Manual Headlight ADjustment.

[dsiingh]

Hi,

Well my nearside(passenger side) beam is slightly out and shines light towards the pavement rather than the road, and both dipped lamps are shining out around 5 feet ahead, not much when your driving on country roads . Is there a way of adjusting these manually. I have searched the forum but may have only skim read each relevant topic, after being overly eager to get these sorted.

Id like to adjust these so that they give light in the right direction and to a suitable length for me.

Is it easy to do? and how can it be done?

is there any other to get these adjusters repaired or upgraded?

[Brianmoooore]

Two adjusters for each light - eight in total. They're fairly obvious if you look at the back of the lights.
If you have/had the headlamp aiming knob near the driver's right knee, the up/down adjusters on the dipped beams will be different from the others, and are likely to be the only ones that aren't seized solid, unless they've all been kept well covered in copper grease over the years.
I've had mixed success in unseizing them - you can usually free them up and clean up the steel threads, but you'll often find that the thread in the plastic nuts has stripped.
New ones are available from BMW at not too high a price, but it mounts up if you change all of them.
If you have the remotely adjustable dipped beams, the hydraulic mechanism will almost certainly have failed beyond repair, and they will have settled in their default position, which is too low to keep the MOT test man happy. There is a fine adjustment available by turning the outer body of the cylinders, but the range of this adjustment is not normally enough to bring the lights high enough. Fortunately, there is a coarse adjustment in the form of the steel threaded rod that projects from the front of the cylinders to the headlamps, and if this is screwed out two or three turns, the correct aim will be within the range of the fine adjuster.
If you wish to retain remote adjusters, the electric adjusters from an E34 can be adapted to fit fairly easily.
Each of the adjusters fits into a plastic cup where they connect to the headlamp rim, and it's usual to find these in need of renewal as well.

[Sanchez]

white(possibly yellow/brown with age) plastic adjusters are found behind the lenses.

No doubt they will be seized so getting the hole headlight unit out and cleaning them up or replacing them(nla from BMW) is the best bet.

[dsiingh]

Is there a how-to article written on installing electric adjusters?


I have this kind of adjustment switch

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/BMW-E30-GENUINE- ... MuT-32DBSP(tNHU!Q~~60_12.JPG

And the light giving me concern has only one visible plastic screw type thing. It is the dipped light, so the one on the left which has only one screw, and each time im turning it around it feels as if nothing is happening.

[dsiingh]

The light in problem is the one with the bosch sticker on it. It only has one screw adjuster - which doesnt seem to do anything but twist. I cant seem to find the second adjuster screw.

Any ideas to repair this?

[Brianmoooore]

The hydraulic cylinder and pushrod from it to the headlamp rim have gone missing. You can see the tripod structure it twists into.
You either need a replacement cylinder, an E34 electric adjuster, or a manual adjuster identical to the one still on the light.

[dsiingh]

Sorry to cause confusion I still have the hydraulic cyclinder. This is a random picture i took off google. But I cant find the second white adjuster screw.

Is it easy to do the electronic adjuster conversion?

[Brianmoooore]

Each headlamp should be supported at three points around the front rim. one of these is a fixed, non adjustable support, the main beam will have two of the adjusters with the white finger grips you can see in the pic., and the dipped beam will either be the same on base models, or one of these adjusters and one hydraulic cylinder on the better equipped models.
I can't possibly say precisely what's wrong with yours, unless you post a pic. of the actual item.

E34 electric conversion: The E34 electric motors fit straight into the tripod shown in the pic. with a small mod. that will be obvious when you try to fit them.
You then need a control switch to fit inside the car, for which you can adapt an E34 or E36 version, or use a standard rotary potentiometer and a couple of resistors which can be fitted with a bit of ingenuity to the standard E30 adjuster knob.
Each of the three components needs an earth, 12 volts + ignition switched, and a third wire which just connects between all three.