Whether you feel you can’t see as well at night, or you feel you’re lighting too low, or too high, in all these scenarios, there’s only one part of your car to blame – your headlights, also named high beams. Nevertheless this adjustment may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a whole adjustment is much more complex than this elementary manipulation, and in this post, we are going to discover how to adjust the headlights of your Kia Picanto? To achieve this, first we will discover why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Kia Picanto.
Why adjust the headlights of your Kia Picanto?
So let’s start our content page with the benefit of adjusting the headlights of your Kia Picanto. For most of us, our headlights are adjusted sufficiently, and they appear to light up enough after dark. However this is not constantly the case and checking this setting, either because the headlights on your Kia Picanto 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 Kia Picanto for safety
To begin with, the headlight adjustment of a Kia Picanto must be conducted for a basic safety reason. Whether 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 miss out an obstacle on your way, or to anticipate a curve badly. Alternatively, if your headlights are too strong, regardless if you are supposed to switch to low beam lights when you pass a car, the time needed to make this switch will generally expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your Kia Picanto . It is therefore essential for others as well as for you to have an optimal adjustment of your headlights.
Adjusting the headlights of a Kia Picanto 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 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 identical to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.
How to adjust the headlights of a Kia Picanto?
We will now proceed to the part that interests you the most in this post, how to adjust the headlights of his Kia Picanto? This adjustment may appear a bit complicated, but by following the recommendations you should be able to perform it without too much concern.
Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Kia Picanto
To begin with, 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.
- Verify your tire pressure carefully.
- Verify that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
- Try doing that with half a full tank.
- Take out all unneeded weight from the automobile, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.
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The headlight adjustment of his Kia Picanto
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 hood, find the screws for horizontal and vertical modification of the headlights of your Kia Picanto (they are in most cases 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 part 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 Kia Picanto is coherent, do not hesitate 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 Kia Picanto, please go through our content page on this subject matter.
To find more tips on the Kia Picanto, take a look at the Kia Picanto category.