- Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto.
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- In this video we're gonna be showing you
a universal procedure for checking the aim
on your vehicle's headlights.
Now this is not a specific or precise measurement
for inspection purposes
but more a way of making sure that your new headlights
are functioning and at the appropriate heights
to get the best performance out of 'em.
So if you've replaced your headlights,
the vehicle's been in a collision
or you plan on carrying a lot more weight
in the vehicle than you normally would
it may be necessary to adjust the aim of your headlights.
I have a homemade headlight aiming board here
but this process can easily be done
on any flat surface with 25 feet of room
from a vertical straight wall.
What we're going to do
since we can move our headlight board fairly easily
is this center line needs to line up
with the center of the front of our vehicle.
In this case it's going to be
the badge on the front of the car
and I wanna make sure that I'm straight
and parallel to the nose of the vehicle.
Some other good indications would be the body lines,
license plate brackets or a hood ornament
centered in the hood.
So we'll now back our vehicle up in a straight line
25 feet to the front of the headlights.
It's important that you make sure
all four of your tires are at the appropriate air pressures,
your vehicle has about a half a tank of gas in it
and it should also have any loads
that the vehicle regularly carries,
such as tools, equipment or any type of supplies
that may weigh down any part of the vehicle.
Check the marking on your headlight.
Ours is a DOT VOR which is a visibly amiable headlight
as well as DOT VOL and DOT VO.
Also depending on your vehicle and location
you may have an ECE or E CODE headlamp,
all of these are visually aimable in similar ways
to the one we're going to show you.
If your vehicle is older
and does not have a US DOT marking on it
then it needs to be aimed with a mechanical aiming device
that's pretty hard to come by
so your best bet is to do the best you can
visually aiming it with a board or a wall
like we'll show you here.
If you're not familiar, turn your headlights on
and check which are the high and low beams.
On our vehicle the outside are the low beams
and our inside are gonna be the high beams.
After you've checked all your other things
like your air pressure and the weight in the vehicle
you'll want to jounce your suspension.
And what we mean by that is grab a firm part,
either the bumper or the radiator support here
and rhythmically bounce it up and down a few times
and allowing the suspension to settle.
This will make sure that it's at
it's appropriate ride height
and isn't stuck in an odd position,
it'll just set everything level
into the proper ride height.
So we have a little dot in our lens that you can see there
and I just used a dry erase marker there
to you show you where it is.
We're gonna put a little dot over that.
You don't need to do this
but I feel it makes it a lot easier.
Take a tape measure and measure from the ground
to the center of that dot.
On our vehicle it's just about 32 inches.
The next thing you'll wanna locate
is your headlight adjusters.
Now these are gonna be in different places on every vehicle
but ours has a toothed wheel down here with a hex on it
so we can adjust that with either a ratchet
or putting a little screwdriver in there
and clicking it clockwise or counter-clockwise.
You may also have horizontal adjustments
but for our vehicle it's just these.
With our headlight on,
we've shut off the lights in our shop.
If you're doing this outside you'll wanna do it at night.
This line here is our headlight cut off.
That's what we'll be using to adjust from,
above that is dark and below that
is where the brightest portion of the headlight is.
Now what we're gonna wanna do,
and I'm just gonna stand in front of it for this purpose,
we now know where are right side cut off is
and from here it looks to be
just about 27, 26 inches which is low.
We wanna be generally, two to four inches below
the center line of our headlight.
In our case 32 inches.
So we'd wanna be somewhere in the 30 to 28 range.
Our left one is actually right about at 32
so it's pretty much dead level
and we want that to be actually a little bit lower
than the right side.
So what I'm gonna go for here
is getting the left side to about 28 inches, 29 inches.
And I'm gonna go right to the 30 mark,
on the right side so we'll have our left cut off
a little lower to prevent from blinding drivers
on the other side of the road.
And our right side will be a little higher
to still gives us a good view ahead of us.
Block the headlight that you aren't aiming
with a piece of cardboard,
you could use a chair with a jacket over it
which is what we're going to do.
So we have our socket and ratchet on the adjuster
and we're gonna see which way moves the headlight.
Right now I'm turning clockwise or to the right
and the beam is going up.
It's also very important
you don't wanna lean too much of your weight
onto the vehicle while you're doing this
and you also don't wanna push
against the headlight in any way.
So clockwise is bringing it up.
We're going to rotate it counter-clockwise
until we get down to 28 inches.
And again we're using a headlight aiming board
but you can easily do this with a piece of tape.
I'm marking everything off.
So our cut off there is right at 28 inches
just where I wanted it.
I'll move our chair
in front of the driver's headlight.
And you can see there,
that they are pretty much level at this point
which isn't a bad thing.
But just a couple of turns can get us
a little more visibility.
And that's why we're here.
So I'll rotate this one clockwise
up to 30 inches.
Till that cut offs right here.
So we're now two inches below the center axis
of our headlight on the passenger side.
And four inches below on the driver's side.
And that's what your headlights should look like.
If adjusting fog lights as well
you'll usually find something similar to this,
like our 2011 Camaro
where it's a Phillips head screw
or possibly a hex bolt or just a little thumb screw
or something you move with a flat blade screwdriver
or pry tool.
Really it's going to be very similar
to the style of adjuster and procedure
of adjusting a headlight on any vehicle.
So now we're gonna show you a method
you can use to aim your headlights
assuming you don't have a headlight aiming board
or access to one and can't justify making one
just for aiming your headlights one time.
So we already know the center line
of our headlights are at 32 inches.
I have my vehicle pulled up to the wall.
So we wanna mark where the center of our vehicle is
just as a reference.
In this case I'll be using
the badge on the front of the car.
So mine's a little awkward
because I have this beam here.
You'll be using a flat board.
There's my center mark.
Now I'm gonna go over in front of the axis dots
in my headlights.
And I'm gonna put it just about straight
and level with 'em.
And this doesn't have to go all the way down
or all the way up,
just keep it right about in line with that headlight.
And I'm going straight to this axis as well.
We'll now back our vehicle up 25 feet
to the front of the headlights from our wall
or in our case the back of our board.
So I know the heights of my headlight axis is 32 inches.
So I'm gonna make a mark on my tape
32 inches up from the ground.
Now I already know that I'm gonna want
to adjust my headlight four inches below this line
on the driver's side.
We'll then make our 32 mark on the passenger's side.
And on this side,
I know I wanna be two inches below my axis.
Just to make this a little easier to see at distance
I'm going to another piece of tape,
I'm gonna put my bottom edge flat with my 30 mark here.
So my cut off is gonna sit right here
in putting the tape above that line
makes it's easier for me to see a difference,
if there's any lighting shining up there.
And we'll do the same thing with my 28 mark
on the driver's side.
Again this isn't super precise
but we're just doing this to make the vehicle
safe to drive.
Your local inspection station
will have to do a precise measurement
if your state does a headlight aim inspection.
Now we know roughly where our headlights are.
You can sort of see the two cut offs here.
Let's make things easier,
I have a jacket on the back of a chair
that I'll be using to block each headlight.
My driver's side is a good ways higher
than it should be.
And the passenger's side is quite a bit too low.
So what we're gonna do now
is use the appropriate tool to adjust the headlight.
And it's important that you don't put your weight
onto the vehicle while you do this.
I'm gonna start clockwise which brings my headlight up,
that's good, that's the way we gonna go.
Counter-clockwise would bring it down.
And I'm gonna bring that cut off line
right to the bottom of my tape
so it's light and the brightest part
is just below the tape.
But the tape line is still dark.
Slide the chair over to the passenger's side
and now I know counter-clockwise
should bring my driver's side headlight down.
So I'll bring that down, same thing,
until my cut off line,
you can see the tape getting darker there,
right there my brightest point
is at the bottom of the tape.
You can see now that our passenger's side
is about two inches higher than the driver's side
which is exactly what we want.
So our driver's side won't blind
drivers coming the other way.
And our right side will stay nice and far out
so we can keep an eye on the side of the road
for animals coming out of the woods
or pedestrians on a sidewalk.
So we performed this with a 2009 Nissan Rogue
but the basics of this procedure
are going to be the same on any vehicle.
Your only major differences are going to be
where that center axis of your headlight is,
your specific state's inspection requirements
for headlight height
and the exact location and tool
you'll need for your adjusters.
But what we've done here
is gotten a nice new set of headlights aimed
so we can drive safely
and still get the best performance out of our product.
- [Mike] Thanks for watching.
Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts,
fast and free shipping
and the best customer service in the industry.