Thread: D4 high-beam alignment

The Light form the D3 50W originals formed two discernable yellow smudges on the road in front (>90% useless). I have no recollection of the possum hunting experiences of the current D4 owners. I thought the D3 lights were actually targeted too low. Remember this is perceived light as the halogens throw significantly less light than the HID High beam.

The new beam pattern with the HID replacements produces a heap of bright white light just in front (where the original smudges were), an odd shaped centre weighted patch and greater light elsewhere including the glare I spoke of. I would like to try separating (widening) and raising the beam pattern if that were possible.

It’s all in the optics as they are small multi faceted reflectors which I expect are supplied to assist the halogen H/L variant and only add to the aesthetics on HID models.

Perhaps enough D3 owners complained about the pattern being too low and they ‘fixed’ it J.

Hope this helps.

Cheers PK

Originally Posted by Peter

Perhaps enough D3 owners complained about the pattern being too low and they ‘fixed’ it J.

very clever....

Thanks Peter. The D3 halogens actually being low enough to shine on the road is what I wanted to know. If both lights are too low then perhaps they need to be adjusted up a little.

The halogens are to fill-in the sides as the bi-xenons are primarily just a spot. The D4 halogen is a wide narrow band which would be quite useful if it shone low enough.

Time for an update. My local dealer principal passed my concern to his new service manager who is going to take it up with LRA. I took the car to him so he could see the lights for himself. Still waiting for a response.
In the meantime, I emailed Dept of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and received a prompt response from the Senior Engineer, Vehicle Safety Standards Branch. I outlined my problem and he is passing it on to Light Vehicle Certification and Vehicle Safety & Recall section. I am waiting for their contact. There seems to be a lot duck shoving and passing the buck, but I am quietly confident of getting some sort of result from somewhere. I am not giving up just yet.

Graham

My email to RVCS has just been sent. Thanks GrahamB.

Any response yet from the vehicle safety/recall people? Have they arranged any testing? Are they waiting for more people to contact them?

I've not heard from RVCS.

The dealer had ordered a new pair of lights for my vehicle but the boxes contained halogen versions so more waiting. I have ordered some HID globes to use instead of remounting my driving lights through the grille whilst I wait for a bull-bar. I'll pack the HID globes to make them centre properly in the reflector, which I had more or less done with the halogen globes by bending the bottom tab a long way back. I'm getting 3000K globes to see how useable they are in fog.

Inspired by the success of Duck's Guts and the photos showing the results of his HID conversion, I got my local autoelectrician to replace the halogen high beams with HID conversions.

It didn't initially have the desired effect. The new HID beam just pointed up into the trees the same as the halogen beams had before, showing a similar flat band pattern well above the bi-xenon high beams and patches of darkness below on each side of the road.

Not happy with that result, the sparky pulled apart one of the lights to see what could be done, not believing that a light could be released that didn't have some means of adjustment. After confirming that the whole reflector is a single piece with no way to provide independent adjustment between the 2 parts of the light, he fiddled with the angle of the new HID bulb till he was happy with where it pointed, then had to use hot glue to hold the bulb in that position and stop it falling out. Not ideal, but it works.

Photos below show the beam pattern before the HID conversion and after. Not sure if much the same result might perhaps have been achieved by angling the halogen bulb and some hot glue without the need for HID conversion, but at least the HID bulbs should last a lot longer before they need to be replaced and face up to the the hot glue challenge.

Not completely convinced about the colour yet, but will see how they go on next night drive. These ones are 6500K and they're a bit too far into the blue/green part of the colour range for my liking, may have to swap them for 5000K instead to get a bit better colour rendition (hot glue permitting).