I wasn’t too convinced with the throw of my 700 on low beams at night and it din’t help that M&M had no documentation on how to adjust the headlight focus neither did their ASC have an SOP and a headlight adjustment chart for 700.
BHPian Sandegov recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
For all the folks who are not happy with their low beam throw:
Here is a brief of my diy fix that I did on a lazy Sunday morning
Problem statement:
I wasn’t too convinced with the throw of my 700 on low beams at night and it din’t help that M&M had no documentation on how to adjust the headlight focus neither did their ASC have an SOP and a headlight adjustment chart for 700.
Solution:
I went with a basic old school method that I had seen one of my friend do in US before his DMV inspection.At that time it dint quite register with me but on reading on it now it was pretty simple and straight forward :
1. Measure your headlight height from ground and mark a horizontal line on a wall at that height.
2. Pull your car back 25ft from wall and then adjust your light cut off to be at this line for cars whose headlights are 34in & below and for cars >34in adjust the cutoff line to be 4 inches below the marked line on drivers side and 2 inches below on passenger side.
Execution:
Spent a good 2 hrs on my 700 with the hood open and removed few panels out before I was able to identify and be fully convinced on the headlight setup and the possible adjustmemts in 700.
Headlights on 700 have three elements :
1. Low beam on the outer portion
2. High beam in upper half of the inner portion
3. High beam assist in lower half of the inner portion.
The back of high beam housing has two screws with a gear setup as shown in below picture – one for vertical adjustment and the other for horizontal. Which is for what can be found only with trial and error and there are no markings. My high beam I felt was good and I dint touch these.
The low beam housing comes with slightly diff setup and I have marked the ones for vertical and horizontal adjustment in the picture below.
These screws can be turned two ways – horizontally using the screw head or vertically using the gears. A philips screwdriver is what you will need for both (deep grooves for vertical option helps). Anticlockwise for going higher/right and viceversa.
With all this done
Step 1: I now pulled up the 700 to wall and measured the height of the headlight which was about 35in from ground and marked it with the long horizontal line.
Step 2: Checked the cut off line of low beam and high beam it was exactly at the marked line. This I did to mark factory setting incase I had to revert back.
Step 3: Pulled back the car 25ft from wall and turned on my low beam and set the leveller to 2. You can see that the cut off was too low almost below the half way from the marked line.
Step 4: Turned on the high beam and it looked ok to me at slightly above the marked line.
Step 5: Adjusted the lowbeam using the adjustment screws and lifted up the cutoff line to be just below the marked line and the end result as shown below.
A quick check later in the night and things were looking good:
Level 3/2 for city
Level 2/1 for highways
Level 0 for some mild revenge light passive aggressive style
In city traffic at level 3 and 2 it was cutting off nicely just below the rear glass of front Nexon upto about 5-6 car length
I think I have got my low beam setup correct now (may be a tad bit higher) or totally wrong too, a few night drives will confirm on it.
Here’s what BHPian swiftLife had to say in this matter:
This is so informative and hats off to you for your effort!!!
So vertical reference is clear from the cut off and can be adjusted. How did you check if horizontal alignment was correct?I can see you’ve used the leveler to tweak the level for city and highways, which is very thoughtful BTW, but the leveler is built to compensate for beams going up due to rear sagging from passengers load and/or loaded boot.
Now with level 2 as the recommended level, actually above recommended as the headlight height is above 34 inches.
So now when your car is loaded at the rear, won’t it create a much higher low beam cut off which you won’t be able to correct from the leveler too?
Meanwhile, check out Bhpian Iamnikhl reply to this post:
Super stuff Sandegov!
I am also not happy with the headlight throw; will have to set aside some time and follow your tutorial. On a daily basis, in Mumbai, with just myself 1 or 2 adults, I have been setting the leveller at 2, but frankly setting the beam at any level has not given any concrete improvement.
Here’s what Bhemian superfed had to say in this matter:
Thanks for sharing Sandegov, very helpful. I also feel the need to raise the low beam cause currently even at level 0 it seems just good enough.
My high beams from factory came completely screwed up. I was able to adjust the high beams but the booster lights are still a problem cause they cant be turned on. Any tricks to adjust those ?
Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
