If you experience you can’t see as well at night, or you experience you’re lighting too low, or too high, in all these cases, there’s only one component of your vehicle to take responsibility – your headlights, also often known as high beams. Although this adjustment may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a complete adjustment is much more complex than this simple manipulation, and in this post, we are going to see how to adjust the headlights of your Alfa Romeo 156? To get this done, first we will see why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Alfa Romeo 156.

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Why adjust the headlights of your Alfa Romeo 156?

So let’s start our article with the benefit of adjusting the headlights of your Alfa Romeo 156. For most people, our headlights are adjusted good enough, and they appear to light up enough at night. Unfortunately this is not always the case and checking this setting, either because the headlights on your Alfa Romeo 156 are not bright enough, or because you have the sensation that they are too weak is a good idea .

Adjusting the high beams of your Alfa Romeo 156 for safety

First of all, the headlight adjustment of a Alfa Romeo 156 must be carried out for a simple security motive. Whether it’s for you, or for the other users you come across during your night trips. In truth, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to fail to see an obstacle on your way, or to anticipate a curve badly. On the other hand, if your headlights are too strong, even if you are supposed to switch to low beam lights when you pass a car, the time required to make this change will most of the time expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your Alfa Romeo 156 . It is therefore important for others as well as for you to have an optimal adjustment of your headlights.

Adjusting the headlights of a Alfa Romeo 156 for legal reasons

In addition to security, there is a law that supervises the power, the adjustment of car headlights (articles R313-2 of the Highway Code), here is what it specifies: have between 2 and 4 headlights that illuminate at least 100 meters. Another legislation supervises their use, the European one (directive 76/756/EEC), which stipulates that there is no maximum height for the adjustment of the headlights, but that the maximum width of the beam must be very same to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.

How to adjust the headlights of a Alfa Romeo 156?

We will now proceed to the part that interests you the most in this post, how to adjust the headlights of his Alfa Romeo 156? This setting may appear a bit complicated, but by following the recommendations you should be able to complete it without too much trouble.

Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Alfa Romeo 156

First of all, you’ll need to prepare your vehicle to adjust your high beams in good conditions, here are the preparations to set up:

  • Place your vehicle on a surface in front of a white wall for example, about 4 or 5 meters from the wall.
  • Verify your tire pressure carefully.
  • Verify that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
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  • Try doing that with half a full tank.
  • Take out all unnecessary weight from the car, just one person should be in the driver’s seat.

The headlight adjustment of his Alfa Romeo 156

Once your vehicle is in place, you will turn 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. Verify with a level that both parts of the cross are straight. Then back your vehicle up to a distance of between 7 and 10 metres. For the rest of the process here are the steps to stick to:

  • Open your bonnet, find the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your Alfa Romeo 156 (they are in general designated, and those on top must modify the verticality and the one on the side controls the horizontality of the adjustment).
  • Use a cloth or different things to hide the projector on which you are not making the adjustment.
  • Using the screws to make the horizontal adjustment, you should have the most intense component of the beam which should be a little to the right of the vertical line marked on the wall
  • .

  • With regard to vertical adjustment, 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 down below.
  • Once finished, check that the headlights setting of your Alfa Romeo 156 is coherent, do not think twice to check it after you have driven it, oftentimes it may move.

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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your Alfa Romeo 156, please read our article on this subject.

If you need more guides on the Alfa Romeo 156, go to our Alfa Romeo 156 category.