Headlamp n00b

[Guest]

Ahem.... now, don't laugh, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this....!?! This weekend, I thought I'd take the headlight apart so that.... well, for no reason really, it was just a "I wonder what's in there?" typical male impulse. Anyway, got the ornamental ring off and and proceeded to happily 'undo' one of the screws with no effect. At this point, I reached for the handbook (oh why didn't I do that first) and found I'd been merrily turning the beam alignment screw.

I then turned the screw in the opposite direction as many times as I hoped I'd turned it in the first place, though I don't know for sure. Is there a general way to check the alignment manually without taking it in to the mechanic?

Who's that laughing?

 

[Guest]

Going back to day's of my Dutton kit car (yes - no laughing please - 200bhp/ton was a lot of fun when 19yr old!!), I regularly took the headlights out (can't for the sake of me remeber why now - might have been John syndrome). I used to park the car about 20ft from a brick wall and adjust the light pattern so it "looked something like" on the wall. Seemed to work fine at the time but then headlight direction wasn't a priority back then.....

 

[Guest]

Hi John,
back in my early twenties I had a 5.7 litre V8 Mach 1 Mustang. The handling was far superior to that of my 3.2 Carrera, Yeah Right!!! But back to the point in question, I too used to do my own headlight allignment the same way as Antony has explained except I used to use the garage door with its horizontal slats to allign the beams.
Its certainly worth a try!
Good luck.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the DIY advice guys, I'll try it myself first. Just wanted to see if anyone said "Gotta hand your wallet over to someone to do it for you, cuz it's the lor," kinda thing. [8|]