Tacoma Drivers, Please take note

[TeriAnn]

Enter the Euro-spec replacement lamps from Hella. They cast almost no light from 9-2, with a sharp horizontal cut-off that keeps the light on the road and not in the sky. The logic of this pattern is that unlike here in the US, the streetsigns in most European countries are illuminated and the vehicle lamps aren't required to illuminate signs. The results are quite impressive and very satisfying. When I come up behind other drivers, I can see a sharp light cutoff line across their trunk lid, and almost no light entering the vehicle itself.

I have IPF headlamps with 90 watt low beam and 140 watt high beam bulbs installed. Like the Hella's the IPF lamp has a razor sharp cutoff for the low beam. I aimed my headlamps by placing the back of a Japanese compact car about 6 feet ahead of my front bumper to simulate being stopped in traffic. I aimed the low beans so the cut off line was just below the rear window.

The IPFs have been on my Land Rover for almost 8 years now and I have never been flashed by oncoming traffic (I'm very careful to dip high beams from a long way off) since I installed the IPF's. With US spec headlamps I occasionally got flashed.

With 90/140W bulbs I can see ever so much better and with the IPF lamps oncoming traffic has less glare off my headlamps.

 

[Photog]

I had a Baja Bug, years ago, that I set up the same way, except with 55/100 watt H4, in 7" Hella Rally housings. They were a direct replacement for the factory sealed beams.

I adjusted the low beams, with a typical sedan ahead of me about 100 ft, so the cut-off line was at their headlight level. At a stop light, my headlights were just below most folks trunk lid.

The high-beams were outstanding. I never needed extra driving lights.

 

[madizell]

The logic of this pattern is that unlike here in the US, the streetsigns in most European countries are illuminated and the vehicle lamps aren't required to illuminate signs.

The street and highway signs in Europe are generally located on the side of the road, not overhead as in the US. Most of the signs in Germany that I saw were not illuminated. Daniel Stern once provided a discussion on the genesis of E-code reflectors.

E-code lights have, in addition to a flat top beam, a small kick-up on the sign side of the lights (on the right for most of Europe where folks drive on the same side of the road as we do), so that the beams are not completely flat topped. Point your E-codes at a flat surface and you will see the spike of light on the right side of each beam. Aussie-code lights, however, have the light kick-up on the left side, not the right because they drive on the left side of the road, and as such, Aussie code lights are not suitable for use in the US because oncoming drivers will see the light spike. For this reason, be careful when using ARB supplied H-4 conversions in the US. If they are Aussie code, they will dazzle oncoming traffic. E-code units are acceptable, and I agree that they are better than US spec lights for the reasons stated by others herein.

 

[ntsqd]

Interesting how the title changed from my original intent.

 

[madizell]

Not so much changed, as progressed.

Aim headlights on lifted vehicles about the same as you would any vehicle. Since the headlight height is rarely the same from one type of vehicle to another, no two vehicles would aim the same if there were some fixed target for aiming lights (i.e., an aim point on the ground at some fixed distance from the light source). Instead, headlights are aimed according to the angle of the light (degrees below horizontal measured at a standard distance) and should be angled away from center line toward the shoulder side of the road (again measured at a standard distance from the headlight). The technical discussion posted earlier by HenryJ explains how to achieve this.

Unless you are driving a monster truck, the lifted height of the lights should make little difference in how they work or how they are perceived by others. On the other hand, if you have a lifted truck and a lot of oncoming traffic is flashing their lights at you, you might want to consider lowering the aim point a bit. I would expect, though, that if you get a lot of flashes from others, the problem has more to do with inaccurate aiming to start with, rather than lifted height of the lights. Look at your average semi tractor. Their lights are usually quite high compared to a Morris Mini, yet they don't offend most drivers.

 

[maximumrob]

Bring back the old, low wattage, yellow bulbs, please! I'm tired of flashing folks, both luxury car drivers and the lifted truck guys who don't have a mechanical bone in their body to even understand that lights should be aimed at the ground.

Thank goodness I have 130 watt KC's on the bumper. That way I can blind other drivers the same way they blind me. Maybe they'll eventually get the hint that HID's are too damn bright for on-road use.

The use of those "super blues" in lowered imports has made me want to go so far as to carry around my 15,000,000 candlepower flashlight for those special occasions.

Dang I'm getting grouchy in my old age.

 

[ntsqd]

Not so much changed, as progressed.

TITLE, not content.

My original post had nothing to do specifically with lifted trucks. It had to do with the glare produced by Tacoma headlights and was titled "Tacoma Drivers, Please take note" or words to that effect. While glare can be caused by poor aiming, I highly doubt that every single stock Tacoma is driven off the lot with poorly aimed headlights.

The changing of the title skewed the content in an unintended direction. While happy with the tech that it produced, I'm not happy with my intent being skewed about.

 

[madizell]

Well, okay, but like most folks I rarely read the title other than on the index page, just to get an idea of what the string is about. I didn't even notice your original title or that the string header had been changed. I guess we just went with the content flow.

I would not bank on every Toyota not leaving the lot with mis-aimed lights. My new Frontier's lights are as delivered, and are too high. I started to aim them one evening and could not find the adjuster screws, and gave up for night. One of these days I will figure out how to adjust them. As they are, the high beams are useless because they illuminate the tree tops. Perhaps Toyota builds their trucks the same way, with lights aimed by the underpaid.

 

[ntsqd]

I didn't say "some", I said "ALL".

The content didn't really change until the title did. If we needed a thread on this why wasn't it split and my original posting left alone? My intent was to make Tacoma drivers aware of something, not to start a thread on headlight adjustment. Now it would appear that I started this thread, which I did not.
edit: I see that my title edit stuck. Now if I could move it back to the forum where it belongs.

 

[Photog]

It may have been my fault in post #6, where I introduced the idea of making adjustments. My appologies if I lead folks off into the weeds.

The info here is good stuff; but it might be better in it's own thread, unrelated to "Tacoma Driver's awareness".

 

[ntsqd]

It may have been my fault in post #6, where I introduced the idea of making adjustments. My appologies if I lead folks off into the weeds.

The info here is good stuff; but it might be better in it's own thread, unrelated to "Tacoma Driver's awareness".

No apology necessary. The direction a thread takes is it's own critter.
It was the manipulation that I objected to, not the direction and subsequent content. I think it should've been split, but it's all good.