Headlight aim adjustment

So coming to the end of my 2nd month of ownership of my 6th Gen, one thing which regularly irritates me is the aim of my LED headlights.

 

They are far too low and cast an uneven beam, tell driver side of which only reaching perhaps 10 feet in front of the car.

 

I understand that latest models have self levelling headlights however I do not believe my MY15 includes this.

 

Does anyone have experience in adjusting the headlight aim? How would I go about doing this?

 

The dealership where I bought my car is 45 minutes away and avoiding the travel time would be ideal.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

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I believe Australian headlamps follow ECE regulations for the most part, so I'm going to take a guess that the beam pattern is probably similar to that of a car sold in the UK. I'm not that familiar with the Australian regulations though. That being said, although it's a far drive, your best bet is truthfully to take the car to the dealership. They will most likely use a camera system to help aim the headlamp versus doing it manually yourself. It's truthfully the best option.

Don't bother going to the dealer, it's not hard to do it yourself. If your driveway is really short or not perfectly flat, find a flat parking lot with a wall or other surface at the end of it, look up "how to aim headlights" and have at it.

 

I go to the school up the road from me which has a nice level parking lot out front, and use the front of the building to aim mine.

Don't bother going to the dealer, it's not hard to do it yourself. If your driveway is really short or not perfectly flat, find a flat parking lot with a wall or other surface at the end of it, look up "how to aim headlights" and have at it.

 

I go to the school up the road from me which has a nice level parking lot out front, and use the front of the building to aim mine.

Andrew this is what I want to do however I am not sure how to aim them. I have never aimed headlights before.

 

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Place the car about 10m from the wall, the height of the cut-off on the wall shall then be slightly lower than the height of the headlight.

 

 

https://www.hella.com/hella-tech-world-au-en/how-to-adjust-headlights-2418.html

It's pretty much the same for all headlights. On the back of the headlight, there's a round plastic part with a bunch of teeth, maybe 2" in diameter. You turn this with a screwdriver or wrench and it'll raise or lower the headlight. Look at your car and if you can't figure it out, I'll go snap a pic of it on my car.

Thank you all, everyone is extremely helpful.

 

I will take a look today and report back!

 

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... They are far too low and cast an uneven beam, tell driver side of which only reaching perhaps 10 feet in front of the car.

...

Does anyone have experience in adjusting the headlight aim? How would I go about doing this?

 

Yes, I have spent a lot of time getting the low beam LED headlights correct on our Australian spec 2016 Liberty. What I’ve found the hard way is if you take shortcuts & do a quick rough adjustment you will end up with the LED low beams adjusted incorrectly – one or both either; too low, too high, too far to the left or too far to the right. Adjusting them too high or off centre to the right causes random glare for oncoming vehicles or vehicles being followed. I also found that incorrect adjustment also randomly caused EyeSight to temporary stop when using low beam on a dark night on unlit country roads.

 

The low beam pattern on the Australian spec cars are different to the low beam pattern on the USDM cars. This pattern shown in the service manual for the 2015 USDM Legacy & Outback doesn’t apply to our Libertys & Outbacks, but the 3m distance to the wall & 1430mm between centres are relevant. On our cars the overall beam pattern is reduced to the right & is lower to the right, but is increased to the left. This is due to oncoming traffic on the right & our footpaths being on the LHS.

 

For reference, my low beam pattern looks like this on my garage wall. The change in angle at B is the reference for the left low beam, and the change in angle at D is the reference for the right low beam. The distance between the dot marks on the low beam headlights is 1430mm. These dot marks projected forward onto the wall should be 30mm directly above B & D (the centre line of the vehicle being halfway between B & D at 715mm from each).

 

... I understand that latest models have self levelling headlights however I do not believe my MY15 includes this.

If you have LED low beams I think they would be auto self-levelling. Do you have the headlight level sensor just in front of the rear anti-swaybar left hand side bushing clamp (the link from this sensor connects between the sensor arm & the bottom wishbone)? If you do then you have auto self-levelling low beam headlights. The sensor looks similar to this.

 

I found on my Liberty the low beams weren’t initialised correctly. There is a re-initialisation procedure that sets the level of the auto levelling of the LED low beams with the correct load in the vehicle if you wanted to try that – yours may have been set wrong like mine, I suspect mine could have been done without a full tank of fuel or incorrect weight in the vehicle.

Before adjusting your low beams I would suggest re-initialising the low beam auto self-levelling first.

 

Re-initialisation:

 

• Before starting the re-initialisation you need; a full tank of fuel, tyres inflated to the correct pressure as per the door sticker (for one person), no extra gear in the vehicle & no-one else in the vehicle except for the driver in the driver’s seat, on level ground with the vehicle parked so that the headlight beams show up on a wall in front of the vehicle. Then bounce the vehicle a few times to normalise the suspension.

 

• Turn the ignition to ON, and within 1.5 to 10 seconds, turn the headlight switch from OFF to ON five successive times.

 

• At the fifth ON of the lights confirm the low beams drop down once then return to normal. Turn the ignition OFF within 30 seconds. (the SM doesn’t mention this but I switch the lights OFF after confirming the drop & raise before finally switching the ignition OFF).

 

• Turn the ignition to ON again, and within 1.5 to 10 seconds, turn the headlight switch from OFF to ON five successive times.

 

• At the fifth ON of the lights confirm the low beams drop down once then return to normal. (the SM doesn’t mention this but I switch the lights OFF after confirming the drop & raise then turn the ignition OFF within 30 seconds).

 

• Check low beam adjustment after this (ideally check before & after to see if it has changed).

 

Low beam check:

 

To check the low beam correctly takes a lot more time. With the above vehicle conditions for re-initialisation (fuel, weight, tyre pressures, etc.) you need to have a level surface for the four tyres (very important for all tyres to be sitting on the same dead level horizontal surface – have various thickness packers under the tyres to achieve this if needed) so the low beams are 3m from a wall & the centreline of the vehicle is 90º to the wall. I use a laser level for this (Bosch Quigo 3), without something like this it is very difficult to get any sort of accuracy & IMO a waste of time. There is a centre blank hole in the plastic section under the front bumper which is the centre at the front of the Liberty & the centre cooling fin of the rear diff on the 3.6R is the vehicle centreline (the rear diff in the 2.5i is different I believe).

 

With someone sitting in the driver’s seat, using the laser level mark horizontal lines on the wall for each low beam in line with each low beam centre dot. Draw horizontal lines 30mm below these lines. From the centreline of the vehicle projected onto the wall draw vertical lines 715mm each side of the vertical centre line (low beam centres for 2015/16 OB & Liberty are 1430mm). Switch low beams on & note where the beams appear compared to the above lines. Referring to my beam pattern above; if correct the -30mm horizontal line should pass through B & D with the vertical lines passing through B & D at 715mm from the vehicle centre vertical line. If not, each light can be adjusted vertically & horizontally.

 

At the back of the headlights, the nylon hex head screw (8mm socket) adjusts the beams up & down, & the metal hex head screw (8mm socket) closest to the mudguard adjusts the beams left & right. The up/down vertical & left/right horizontal adjustment on our models also adjust the high beams at the same time (you can’t adjust high or low beams independent of each other).

 

If you have experienced good HID low beams such as on the Australian spec SJ Forester XT Premium, don’t expect these LED low beams to be as good.