It doesn’t matter if you feel you can’t see as well at night, regardless you feel you’re lighting too low or too high, in all of these occasions, there’s only one component of your car to blame – your low beams. Although this correction may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a full correction is much more complicated than this common manipulation, and in this article, we will see how to adjust the low beam lights of your Citroen Xsara? For this, first we will see why you should adjust your lights, and, secondly, how to adjust the low beam lights of your Citroen Xsara.
Why adjust the low beam lights of your Citroen Xsara?
So let’s begin our article with the advantage of adjusting the low beam lights of your Citroen Xsara. For the majority of us these lights are sufficiently adjusted, and it looks like that they light up enough at night. Sadly this is not constantly the case and looking at this setting, either because the low beams of your Citroen Xsara are not lighting up well, or because you have the sense that they are too low or too strong is a good plan .
Adjusting the low beam of your Citroen Xsara for safety is a good plan.
To start, the adjusting of the dipped headlights of an Citroen Xsara must be done for a basic safety purpose. Regardless it’s for you, or for the other users you encounter during your night trips. Indeed, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to miss an obstacle on the route, or to anticipate a curve badly. On the flip side, if your lights are too strong, you risk dazzling the car owners in front of you, and thus putting yourself at risk. It is consequently necessary for others as well as for you to have an ideal setting of your parking lights.
Setting the low beam headlights of an Citroen Xsara for legal reasons
In addition to safety, there is a law that controls the power, the adjustment of low beams of cars, here is what it specifies: have between 2 and 4 headlights that light up at minimum , 30 meters. Another legislation controls their use, the European one (directive 76/756/EEC), which stipulates that the height of the beam must be between 500 mm and 1200 mm from the floor, and that they must be at least 600 mm apart.
How to adjust the low-beam headlamps of a Citroen Xsara?
We will now go forward to the section that concerns you the most in this article, how to adjust the low beams of his Citroen Xsara? This setting may appear to be a bit complex, but if you follow the guidelines you should be able to do it without too much difficulty.
Preparations to set the low beam of a Citroen Xsara
To start, you will need to prepare your car to adjust your low beam lights in good conditions, here are the preparations to do:
- Place your car on a surface in front of a white wall for example, about 4 or 5 meters from the wall.
- Examine your tire pressure carefully.
- Examine that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
- Try doing that with half a full tank.
- Remove all unneeded weight from the car, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.
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The setting of the low beam headlights of his Citroen Xsara
Once your car is in place, you will switch on your dipped beam and make a cross-shaped mark (one horizontal and one vertical section) in the middle of the beam that will be projected on the wall. Make sure with a level that both parts of the cross are straight. Then back your car up to a distance of between 7 and 10 metres. For the rest of the procedure here are the steps to follow:
- Open your bonnet, situate the screws for horizontal and vertical adjustment of the lights of your Citroen Xsara (they are almost always marked, and those above must adjust the verticality and those on the side controls the horizontality of the adjustment).
- Use a cloth or something else to hide the light on which you are not making the adjustment.
- Using the screws to make the horizontal adjustment, you should have the most strong part of the beam which should be a little to the right of the vertical line marked on the wall
- With regard to vertical manipulation, you will have to use the screw to try to position the upper end of the beam at the level of the horizontal marking on the wall, or slightly below.
- Once complete, examine that the low beam setting of your Citroen Xsara is consistent on the road, do not hesitate to examine that it has been driven, in some cases it may move.
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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your Citroen Xsara, please read our article on this subject.
If you want more tutorials on the Citroen Xsara, go to our Citroen Xsara category.
