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 circumstances, there’s only one component of your vehicle to blame – your headlights, also called high beams. Although this adjustment may seem easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a whole adjustment is much more technical than this basic manipulation, and in this article, we are going to discover how to adjust the headlights of your Kia Optima? To get this done, first we will discover why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Kia Optima.
Why adjust the headlights of your Kia Optima?
So let’s begin our content page with the benefit of adjusting the headlights of your Kia Optima. For many people, our headlights are adjusted sufficiently, and they seem to light up enough during the night. Sadly this is not always the case and examining this setting, either because the headlights on your Kia Optima are not bright enough, or because you have the feeling that they are too weak is a good idea .
Adjusting the high beams of your Kia Optima for safety
First of all, the headlight adjustment of a Kia Optima must be made for a simple safety reason. Regardless it’s for you, or for the other users you come across during your night trips. Indeed, if you don’t see enough, the risk is to ignore an obstacle on the road, or to anticipate a curve badly. On the other hand, if your headlights are too strong, regardless if you are meant to switch to low beam lights when you pass a car, the time needed to make this change will most of the time expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your Kia Optima . It is consequently necessary for others as well as for you to have an ideal adjustment of your headlights.
Adjusting the headlights of a Kia Optima 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 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 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 Kia Optima?
We will now proceed to the part that interests you the most in this article, how to adjust the headlights of his Kia Optima? This adjustment may seem a bit difficult, but by simply following the guidance you should have the ability to do it without too much trouble.
Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Kia Optima
First of all, you’ll need to prepare your vehicle to adjust your high beams in good conditions, here are the preparations to put in place:
- Place your vehicle on a surface in front of a white wall for example, about 4 or 5 meters from the wall.
- Check your tire pressure carefully.
- 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 car, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.
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The headlight adjustment of his Kia Optima
Once your car 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. Check 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 follow:
- Open your hood, find the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your Kia Optima (they are generally marked, and those on top must adjust the verticality and the one on the side adjusts the horizontality of the adjustment).
- Use a cloth or different things to hide the projector on which you are not making the correction.
- Using the screws to make the horizontal correction, 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 correction, 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 Kia Optima is coherent, do not hesitate to verify it after you have driven it, in some cases it may move.
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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your Kia Optima, please read our content page on this subject matter.
To get more tips on the Kia Optima, take a look at the Kia Optima category.
