Yeah this is something owners of those jacked up 4WDs never seemed to be able to get their minds around. A headlight system is designed to be spaced within a given minimum and maximum distance above the road surface. Get outside that zone and no amount of reaiming will fix the problems with the patterns produced. Some of the issues involved are simply insoluble. You can at least partly address the high vs low beam pattern incompatibility by going to a 4 headlight system, where you can aim the dedicated high beam housings independently of the combo beam housings. Then, if your bulbs are up to it, you can simply disconnect the high beam connectors to the combo bulbs so you get high beams only from the dedicated high beam bulbs. This lets you aim each set of housings for best effect for that specific beam. Personally, I've always preferred the light patterns from round headlights myself, assuming you get good quality headlight housings and bulbs, and makes sure the bulbs are supplied adequate electrical power. It's unscientific for sure, but to me round headlights always seem to give a better pattern than the various rectangular versions out there. And as for those model specific "aerodynamic" headlight housings, they range from down right awful to pretty darn good, depending on the vehicle. But with them, you get what you get. No way to improve them unless there is an E-code version you can convert to. We did this with my wife's Grand Cherokee and the improvement was simply astounding. Stock the headlights were almost as bad as the 86+ Vanagons. With the E-code version of the headlights installed, it had amazingly good illumination.
Al Knoll wrote: > The reflectors have an optimum above the roadway height so that both beams > are correctly aimed. The headlight position oo the vanagon is above that > design height. > > -- Marc Sayer Journalist, Photographer, Dog Trainer (APDT member #062956) Board member - Western States Great Dane Association Director of Operations & Training - Deaf Dane Rescue Inc. Oakridge, OR USA My Homepage - http://gracieland.org Deaf Dane Rescue - http://deafdane.org Western States Great Dane Rescue Association - http://wsgdra.org RescueWatchdogs - http://rescuewatchdogs.org Association of Pet Dog Trainers - http://APDT.com |
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