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 part of your car to blame – your headlights, also called high beams. Although this adjustment may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a whole adjustment is much more complex than this basic manipulation, and in this post, we are going to see how to adjust the headlights of your Citroen C3? To do this, first we will see why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Citroen C3.

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Why adjust the headlights of your Citroen C3?

So let’s start our content page with the interest of adjusting the headlights of your Citroen C3. For the majority of us, our headlights are adjusted good enough, and they seem to light up enough after dark. Sadly this is not always the circumstance and examining this setting, either because the headlights on your Citroen C3 are not bright enough, or because you have the sensation that they are too weak is a wise decision .

Adjusting the high beams of your Citroen C3 for safety

To begin with, the headlight adjustment of a Citroen C3 must be made for a basic safety reason. Regardless it’s for you, or for the other users you come across during your night trips. In fact, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to fail to see an obstacle driving, or to anticipate a curve badly. Alternatively, if your headlights are too strong, even if you are meant to switch to low beam lights when you pass a vehicle, the time needed to make this switch will generally expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your Citroen C3 . It is consequently essential for others as well as for you to have an optimal adjustment of your headlights.

Adjusting the headlights of a Citroen C3 for legal reasons

In addition 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 suggests: 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 matching to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.

How to adjust the headlights of a Citroen C3?

We will now move on to the part that concerns you the most in this post, how to adjust the headlights of his Citroen C3? This adjustment may appear a bit complex, but by following the instructions you should have the ability to complete it without too much trouble.

Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Citroen C3

To begin with, you’ll need to prepare your car to adjust your high beams in good conditions, here are the preparations to executed:

  • Place your car 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.
  • Remove all unneeded weight from the vehicle, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.

The headlight adjustment of his Citroen C3

Once your car 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. Verify 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 follow:

  • Open your bonnet, find the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your Citroen C3 (they are in general marked, and those on top must adjust 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 part of the beam which should be a little to the right of the vertical line noted on the wall
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  • 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 below.
  • Once finished, check that the headlights setting of your Citroen C3 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 Citroen C3, please browse our content page on this subject.

To discover more tips on the Citroen C3, take a look at the Citroen C3 category.