Pablobaamonde

About the adjustment areas in Bi Xenon highlights in the E-Class, there is a dual adjustment, an outer ring and an inter screwhead (philips screwdriver).

Some time ago, I tried the inter screwhead to lift up a little the highlights, because they came very low from the factory.

However, I realised that the pattern of the highlights is flat at the left and front side of the road and ascend progressively up when it gets to the right, so as to light the licences of the cars driving in the right lane.

The height of the highlights is fine at the front of the road ahead, but at the right side is too high. (May be because I changed the previous balance)

Has anyone tried the outer ring to correct this?

Chimo,

Nice weather in Valencia.

SAguirre

I know a few things about this, but I don't know if you are still looking at this post. So if you are interested, reply.

Steve Aguirre

Fastbuck

It may be worth hearing what you have to say anyway!

SAguirre

What I know about this is that the headlight pattern is a typical Continental European pattern. The pattern is like two Ls except that the vertical part of the L is at about 30 degrees to the right, like two acute angles opening to the right.

The purpose of this is to see the traffic signs, bikes and people on the sidewalk. Here in the US headlights with this pattern were not allowed for years and caused US cars that came from Europe to have different headlights that conformed with the DOT (Department of Transportation). The headlight splash pattern is the US was always symmetrical. My personal opinion is that European lights were always better (except for those yellow headlights the French used for years).

If you can only see the license plates of the cars to your right, they are way to low. There is an actual machine that you should use to align Euro headlights that even tells you how bright they are and if they are OK. If you don’t have access to this machine, then this is one thing you could try: You should park your car about 1.5 meters in front of a wall or garage door and make sure your car is level. Then you should measure how high the center of the projector beam is on the car and set the horizontal line just a few cms below where it is the equal height at the wall or garage door. Then you should test drive them. If cars that you pass on the right flash you, then you are still too high and you are blinding them so you should measure again and lower them a few more cms.

This is assuming that your car has automatic leveling headlights, if it does not, you should lower them just a bit more so that they will not be pointing to the moon when your car is loaded down. I don’t think that this is an issue in Europe since even in the old cars you had a manual headlight tilt adjustment inside the car.

But this might answer your question for good. The weird pattern that you are talking about is not adjustable. It is in the projector beam or the light bulb. The adjustment you are talking about messing with just will point the headlight to the right or to the left, but will not change the fact that they are higher to the right hand side.

I really have no idea if the UK has the same headlights, but are just inverted. I took my continental MB to London once and had to get stickers that went on the lenses of the headlights so that I would not blind the oncoming traffic since they were pointing higher to the right by design. I never took my car back since it was too had to get used to driving on the left in a continental car. I found it easier to get used to driving on the left if at least everything was changed, most importantly the driving position.

This is all folks,

Steve Aguirre

Pablobaamonde

I am well aware of everything you said about the lights, though I didn´t know that this kind of pattern is just prevailing in Europe.

I formerly had a VW passat with bixenon lights and, although that pattern you described was an actual fact, it was by no means comparable to that of the Mercedes.I believe in Mercedes is much more exagerate, that is the reason I questioned this forum. I do not pretend to make disappear the L, just moderate it a little.

When I bought the car, I was very dissapointed because just any car had more powerful lights than my new car, till I found out, by means of this forum, that this is a quite a common problem in mercedes coming from the factory.

I am aware that any adjustment I could made, could be anything worse than that made by mechanics and the dealer, but I wanted to know the tools to make those changes, people in America, usually do more mechanics, and like more to make improvements in their own cars than here, and since I fear that any dealer adjustment will return the car to the former blind-kind situation.

Certainly I dont get flashed by cars coming in a two lane roads, and I have tested not to cause any mean effect to other drivers.

But since I am a somewhat obsesive with this matter, I have figure out that, at least in Spain, not everyone have the lights adjusted equally, Some have them extremely high, others extremely low, as to wonder how they are capable to see anything. And the rest you could see within a range, many variations.

For instance, the VW, and Audi, have the lights very high (I drive a lot during the night).

Thank you so much Steve

SAguirre

I also am very picky about headlights. The Euro pattern that we are both talking about does seem to be much more pronounced on the E class. However, I have no idea if it is because of the fact that the Xenon lights are so much brighter.

When I bought my E class, I got it of the dealer’s lot and I was not able to pick the options, that is why I had the Bi-Xenons installed. The old headlights were better than my last e-class’ lights, but also had a really pronounce L pattern to the right, they just were not very bright.

I am not up to speed on VWs or AUDIs anymore. I have an AUDI, but it has the bad American H5 (9004) bulbs for the US market. They have a totally symmetrical pattern. However, I have not seen any other Bi-Xenon systems with the L pattern here in the US. I will look more closely to make sure. My family has a new Lexus with Xenon lights and it does not have that overwhelming tendency to be so high on the right.

If you are not blinding anyone, then you must have them set correctly and that is the way they are. I just don’t think you can do anything about the pattern. When I took the old headlight off, I removed the H7 bulb and looked in the reflector housing and saw that there was a steel piece that was causing that pattern inside. I did not look inside the Bi-Xenon’s reflector housing, but I bet that that piece of steel is what flips up when you turn on the high beams.

Veo que hablas español, y se me ocurrió escribir un poco en mi lengua paterna. Una de las cosas que me guata mas de esta forum es que no solo tenemos los mismos gustos en autos, sino también tenemos las mismas tendencias de observar cosas similares. Cuando viví in Alemania, todos mis amigos me miraban bien raro pro que yo siempre le cambiaba el aceite a mi Mercedes allí. Siempre me preguntaban como era posible que yo sepa algo sobre autos si no estaba estudiando nada de mecánica. Quizá tienes mucha razón cuando dices que aquí en los EE.UU. la gente se atreve mas a ponerle las manos a sus coches. Lamentablemente, cuanto mas leo sobre mi Mercedes nuevo, me estoy dando cuenta que a este auto no le voy a poder hacer mucho. Quizá voy a poder comprar una de las computadoras de diagnóstico para este auto, pero cuestan un montón.

Hasta luego,

Steven Aguirre

Pablobaamonde

Esteban,

Me alegro que hables esta preciosa lengua castellana. Me imaginé que tenías algún antecedente ibérico por tu apellido que procede de una región española denominada País Vasco. Ya no llego a determinar que significa en la lengua vasca tu apellido.

Yo estudié, hace ya algunos años, (14) en el Estado en el que te encuentras, cerca de una ciudad llamada Colorado Springs, en Widefield. Y me parece un lugar privilegiado para vivir, y al que me gustaría volver algún día.

Te agradezco mucho tu información sobre los faros y hasta pronto.

un saludo,

Pablobaamonde

This has nothing to do with the thread

Steven, por si te interesa, aquí tienes el significado de tu apellido. Significa Campo, pastizal pradera.

http://www.geocities.com/vcanomx/ape/aguirre.html

Saludos

ATS

I believe the pattern is called a Z pattern.. /

dark / light

/

----------------------------------------/light

ATS

That diagram above didn't work out too well..

Pablobaamonde

[CENTER]Actually what you can see in the road is somethin like this


_______/ _______/


Well, sort of

SAguirre

That is exactly what I am talking about. There are very few cars in the US have those pattern lights, but I think that we are starting to get morenow. The horizontal line of the pattern is not supposed to be any higher than the heights of the bulb on the car.

Thanks for the visual aid

Steve (aka Esteban)