We’ve shown you how to restore worn headlight’s clarity, but sometimes a full replacement is needed. And in that case, you’d best follow the advice from Dan Maffett, lighting up the path to proper headlight alignment on MotorWeek’s “Your Drive!”

DAN MAFFETT: I think we’ve all had that situation at night when we’re driving and get blinded by headlights on a vehicle coming at us that has the headlights misaligned. Now, no one wants to be that guy, and there’s no excuse anymore now that every vehicle you have has some type of adjustment, whether it’s in the housing or in the bulb itself. And to adjust it is easier than ever. You pull it up to a wall, about 3 feet away, you transfer the dimensions of the headlight bulb positions at ride height to the wall with some tape, pull the vehicle back about 24-25 feet, and then turn your headlights on. And what that’s going to do is give you the line, and you want to adjust your headlights 3 inches below. Now, we’re going to line up this one behind us, and show you how to lay it out.

Headlight Aiming 1

So, when you go to adjust your headlights, you want to make sure that you transfer all the dimensions of where the headlight is placed, onto a wall. Easiest thing to do is pull up very close to a wall. We’re going to use a garage door. You measure from the ground to the center of the bulb, then from the centerline out to the bulb. And that gives you the dimensions to transfer, so you can then make sure you’re right in the area you need to be.

Now, once you have the measurements transferred to the wall with these intersections of where your bulbs are positioned at ride height, you want to measure 3 inches down, because we’re going to adjust the bulbs so that they’re hitting 3 inches below this center mass. So, ours, 3 inches down is right here at this lip, we got a little lucky. And we mark those out on both sides. Now we can get in and adjust them.

Headlight Aiming 2

So, once you have your marks transferred to the wall and the vehicle pulled back about 25 feet, you can get under the hood, locate your adjusters, and even something as state of the art as this only requires a screw driver to adjust.

So, you can find your adjustment, you want to look at the wall and make sure that your light is going up or down– it’s either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on your vehicle. And we are a little tall, so I’m going to bring this down a little bit… and that is going to do us really good. So, adjusting your headlights has never been easier. And if you have any questions or comments, hit us up right here at MotorWeek.