euro spec ones. One that goes left and right, one that goes up and down. Trick is trying to find out which one is which. I don't remember offhand what they are, haven't had to adjust my beam in a long time.

[coffee328]

^it'd be the inner (middle of the headlight) adjuster making the beam go up/down, and the adjuster on the outsides working the left/right adjustments. it's this way on my Bosch ellipsoids at least.

OP, if you do have ellipsoids ("euro" projector headlights), then here's a simple way to get you started. park your car on level ground with a wall running right beside your driver's side. the left side of each headlight beam (the horizontal part before the slope/uptick) needs to be angled slightly lower than parallel to the ground. this varies a little depending on a vehicles ride ht...(trucks would need to aim down a bit more). once you're finished aiming the driver headlight, park the car facing the wall and aim the left side (horizontal part) of the passenger headlight to be the same ht. as the left side (horizontal part) of the driver side beam.

so it looks like this:

_________/-------------__________/-------------

these are both beams beside each other. depending on your ellipsoid brand, the cutoff might not level off after the slope.

then just drive around...i'd plan on readjusting a few times until it looks or 'feels' right...your driveway (or whatever you use) may not be level. if you don't have a decent location for parking alongside a wall, just make the beam pattern appear like i illustrated above and drive around, re-aim, and repeat.



if you have HIDs in the stock, reflector headlamps, then "proper" aim isn't always easy. it's much harder to aim blobs of light, but it's the same general concept. drive around and try to make the light pattern a bit lower than a horizontal plane. for instance, you don't want to see light shining in people's car windows, lol. i mean, it occasionally happens over hills and whatnot.

[Mpowered02]

OP...we definitely need to know at least what KIND of lights they are. Do they have "Euro" projectors? Easy question if you don't know which is which...is the outer lens of the headlights glass or plastic. If they're glass then you have some kind of "euro" headlight. If plastic then they're the crappy DOT headlights.

The next question we have to ask is, if they are Euro headlights are the HID's merely a plug & play kit or a true retrofit? If they're kit HID's, you'll probably have to aim them downward a notable amount from what would be "right" for either halogens or a proper xenon retrofit. I had a xenon kit in my ZKW's before finally doing a full retrofit and even when they were properly aimed accoding to E-code standards I still got flashed. I had to aim them downward a significant amount in order to not get flashed...due to the excessive glare caused by xenons in a projector designed for halogens. Anyway, hope this helps...at least some...

[ayoDMO]

sorry i haven't been on to check. but your guys help worked. i fixed em! thank you all