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 part of your vehicle at fault – your headlights, as well named high beams. Nevertheless 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 post, we are going to see how to adjust the headlights of your Subaru Forester? To achieve this, first we will see why you need to adjust your high beams, and secondly how to adjust the headlights of your Subaru Forester.

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Why adjust the headlights of your Subaru Forester?

So let’s start our article with the interest of adjusting the headlights of your Subaru Forester. For most people, our headlights are adjusted sufficiently, and they seem to light up enough through the night. Regrettably this is not always the circumstance and looking at this setting, either because the headlights on your Subaru Forester 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 Subaru Forester for safety

To begin with, the headlight adjustment of a Subaru Forester must be done for a simple safety explanation. If 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 ignore an obstacle driving, or to predict a curve badly. Alternatively, if your headlights are too powerful, regardless if you are expected to switch to low beam lights when you pass a car, 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 Subaru Forester . It is therefore important for others as well as for you to have an ideal adjustment of your headlights.

Adjusting the headlights of a Subaru Forester for legal reasons

In addition to safety, there is a law that regulates the power, the adjustment of motor vehicle headlights (articles R313-2 of the Highway Code), here is what it suggests: have between 2 and 4 headlights that illuminate at minimum 100 meters. Another legislation regulates 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 Subaru Forester?

We will now move on to the section that interests you the most in this post, how to adjust the headlights of his Subaru Forester? This adjustment may seem a bit complex, but by simply following the guidance you should be able to complete it without too much problem.

Preparations to adjust the headlights of a Subaru Forester

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 cautiously.
  • Verify that the height adjustment knob for the lights is set to 0
  • .

  • 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 Subaru Forester

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 process here are the steps to stick to:

  • Open your bonnet, locate the screws for horizontal and vertical adjustment of the headlights of your Subaru Forester (they are usually designated, and those on top must modify the verticality and the one on the side handles the horizontality of the adjustment).
  • Use a cloth or another thing to hide the projector on which you are not making the modification.
  • Using the screws to make the horizontal modification, 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 modification, 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, verify that the headlights setting of your Subaru Forester is coherent, do not hesitate to verify it after you have driven it, sometimes it may move.

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If you want to adjust the fog lights on your Subaru Forester, please browse our article on this subject.

If you wish more guides on the Subaru Forester, go to our Subaru Forester category.