What’s everyone using for the best xenon replacement bulb?

[andrewwynn]

Aim your headlights! Studies show that not one in 20 cars have their headlights Aimed properly.

Aim them at exactly zero degrees: all the tech manuals will say to aim into the dirt because the manuals were written for bulbs that have conical output: just as bright up and down. Projector bulbs are 90% dimmer below the cut off so take advantage of it! What also happens is that you get full brightness up and to the right that will light up road signs like you've never seen before!

(My car puts more light on the road signs than the next five cars because the other cars are lighting up the road 50' in front of the car only).

I never once have had a problem with blinding oncoming cars but perhaps a very short sports car may have a problem.


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[X5only]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

Aim your headlights! Studies show that not one in 20 cars have their headlights Aimed properly.

Aim them at exactly zero degrees: all the tech manuals will say to aim into the dirt because the manuals were written for bulbs that have conical output: just as bright up and down. Projector bulbs are 90% dimmer below the cut off so take advantage of it! What also happens is that you get full brightness up and to the right that will light up road signs like you've never seen before!

(My car puts more light on the road signs than the next five cars because the other cars are lighting up the road 50' in front of the car only).

I never once have had a problem with blinding oncoming cars but perhaps a very short sports car may have a problem.


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Could you please provide more details on the above or some link on a DIY? Thanks!

[andrewwynn]

I aim my headlights by parking the car about 50' (15m) from a white wall at night.

Measure the height to the center of brightness of the cone of light exiting the bulb then go mark that same height with some wide tape on the white wall.

Adjust one lamp at a time blocking the other with your body or some other means and set it so the transition from bright to dark on the LEFT side of the beam will be at the exact same height as measured at the car.

The auto leveling lights aren't actually "level" so you don't have to be on level ground when you do this just constant angle.

At 50' the right side should be perhaps 5-7" higher than the left side. This works fantastically well to put the beam up in the air to light up road signs.

When I'm driving around my car is doing virtually all the illumination of all road signs on the right side of the road. Virtually all cars have their headlights aimed into the dirt and useless for sign illumination.

For left and right adjustment, get the car lined up perpendicular to the wall and measure from a reference line (such as a expansion crack in the driveway)

The center of the output should be straight out eg. If the right light is 1' and left is 5' from the seam in the driveway or should be the same on the wall.

[X5only]

Is this what I should be aiming for? Found it in an E39 M5 forum.

[Overboost]

Originally Posted by X5only

Is this what I should be aiming for? Found it in an E39 M5 forum.

That is the way I aimed my xenons on my E46. I have also read you can aim the right a couple inches higher on the right side at 20 feet to illuminate the road signs on the right side of the road but I just set them level just as your image shows. The X represents the center of the headlight as it was measured from the front of the car directly against the wall. I have no issues seeing the road signs hundreds of feet ahead.

[Crowz]

I use a small car. Most of the time I use my 323i.

I pull up behind it to the distance I would be if I was behind it at a drivethru.

I aim the lowbeams to cut off at the top of the seat. Not the headrest but the shoulder area. If no light hits the headrest then its impossible to blind them. I never get flashed and I can see fine. Works for me. Especially handy aiming some of my lifted trucks.

[Crowz]

On a side note to the above. When aiming lower vehicles such as cars I aim for right below the top of the trunk lid of the 323i. Trucks and higher things I use the seat back.

[andrewwynn]

I described what is shown except that method is following the 50 yr old method of aim into the dirt to avoid blinding oncoming traffic.

0.5° down puts ALL the light in the street at 300'.

There is virtually no brightness above the centerline and no reason to throw away 50-75% of the light by following 70 year old rule. If you look at the photo above you will see that even when aimed down 0.5 degrees (2.1"@20'; I'm not sure the distance in this example)

Watch as you drive next to a white oncoming car in the city you will see the side of the car illuminated and not the hood even a little. This means that the oncoming car will only see a dim Flow of light.

I drove my wife's car the other day and hers are not quite at zero they might be 1/4 to 1/3 degree down and in the country I get HALF the light as in I can see 1000' with my high beams and 500' with hers.

I've compared with brother's van and my LOW beams illuminated more than his high beams without putting any light into oncoming eyes.

I'm hoping the Reflectors or bulbs are made opposite for right hand drive cars and then of course you would line up the RIGHT side to center.

I was concerned about shorter cars since the X5 does have higher centerline but I've checked many times with short sports cars and I think I've only seen one or two exotics that were short enough even for light to get past the hood but it still won't be as high as the driver's eye.

You may feel like the lights got dim once you adopt the zero bubble alignment because you won't be brightly lighting up the street directly in front of you. What you should notice is you can't really see where the lights are aimed at all; that you can't really tell the light is coming from you but that for about 120° you have nearly perfect illumination edge to edge.

You will also notice especially on the freeway that you are responsible for 80% of the light hitting the road signs you will even see "cookie cutter" silhouettes as cars pass in front to the right of you on the signs.

I started using zero bubble with my Z28 which didn't have projector bulbs so I obit did the high beams zero and minus 1/4 on the low (the lights were only about a foot off the ground). I could see illumination from at least 3/4 of a mile with those headlights. If aimed into the dirt like normal they reach 1/10 of a mile at best.

When driving next to a long fence you can clearly see the bright line and the left should be horizontal and go farther then you can clearly see the right side should climb at a degree or two I've never measured I just know it's 20' tall by 400' away or so because I rarely see the bright line until I'm almost passing a road sign.

If you are behind and left of a car they will get illuminated but it will be off axis and they have night mode on their mirror. I've done testing and didn't notice any problem when my wife is following me.

I've been using zero bubble since 1996 definitely not going back to literally driving blind.

[X5only]

Thanks for your analysis, Andrewwynn. I'm finding it a bit hard to understand your technique from your descriptions so far. A picture or diagram will speak a thousand words. Do you think you can modify the above picture to portray the modern technique of adjusting headlights you speak of, or kindly post one if you already have it? Thanks!

[andrewwynn]

That picture posted actually is just about perfect. Once you start doing an adjustment you'll see it becomes very obvious. I can maybe post a picture showing which is the horizontal and which is the vertical trim.

You will see once you do yours the picture shows two overlapping images. When you adjust one light will they heard from the other one and then you'll go adjust the other one and tell it matches the same height.

The main thing in the difference from the photo is that in my case the brightness change will be exactly the same height not 2 in below. I would not worry too much about the left and right mostly just the up-and-down is what matters unless your car actually had some front-end damage and bent something.

I like to do my adjusting from 40 or 50 feet away but the bright-line gets pretty fuzzy.

Alsa very important: if you are right hand drive then of course the right side of the lower and that's the side you line up.

You should be able to do a decent adjustment from 20 or 30 feet.

I'll see if I can find a nice white wall and take a couple pictures