If you feel you can’t see as well at night, or you feel you’re lighting too low, or too high, in all these circumstances, there’s only one component of your car at fault – your headlights, as well called high beams. Although this adjustment may seem easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a whole adjustment is much more complex than this simple manipulation, and in this article, we are going to discover how to adjust the headlights of your BMW X5? To achieve this, first we will discover why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your BMW X5.
Why adjust the headlights of your BMW X5?
So let’s start our article with the benefit of adjusting the headlights of your BMW X5. For most people, our headlights are adjusted well enough, and they seem to light up enough at nighttime. However this is not always the circumstance and examining this setting, either because the headlights on your BMW X5 are not bright enough, or because you have the feeling that they are too weak is a great idea .
Adjusting the high beams of your BMW X5 for safety
First of all, the headlight adjustment of a BMW X5 must be carried out for a basic safety motive. Regardless it’s for you, or for the other users you come across during your night trips. In actual fact, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to miss an obstacle on the road, or to anticipate a curve badly. On the other hand, if your headlights are too powerful, even if you are supposed to switch to low beam lights when you pass a vehicle, the time required to make this change will generally expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your BMW X5 . It is consequently necessary for others as well as for you to have an optimal adjustment of your headlights.
Adjusting the headlights of a BMW X5 for legal reasons
Furthermore to safety, 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 minimum 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 matching to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.
How to adjust the headlights of a BMW X5?
We will now move on to the section that interests you the most in this article, how to adjust the headlights of his BMW X5? This setting may seem a bit complicated, but by following the guidelines you should be able to do it without too much issue.
Preparations to adjust the headlights of a BMW X5
First of all, you’ll need to prepare your car to adjust your high beams in good conditions, here are the preparations to put in place:
- Place your car on a surface in front of a white wall for example, about 4 or 5 meters from the wall.
- Check your tire pressure attentively.
- Check that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
- Try doing that with half a full tank.
- Take out all needless weight from the vehicle, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.
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The headlight adjustment of his BMW X5
Once your vehicle is in position, 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. Check with a level that both parts of the cross are horizontal. 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 stick to:
- Open your bonnet, locate the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your BMW X5 (they are in general designated, and those on top must modify the verticality and the one on the side manages the horizontality of the adjustment).
- Use a cloth or something else 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 noted 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, verify that the headlights setting of your BMW X5 is logical, do not think twice to verify it after you have driven it, occasionally it may move.
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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your BMW X5, please browse our article on this subject.
If you need more guides on the BMW X5, go to our BMW X5 category.
