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 situations, there’s only one part of your vehicle guilty – your headlights, also called high beams. Nevertheless this adjustment may appear easy thanks to the thumbwheel on your dashboard, a complete adjustment is much more complex than this basic manipulation, and in this article, we are going to find out how to adjust the headlights of your smart forfour? To do this, first we will find out why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your smart forfour.
Why adjust the headlights of your smart forfour?
So let’s begin our article with the interest of adjusting the headlights of your smart forfour. For many of us, our headlights are adjusted sufficiently, and they seem to light up enough through the night. Regrettably this is not constantly the case and looking at this setting, either because the headlights on your smart forfour are not bright enough, or because you have the impression that they are too weak is a great idea .
Adjusting the high beams of your smart forfour for safety
To begin with, the headlight adjustment of a smart forfour must be done for a very easy safety reason. If 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 ignore an obstacle on your way, or to predict a curve badly. However, if your headlights are too powerful, regardless if you are expected to switch to low beam lights when you cross a vehicle, the time needed to make this switch will most of the time expose the driver in front of you to the headlight beam of your smart forfour . It is therefore necessary for others as well as for you to have an optimal adjustment of your headlights.
Adjusting the headlights of a smart forfour for legal reasons
Furthermore to safety, there is a law that supervises the power, the adjustment of motor vehicle 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 equivalent to that of the dipped headlights and that the maximum luminosity must be 225, 000 cd.
How to adjust the headlights of a smart forfour?
We will now go forward to the section that concerns you the most in this article, how to adjust the headlights of his smart forfour? This adjustment may appear a bit complex, but by simply following the guidelines you should be able to accomplish it without too much problem.
Preparations to adjust the headlights of a smart forfour
To begin with, 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 attentively.
- 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 car, only one person should be in the driver’s seat.
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The headlight adjustment of his smart forfour
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. 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 procedure here are the steps to stick to:
- Open your hood, locate the screws for horizontal and vertical control of the headlights of your smart forfour (they are in most cases marked, and those on top must adjust the verticality and the one on the side handles 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 part 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 below.
- Once finished, check that the headlights setting of your smart forfour is coherent, do not hesitate 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 smart forfour, please go through our article on this subject matter.
If you have any additional questions about the smart forfour, do not hesitate to consult our smart forfour category.
