[Troika]

tl;dr - Is it possible that my headlights were aimed 1ft+ too low?


I hate to start a thread on this, because it's been discussed so thoroughly in the past, but the alternative was to wake up a years-old zombie thread and I have a specific question for people here with more experience than me.

I have a 2013 SR5. It has had Bilstein 5100s and in the process got some ride height tuning that raised the front end a little bit and leveled it side to side. So, my assumption was that my lights were aimed a little high, since I hadn't adjusted them.

The front lighting, as is well documented, was the absolute worst part of the truck for me. So bad that driving in my neighborhood on residential streets at night I've wondered if my lights were on at all. I've been keeping my factory fog lights on to compensate and wanting to upgrade my lighting, but the reflector system from 2013 doesn't present me with great options.

This week, I replaced my lowbeams with Philips H9s and noticed a huge difference in brightness, though the consistency of the beam was blotchy and now I was really worried about making sure that my lights weren't going to shine in the eyes of other drivers.

So, I found a dark parking lot with a cinder block wall at one end and measured off 25' from the wall and put a tape line at 36-38" horizontally. I went back at night and planned to adjust my headlights down to that line.

BUT, it appears that my lights were aimed freakishly below that line...like more than a foot below that line. I adjusted them up, but stopped short of all the way to the line I marked and i tried to level the beam focus from the left and right headlights. Plan was to drive with it for a while and then maybe go back and make another adjustment.

I'm really happy with the improvement in lighting on dark neighborhood streets and the blotchyness that I described above is gone or mostly gone. I think it was a product of the left and right not being aimed at the same plane.

But, am I doing this right? I've not read anyone else's account of their lights being too low, especially after a suspension mod that raised the front end. I'm following the instructions, but since this is a first experience for me, I don't trust what I see 100%, since it seems to fly in the face of everyone else's accounts.

Any advice or opinions will be appreciated.